Vampire’s Fall: Origins was originally released as a mobile game on iOS and Android but the developer decided to release a remastered version of the title for players who want to experience the game on PC. This is our review of Vampire’s Fall: Origins in which we dig deep in the PC version of the game and check out how good the PC port really is. Vampire’s Fall: Origins is an open-world RPG where you play as a vampire who is on the hunt to defeat a Witchmaster.
You begin the game by selecting your character and their Bloodline. The Bloodlines do not really matter in the game apart from the tiny bonus that they offer right from the start of the game. I went for Ranjeni which are masters of deception. Considering the fact that how the combat in the game plays out, opting for a 2% dodge Bloodline certainly showed its benefits later in the game. After the tutorial run in the game, you are on your own in the world of Vampire’s Fall: Origins with just the main quest guiding you. Rest of the things such as finding better gear, leveling up and exploring the world is all up to you.
You will also spend quite a lot of time managing your inventory in the game. You will find random loot which will give you better gear however the best gear is found at the Blacksmith. After certain progression in the game, you will gain access to a Blacksmith and a nearby Forge. Blacksmith will sell you better weapons, gear, amulets, and rings while the forge will allow you to upgrade and enhance your equipped or purchases items. It is vital that you find and equip better weapons because you will not survive for long without good equipment.
Earning gold is not too hard in Vampire’s Fall: Origins at this point. After hardly any grind and completing a few starting quests and some side quests, I was able to purchase a few decent weapons and good armor. You can explore the world of the game fully without completing the main quests pretty early in the game however random enemy encounters will not be so kind on you. As you are exploring the map, sometimes you will encounter random enemies. Depending on the are you are in, these enemies could be relatively easy to kill or extremely difficult to kill.
The weakest link in Vampire’s Fall: Origin is its combat. For some reason, you are unable to use healing items during battles. To make matters worse, the crafting system is even worse than the actual combat. You do not need any sort of ingredients for crafting but rather just open the crafting menu, choose the item that you need and it just starts crafting with a timer. This mechanic feels very much like a pay-to-win mechanic where you pay to quickly craft the items. There are no in-game transactions here but if the developer was porting the game to PC with a price tag, these annoying mechanics should have been replaced with more PC friendly mechanics.
The combat is simply a selection of different commands from the screen. Instead of utilizing the full keyboard for combat, the developer thought that it was a wise idea to simply put the icons on the screen and let players click their way through battles. I’ve played tons of turn-based combat games but most of the titles have really embraced the mechanics instead of just putting it there. Focus is required for using most of the abilities and unless you are storing it, most of the abilities are just simply sitting there on your screen with you never having enough Focus to use them especially during the early stages of the game.
In most Focus or a Mana based combat systems, normally the basic abilities have pretty less requirements to make the combat enjoyable. As you unlock better and more powerful abilities, the cost requirements increase but when you reach that spot, you are pretty powerful yourself and have enough mana pool already to use the powerful abilities but here the starting cost of even the early abilities is so high that you never get to use most of your abilities for a majority part of the combat. After three moves, you get a combo move during which you get Extra Focus but even that is not really enough to deal some serious damage to enemies.
Leveling up in Vampire’s Fall: Origins is pretty much traditional when compared with any other RPG. You earn XP by killing enemies, completing main quests and side quests in the game. To make your character powerful, you get to invest points you unlock in Blood Lines and Abilities. Every time you level up, you get 1 Ability Point and 4 Skill Points. There are three Blood Lines in the game where you must invest the Skill Points to make your character powerful. These Blood Lines are Anger, Vitality, and Deceit. Each of these three Blood Lines comes with their Skill Trees where you invest in different skills to acquire them or upgrade them. Anger deals will skills that make your attacks powerful, skills in Vitality ensure that you survive longer in battles while Deceit is all about blocking enemy attacks, dodging their attacks, getting more gold or increasing inventory limit.
Acquiring 4 Skill Points every time you level up ensures that you get to invest in more than 1 Skill at the same time. You also earn 1 Ability Point each time you level up. These abilities are active combat abilities that will help you defeat enemies in combat. To use these abilities, you will require Focus. Upgrading these abilities will allow you to make these abilities more powerful and make them more efficient in combat. These abilities also fall into three categories. You get Instinct, Control, and Might. Abilities in Instinct and Control are unlocked after reaching specific levels. Might abilities are only unlocked when you purchase the best equipment in the game which are Wings and Helmets. They are the most expensive items in the game but they grant you Might abilities which are your ultimate abilities.
The world is pretty big and you have a lot of different areas to explore but most of the time there are no fights at all. Exploring is not rewarding at all apart from finding random chests that give very little gold or items that are useless. Random encounters are extremely less which shows that the game did not use any of PC’s power to use by adding increased enemy encounters. The visuals are a major improvement over the mobile version but that is just it. Playing the game with a controller is pretty boring as well. I’ll recommend that you stick with a mouse and keyboard if you decide to jump in Vampire’s Fall: Origins on PC.
The only worth activity to do in the game apart from the main quest and side quests is the World Brutals. World Brutals are the toughest optional bosses in Vampire’s Fall: Origins that are hiding in the world in far off places. These are the toughest battles in the game and also serve as the potential end game content of the game. Tackling these World Brutals will require the best gear and skills and you will have some good fun taking down these bosses. Apart from finding and hunting down these Brutals, the open world of the game does not offer much if you prefer exploration in your RPGs.
Final Verdict:
Vampire’s Fall: Origins is essentially a mobile game ported to PC with improved graphics, sound and controller support. Sadly, it fails to impress as a proper PC game. You will notice a lot of mobile mechanics here and there. These mechanics are great for a mobile game but when you compare it with other similar RPGs present on Steam, Vampire’s Fall: Origins falls behind massively. The gameplay overall is okay but when it comes to combat, the port feels like a mobile game instead of a PC game which controls that suit a touch screen rather than a controller. It is a decent game overall but if you have some other RPGs at hand, I will recommend that you spend your time on them.
Final Score: 6.5/10
