V Rising

While its time-consuming crafting aspects can take the bite out of the vampire fantasy, V Rising really does rise to the occasion with its excellent boss design and respectable ARPG combat.

It starts with a bump, but played the right way, V Rising offers riches few other crafting survival games can match.

An even better version of one of the best Early Access survival games.

On the surface, V Rising appears to be just another survival game, slathered with a different coat of paint. In many ways, it’s hard to argue otherwise. However, it manages to layer complex systems inspired by the popular mythology of the vampire to distinguish it from the sea of survival games. While V Rising hasn't completely satiated my thirst in its current form, I’m hopeful that it will somewhere down the line.

Even more streamlined than before, and still easily one of the best survival games out there.

V Rising is a devilishly addictive action RPG - but only once you've worked through the game's fairly tedious first act. Getting your castle up and running takes time and patience, but if you can embrace the grind, you'll discover a dynamic open world that's full of interesting ideas and satisfying gameplay loops.

V Rising offers something distinct, and pretty cookie cutter at the same time. It’s a survival game, but with a novel genre blend meant to attract a different kind of audience. There’s a lot of these, but V Rising brings the action-RPG and gothic styles to the table in a way that feels unique. So that’s fun, but the survival and crafting part is about as boilerplate as it gets. Therefore, if you’re the type of person that shrivels up and shrieks at survival game systems like a vampire considering the concept of brunch, V Rising won’t change your mind. But if you can hang with the concept and also enjoy some Diablo-like combat, having those two things together in one game is pretty rad.

V Rising may not have the deepest survival game mechanics around, but that is hardly a problem. The experience crafted by Stunlock Studios manages to masterfully weave together mechanics from very different genres to provide an experience like any other on the market. While solo players may find the experience becoming a little stale over time, everyone else will find plenty of reasons to remain in this world, whether it's to perfect their characters or build the most haunting vampire castle ever seen.

Even with its slightly unintuitive interface and occasionally-tedious boss encounters, V Rising does what so many survival-sandbox and loot-based RPGs alike get horribly wrong from the word go: having the base gameplay start from a point of enjoyment. While the task to build one's self up and survive the ongoing perils remain crucial to one's progression, it's thanks to the game's reframing of key genre pillars like gear score and meters to manage that make the experience far from the slog it may initially imply. While its introduction may lead many to suspect the same mounting tedium is coming, a host of well-integrated mechanics alongside that consistent balancing of the risks one may be willing to take make V Rising -- and now, its subsequent release onto PS5 -- a noteworthy accomplishment.

Minor issues of pacing and controls aside, V Rising on PS5 is a more than worthy port. Its expressive customization options, unfolding combat mechanics, and flexible build options have made it a must-own for PC players, and now the same can be said for PlayStation players. If you're a fan of survival games, action-RPGs, and Gothic horror, you can't do much better than V Rising.