V Rising is one of the better vampire games out there. It's also a game that's not good enough to stand as a single player game.
You see, the gameplay itself was designed with the core gameplay loop of having friends to run things with. It has a rather robust clan system baked into the game itself, so in theory, it should work great as a multiplayer game, right?
Not particularly, for reasons that will be described below. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
V Rising stars you as one of the many vampires long subjugated by The Church in a war to eradicate evil, where you and your kind lost and lay dormant, waiting for the next perfect opportunity to rise up... and become more powerful.
That's the plot. You get more powerful as you go as you eventually fight the Ultimate Adversary. I never got as far there for reasons that will be outlined later, but what snippets you get of the lore you will find in the special bosses you find in the map, though they have as much charm as the next MOBA flavortext.
You start out as a very-emaciated vampire and from there, craft items and rise out of the pit. Item crafting is very crucial here, because there's no levels, but there's gear score. Gear score gives scaling attack and defense bonuses depending on your gap versus an enemy's level, so you really need to find a way to get it up. This does mean that whatever you're doing not trying to raise it up will likely feel like a waste of time because you can farm as many pieces of cloth out there and kill as many enemies, but you will never get more powerful if you don't actually kit up.
However, to help with this, instead of classes, you need to find blood which will give you an archetype of stat bonuses to help you feel more like a particular class. Rogue Classes allow you to deal more critical hits and move faster; Warrior Classes give you more oomph on the raw damage.
It's an interesting system, especially since the enemies don't regenerate if you leave a zone; that means if you leave a 100% pureblood enemy, you could save that for later consumption, or later on, get a prison cell so you can basically bottle their juice on the spot without killing them.
But that's the thing, this strategy is impossible on multiplayer. Multiplayer is rather lopsided; stronger parties will stomp smaller clans, but even then, once you actually max out the gear score, there's no real postgame so there's no real pvp scene either. With the presence of scaling damage and defense values based on your gear score gap, this can basically mean an outright massacre when a stronger team kills a bunch of leather-kitted people, with no real way to defend themselves.
The other multiplayer-specific features are also present on single player. You can send thralls once you get them to do missions (but you can't let them do housework, bah.) and while the timer runs while you sleep whether the server is off or on, the same can't be said for the other timers. Castles still need to be fed, same with horses unless you get a better demonic mount, and the other timers still require the server to be up. This is kind of a good thing on single player but it begs the question, why isn't there an option to turn these timers off anyway?
Of the options available to you, the game is actually largely customizeable, but some of them require editing files outside if especially you want to change the behavior of bosses to be more competent. Yet some features are missing. Why can't I remove the thrall injury system on single player when it adds nothing to the gameplay experience? Multiplayer, I can understand.
There's also no autocraft from chest/castle inventory too; stations have their own inventory and also take from your person, but it cannot take from the chest beside you. This means you have to run back and forth sorting items Terraria-style.
And the combat is a bit of a mess. At a glance, it's snappy and it's tactical, with most damage being emphasized on your weapon skill, spell spread, and your singular ability to dash away from enemies, which runs on a god-forsaken long timer.
It feels like a half-baked Souls game mixed with aspects of Moba.
The undead tree is uninteresting because the skeletons die in like 5-7 seconds.
You can't ask your thralls to band with you to raid other settlements. Your castles also don't get raided by anyone else except other players if it exists. Spell slots are limited to two at a time, but you get so many skill points that it feels limiting to only equip 2, a singular ultimate skill, and an empowered dash skill based on the tree you selected.
And the grind? It's just a repeat of what you've been doing from the start: 1. Get items, build items, kill enemies and bosses, get technology, get items, build items, kill enemies and bosses, expand castle, get technology, kill all of the bosses of that tier, and then go back to step 1 but bosses are now harder.
Accordingly, as fun as this was for my monkey brain, I don't think this is the diablo clone with minecraft basebuilding you might have been hoping for when you saw the description on the storefront.
You see, the gameplay itself was designed with the core gameplay loop of having friends to run things with. It has a rather robust clan system baked into the game itself, so in theory, it should work great as a multiplayer game, right?
Not particularly, for reasons that will be described below. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
V Rising stars you as one of the many vampires long subjugated by The Church in a war to eradicate evil, where you and your kind lost and lay dormant, waiting for the next perfect opportunity to rise up... and become more powerful.
That's the plot. You get more powerful as you go as you eventually fight the Ultimate Adversary. I never got as far there for reasons that will be outlined later, but what snippets you get of the lore you will find in the special bosses you find in the map, though they have as much charm as the next MOBA flavortext.
You start out as a very-emaciated vampire and from there, craft items and rise out of the pit. Item crafting is very crucial here, because there's no levels, but there's gear score. Gear score gives scaling attack and defense bonuses depending on your gap versus an enemy's level, so you really need to find a way to get it up. This does mean that whatever you're doing not trying to raise it up will likely feel like a waste of time because you can farm as many pieces of cloth out there and kill as many enemies, but you will never get more powerful if you don't actually kit up.
However, to help with this, instead of classes, you need to find blood which will give you an archetype of stat bonuses to help you feel more like a particular class. Rogue Classes allow you to deal more critical hits and move faster; Warrior Classes give you more oomph on the raw damage.
It's an interesting system, especially since the enemies don't regenerate if you leave a zone; that means if you leave a 100% pureblood enemy, you could save that for later consumption, or later on, get a prison cell so you can basically bottle their juice on the spot without killing them.
But that's the thing, this strategy is impossible on multiplayer. Multiplayer is rather lopsided; stronger parties will stomp smaller clans, but even then, once you actually max out the gear score, there's no real postgame so there's no real pvp scene either. With the presence of scaling damage and defense values based on your gear score gap, this can basically mean an outright massacre when a stronger team kills a bunch of leather-kitted people, with no real way to defend themselves.
The other multiplayer-specific features are also present on single player. You can send thralls once you get them to do missions (but you can't let them do housework, bah.) and while the timer runs while you sleep whether the server is off or on, the same can't be said for the other timers. Castles still need to be fed, same with horses unless you get a better demonic mount, and the other timers still require the server to be up. This is kind of a good thing on single player but it begs the question, why isn't there an option to turn these timers off anyway?
Of the options available to you, the game is actually largely customizeable, but some of them require editing files outside if especially you want to change the behavior of bosses to be more competent. Yet some features are missing. Why can't I remove the thrall injury system on single player when it adds nothing to the gameplay experience? Multiplayer, I can understand.
There's also no autocraft from chest/castle inventory too; stations have their own inventory and also take from your person, but it cannot take from the chest beside you. This means you have to run back and forth sorting items Terraria-style.
And the combat is a bit of a mess. At a glance, it's snappy and it's tactical, with most damage being emphasized on your weapon skill, spell spread, and your singular ability to dash away from enemies, which runs on a god-forsaken long timer.
It feels like a half-baked Souls game mixed with aspects of Moba.
The undead tree is uninteresting because the skeletons die in like 5-7 seconds.
You can't ask your thralls to band with you to raid other settlements. Your castles also don't get raided by anyone else except other players if it exists. Spell slots are limited to two at a time, but you get so many skill points that it feels limiting to only equip 2, a singular ultimate skill, and an empowered dash skill based on the tree you selected.
And the grind? It's just a repeat of what you've been doing from the start: 1. Get items, build items, kill enemies and bosses, get technology, get items, build items, kill enemies and bosses, expand castle, get technology, kill all of the bosses of that tier, and then go back to step 1 but bosses are now harder.
Accordingly, as fun as this was for my monkey brain, I don't think this is the diablo clone with minecraft basebuilding you might have been hoping for when you saw the description on the storefront.