V Rising 1.0 Review: One of the Best Survival Games My Cousin and I Have Ever Played

Title: V Rising
Genres: Survival, Action
Developer: Stunlock Studios
Platforms: PC
Release Date: Full Release 2024

Price: $29.99 USD

There are a lot of games my cousin Justin and I have played together over the years. Some are great for a weekend. Some keep us around for a few months. Every once in a while, though, we find one that gets added to that very small list of games we know we are going to remember. V Rising is one of those games.

We have played this thing from beginning to end three separate times, and somehow we have enjoyed it every single time. We are not casually poking around either. We play on the harder difficulties, chase bosses night after night, rebuild our castles, try different weapons, change our setups and happily go through the entire progression loop again. There have been nights where we knocked out two or three bosses back-to-back and called that a VERY productive evening. There have also been nights where one boss decided that no, actually, this was going to be the rest of our night. And we loved that too.

Justin has said more than once that if Stunlock Studios announced another game tomorrow, he would buy it without even needing to know much about it. I agree. They earned that kind of confidence from us with V Rising. That is how good this game is.

So what is V Rising?

You begin as a weakened vampire who has been asleep long enough for the world to move on without you. Your job is basically to rebuild yourself into the terrifying monster you were apparently always supposed to be. That means gathering resources, crafting weapons and armor, building an enormous castle, hunting humans for better blood, unlocking spells and murdering a long list of increasingly dangerous V Blood bosses.

The basic survival loop will feel familiar if you have played the genre before, but V Rising never feels like another survival game wearing a vampire skin. The combat is simply too good for that.

It feels like someone grabbed pieces of a MOBA, Dark Souls, World of Warcraft and Diablo, threw them into a survival game and somehow didn’t create complete garbage. Abilities have cooldowns. Weapons have their own skills. Positioning matters. Dodging matters. Boss mechanics matter. You need to read attacks, understand what is happening around you and react properly instead of standing still while your stats do all the work.

It feels fantastic. And unlike Diablo, the game is very capable of reminding you that you are, in fact, mortal. Well… vampire mortal. You get the point.

Three full playthroughs later, we still wanted more

I think this is the biggest compliment I can give V Rising. We finished it, then we did it again, then we did it again. Beginning to end. Three times.

There are games I love that I have absolutely no desire to restart because I already know exactly how that journey is going to feel. With V Rising, starting over somehow became part of the appeal. You know the early bosses now. You understand the systems better. You know what weapons you like. You know where you wasted time during your last playthrough, so this time you’re DEFINITELY going to be more efficient.

Except then you build a bigger castle. Or decide to try a different weapon. Or turn the difficulty up. Or completely change the way you are approaching bosses. Suddenly it feels different again.

Playing on Brutal helped a lot here because Stunlock didn’t take the lazy route of simply inflating every enemy’s health and damage. Bosses can get new attacks, modified mechanics and additional stages. Fights you thought you understood can surprise you again. That made repeat playthroughs much more interesting for us because we weren’t simply replaying the exact same encounters with larger numbers floating over everyone’s heads.

The boss fights are the heart of V Rising

This is where the game becomes something special. The bosses are not side content. They are V Rising.

Your progression is built around hunting down V Blood carriers and taking what they have. Kill one and you may unlock a spell, crafting station, recipe, transformation or another major piece of progression that pushes you toward the next target. There is almost always somebody else on that list staring at you.

And those fights can be HARD. One thing Justin and I both love is that V Rising never treats getting a boss to 1% health as if you somehow deserve the victory. You don’t. Kill it.

We have died with bosses sitting on what looked like a single pixel of health more times than I would like to admit. Usually because somebody gets greedy and thinks, “I can get one more hit.” Nope. Dead. Then the other person sees the boss at 1%, decides they are obviously about to become the hero of this story, gets greedy too and dies approximately five seconds later. Back we go.

There is a very Souls-like feeling to some of these fights where your first attempt is inexplicably incredible. You dodge everything. Mechanics make sense. You’re calm. You almost kill it. Then you wipe at 1%. Fine. We figured it out. Second attempt? We have apparently forgotten how video games work.

That frustration is part of why the victories feel so damn good. When we finally kill a boss that has been destroying us, there is genuine relief and that little burst of “FUCK YES” that I want from difficult games. Three bosses in a night can be a challenge. Sometimes two feels like plenty. Sometimes one asshole owns the entire evening. And I love that.

Brutal mode is the way we like to play

Difficulty is adjustable, so V Rising can absolutely be tuned to the kind of experience you want. If you want a more relaxed survival experience, you can do that. We don’t. We like Hard and Brutal.

There is something about having to actually learn the boss fights that makes the entire progression system more satisfying. We don’t want to walk into a boss arena, unload everything we have and watch a health bar evaporate. We want the fight.

Brutal mode is especially good because bosses can gain new mechanics and altered movesets instead of simply becoming stat walls. That matters tremendously for replayability. When you’re on a second or third playthrough and suddenly realize the boss you remember has something new waiting for you, that is exactly what I want from a higher difficulty. It keeps you honest.

Building our vampire castles never got old

The building system is another huge reason we kept coming back. Your castle starts as this little functional box because you need somewhere to dump your garbage and make better weapons. Eventually that box starts growing. Then it keeps growing. Then somebody decides the entrance isn’t dramatic enough. Then we need a garden. Then the crafting area could probably look better. Then the flooring doesn’t match. Now two grown men playing a vampire survival game are discussing interior decorating. Perfect.

The expansions you can create are genuinely wonderful. Large castles feel impressive, and the building system gives you enough flexibility to create something that feels like an actual home rather than a warehouse full of crafting benches. And the COLORS AND LIGHTING?!?! Chef’s kiss.

The way light pours through windows, the colors from different light sources, the dark stone mixed with warmer interiors, all of it works beautifully with the gothic style of the game. There were plenty of moments where Justin and I were supposed to be doing something productive and instead we were wandering around our castle looking at whatever we had just built.

For the love of Dracula, let us craft from storage

This is probably my biggest complaint with the entire crafting system. Why can I not pull materials from nearby chests?

It feels especially dated in a modern survival game because so many other games have figured this out already. Instead, your most heavily used crafting areas tend to become giant piles of storage because you don’t want to constantly run around the castle looking for whatever chest has the iron, cloth, gems, leather or seventeen other things you suddenly need.

So we have this gorgeous castle. Beautiful rooms. Lighting everywhere. Carefully arranged decorations. And then one corner looks like a vampire Costco because everything useful needs to be crammed near the crafting stations.

It doesn’t ruin the building system, but after three full playthroughs I can tell you that I never once thought, “You know what I really enjoy? Walking back to the chest because I’m missing three pieces of copper.” Let us pull from storage. Please.

The world is absolutely gorgeous

V Rising nails its atmosphere. Every region has its own personality, and progressing through the world feels like you are genuinely pushing into more dangerous territory instead of simply entering the same forest with higher-level enemies.

The forests are dark and moody. Ruins feel appropriately miserable. Villages and farms look lived in. Later regions become dramatically different from the areas where you started. There is enough environmental variety that exploration stays interesting throughout the progression.

But what really gets me is the lighting. The dynamic daylight system is not simply visual fluff because sunlight can literally kill you. During the day, you’re watching shadows move in real time. A tree can save you. A building can save you. A little sliver of shade becomes your best friend. Then the sun moves and that tree betrays you. Now you’re running around like an idiot trying not to burst into flames.

It creates this constant interaction between the visuals and the gameplay that makes the world feel much more alive.

The day-night cycle completely rewires your brain

Most survival games spend years programming us to think the same way. Nighttime bad. Daytime safe. V Rising completely screws that up.

After enough hours, Justin and I would catch ourselves seeing night arrive and saying something like, “Okay good, it’s dark. Let’s go.” That sounds completely normal while you’re playing. Then you think about every other survival game you’ve ever played and realize how backwards it is.

Daytime doesn’t make the world impossible to navigate because there are shadows everywhere, but it absolutely changes how you move. Sometimes you’re hopping between trees, waiting under a roof or trying to decide if you can make it across an open area before the sun starts cooking you.

It can occasionally be frustrating, especially when you are trying to do something specific and daylight shows up at the worst possible moment, but I wouldn’t remove it. Being inconvenienced by the sun is kind of important when you’re a vampire.

Transmog was one of the best additions they made

I LOVE the transmog system. There are few things I hate more in RPGs than finally finding a piece of equipment with better stats and realizing it looks like something my character found behind a dumpster. Congratulations. You’re stronger now. You also look like an asshole.

V Rising lets you separate your actual equipment from how your character looks, which means you can keep the stats you need while wearing the appearance you actually want. You can recolor gear too, which gives you a ridiculous amount of control over your vampire’s look.

For a game that puts so much effort into visual atmosphere and castle customization, this system makes perfect sense. My vampire should look like MY vampire, not whatever random collection of statistically superior clothing the progression system happened to hand me.

We spent plenty of time messing with our looks. Probably too much. But if I’m going to spend dozens of hours killing people and stealing their blood, I would at least like to look good doing it.

Weapon variety actually changes how you play

The weapons in V Rising are another part of the game that held up extremely well across multiple runs. They aren’t simply different animations attached to slightly different damage values. Each weapon comes with its own abilities and rhythm.

The Reaper has always been one of my favorites because it works in so many situations. Bows added a genuinely useful ranged option, and there are enough other weapon types that Justin and I could experiment without feeling like we needed to play identical builds.

Some weapons definitely feel better in certain encounters, and there are times where you can feel the PvP balancing bleeding into PvE. A weapon or skill might feel oddly strong against a particular boss, and you’re left wondering whether you found a clever strategy or stumbled into something people are abusing in PvP.

But overall, the variety works. More importantly, combat feels responsive enough that switching weapons can change the way you approach the game instead of simply changing how much damage you do.

Combat feels more like a MOBA or Souls game than a survival game

This is probably the thing that separates V Rising most from other survival games. A lot of survival games have combat because eventually you need something to hit with the sword you spent six hours crafting. In V Rising, combat feels fundamental.

You have skill shots, cooldown management, defensive abilities, movement abilities and fights where positioning can be more important than raw damage. It can feel very MOBA-like at times.

There is also a lot of that Souls mentality where learning the enemy matters. You recognize attacks, understand timing and gradually turn something that originally seemed impossible into a fight you can control.

The nice thing is that when we die, most of the time we understand why. I stood somewhere stupid. I wasted my dodge. I got greedy. I ignored a mechanic. Justin did something stupid. I will include that last one for journalistic balance.

PvE with a friend is where V Rising is nearly perfect for us

We have always approached V Rising primarily as a cooperative PvE game, and that is easily where it shines for us. The game naturally creates little jobs without forcing them.

One person is gathering resources while the other is building. Someone starts smelting materials. Someone notices we are missing something. Now we’re planning a trip. Then we realize there is a boss nearby. Well… we’re already here. Five minutes later our original plan has been completely abandoned and we’re fighting something we absolutely did not prepare for.

That kind of organic co-op works incredibly well. Resource sharing, castle building and boss progression all give you reasons to work together without the game constantly screaming COOPERATIVE MECHANIC at you. You just play together.

PvP is a different beast

PvP has never been the main attraction for us, and I think it has a steeper barrier to entry because so much of your progression is connected to killing bosses. New players aren’t simply learning how other players fight. They are also working through the progression system needed to unlock the abilities and equipment those players may already have.

That can make jumping directly into PvP more intimidating than it would be in something where everyone starts with access to roughly the same tools. For people who love that competitive progression and the tension of dealing with other players, I can absolutely understand the appeal.

But PvE is where V Rising becomes special for us.

Hot Takes:

• “The combat in V Rising rivals top MOBAs for intensity and strategy.” – Alex G.
• “Crafting and building feel satisfying and immersive.” – Jamie L.
• “Endgame content keeps me engaged far longer than expected.” – Chris D.

The whole game feels like endgame

People always want to know what happens when you reach the end of a survival game. What is the endgame?

With V Rising, our answer has always kind of been: the whole game is the endgame.

The bosses ARE the progression. You’re constantly preparing for another major fight, unlocking something meaningful and using it to push farther into the world. There isn’t this feeling that you’re grinding through fifty hours of filler so you can finally reach the part that matters. The part that matters started almost immediately.

Later content adds higher-level systems and areas, including Mortium and rifts, which give players another layer of progression and challenges once they have pushed much farther into the game. But even before we got deeply invested in those systems, we never felt like we were waiting for V Rising to finally become interesting. It already was.

The isometric camera takes some adjustment

If there is one technical aspect that may initially throw people off, it is the camera. V Rising uses an isometric perspective, which fits the combat extremely well once you get used to it, but there is definitely a learning curve.

During busier encounters you can have enemies, spell effects, environmental objects and boss mechanics all happening at the same time. Early on, it can feel like your brain is trying to process eight different things while also remembering that sunlight is trying to murder you.

Eventually it clicks. Once it does, the camera starts making sense with the rest of the combat system.

And technically, the game has run wonderfully for us. Across our playthroughs it has generally felt polished, stable and remarkably complete, especially considering how much of its life started in Early Access.

Early Access done right

This deserves some credit because “Early Access” can mean almost anything now. Sometimes it means you’re buying into an unfinished game that may eventually become what was promised. Sometimes it means you’re funding a science experiment. Sometimes the game vanishes.

V Rising is the version of Early Access I actually want to see. Stunlock took an already good foundation, continued expanding it and eventually delivered a full release that feels like the ideas were actually finished.

The 1.0 version didn’t make me think, “Finally, they fixed the game.” It made me think, “Holy shit, they made an already good game better.” That is a very different compliment.

Replayability is not theoretical for us

A lot of reviews talk about replayability based on what a game technically allows you to do. I’m not doing that here. We replayed it. Three times. Beginning to end. That is my replayability test.

Different weapons gave us reasons to experiment. Brutal changed encounters. Building new castles scratched that creative itch again. Bosses remained fun even when we knew what was coming.

And weirdly, knowing the progression sometimes made another run MORE enjoyable because we could start planning ahead. We knew what we wanted. We knew what bosses were coming. We knew which one was going to piss us off. We were already talking shit before we even got there.

That’s a pretty good sign.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Outstanding boss fights: This is the reason we kept coming back. Challenging, varied and genuinely satisfying to beat.
• Excellent cooperative PvE: One of the best games Justin and I have played together.
• Real replayability: We completed the entire game three times and still enjoyed the progression.
• Brutal difficulty actually changes fights: New mechanics and altered boss encounters make repeated runs interesting.
• Strategic combat: Weapons, abilities, positioning and timing all matter.
• Beautiful world: The colors, lighting and gothic environments are incredible.
• Great building system: Creating and expanding a giant vampire castle is ridiculously satisfying.
• Transmog: Your vampire can actually look the way you want without sacrificing equipment stats.
• The day-night cycle: It changes how you move through the world instead of existing as a cosmetic clock.
• Fair difficulty customization: You can tune the game heavily, but we absolutely recommend playing it hard if you enjoy difficult combat.

Cons

• No crafting directly from storage: After three playthroughs, yes, I am still annoyed about this.
• The isometric camera can take time to learn: Especially during chaotic boss fights.
• Daylight can be frustrating: I still think it belongs in the game, but the sun has definitely ruined plans.
• Some weapons feel better balanced for PvP than PvE: Certain setups can feel dramatically stronger in boss encounters.

Final Thoughts

There are games I recommend because they are good, then there are games I recommend because I’ve actually lived with them for a while. V Rising is the second kind.

My cousin and I have beaten it three times from beginning to end. We have built multiple castles, experimented with builds, fought every kind of boss the game could throw at us, bumped the difficulty up and happily walked straight back into fights we already knew were going to beat the shit out of us. And we kept having fun.

The boss fights are some of the best I have played in the survival genre. The combat is good enough that I would happily play it without the survival systems. The building is good enough that we have wasted entire evenings making our castle prettier instead of progressing. The world looks fantastic, the vampire mechanics actually matter, and Brutal mode gives repeat playthroughs enough surprises that the game doesn’t simply become a checklist you already memorized.

It is rare for both Justin and me to come away from a game with this much confidence in the developer behind it. He has said multiple times that if Stunlock Studios announces another game, it is an instant buy. No waiting for reviews. No waiting for a sale. Just tell us what it is.

That is probably the strongest endorsement I can give V Rising. We didn’t finish it once and decide it was great. We finished it three times, and I would still play it again.