I cannot recommend this game. After spending over 20 hours playing the game and beating the main story I was ready to go do some dungeons but what I did not realize was the PC version is vastly inferior version to the FREE mobile app. When I first bought this game I knew there was a mobile version but was lead to believe that the PC version was basically the same thing just minus the PVP but that could not be more wrong. The PC version has no PVP, no events, the unimproved skill tree, no dungeons and more. Without PVP or dungeons the endgame is a generic type of new game plus where you just do the same quests over and over again. What is worse is the last update for the PC version was about 6 months ago leading me to believe they don't plan on keeping it up to date with the mobile version. I would just play the mobile version but I don't feel like starting from scratch especially after I already bought this game on PC for $12.99.

TLDR
The game costs $12.99 compared to the free mobile version but is far behind on updates including the ones that add the most essential content. The PC version just seems like a cash grab to screw over people who do not know any better.

Vampire’s Fall prides itself to be a tribute to classic RPGs and in some aspects it succeeds at that very well more notably with the beautiful hand-drawn graphics. Even though I had high hopes for this title, I was disappointed with the lack of polish that you expect from any game that gets released nowadays and the shallow combat with little strategy involved.

• Story is interesting at the start, but falls apart due to poor writing
• The free expansion of the game gets the difficult just right
• New Game+ system adds replay value
• Music sets the atmosphere nicely
• Large selection of weapon types with their own unique skills
• Backgrounds of the fight scenes are beautiful
• Graphics are a pure tribute to the classic RPGs
• Beautifully hand-drawn artwork to illustrate the story

• Writing lacks depth and detail with a poorly paced story and terrible jokes
• Combat feels unbalanced and needs more depth
• Open world is bland and boring to explore
• Chests only contain gold, and completing quests only rewards you gold and xp, no loot
• Main quests are mundane with little to no creativity
• The world feels lifeless from lack of animation
• Menus look ugly
• Little variety with sound effects
• Transitioning from different ambient sounds is sometimes abrupt and jarring

The story follows a vampire warrior in a world where there is no king, no one in control and everyone tends to their own needs. The land is a peaceful place, until a Witchmaster starts wreaking havoc on the realm, destroying villages and killing people. Your village gets overrun by the Witchmaster's army, you are the only survivor and now you seek revenge.

With the base of the story set I was confident that this game would be full of detail and lore behind how these events happened in the first place, why the king was heirless, how he died, where the Witchmaster came from, etc. Unfortunately what you get is on the other end of the spectrum, a poorly paced story with little to no additional detail about the world or characters.

The combat in a RPG is what's meant to keep you hooked, it’s the main gameplay loop that is necessary to be interesting otherwise the entire game falls apart. Thankfully the combat in Vampire’s Fall isn’t that bad thanks to the varied Diablo-type weapons and equipment, each with their own skills and additional stats. This does however cause balancing issues, where your weapons are too overpowered to provide any sort of challenge on your first run through the game and consequently makes the combat repetitive. There also lacks a range of skills and abilities to choose from as you’ll unlock them all eventually anyway.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2052223881

This game also features a New Game+ system called Rebirth which you can do multiple times to keep increasing the difficulty. Even though this does add replay value to the game and make it more challenging I didn’t feel the need to start NG+ as I was already bored of the combat by the time I had finished the game.

When I think of an open world I think about the variety of the environment, I want to get sidetracked from my main quest because something in the environment caught my eye and looked intriguing. I want to feel immersed in this world, but when all you're doing is travelling through boring forests to get to your destination, you dread the journey rather than wonder what you might come across. I’d say maybe 80% of the main campaign map is either open forests or flat land that you’ll find yourself walking through to get to the next quest. At least you’ll find chests along the way filled with loot right?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2052228403

When you see a chest in a game focused on looting doesn’t it bring you a little sense of excitement, a sense of anything could be inside and so you're intrigued to open it? Similar to side quests, you may feel more compelled to complete side quests to gain additional rewards such as weapons, armour, ammo, equipment, rings etc. However, the devs thought it would be a good idea to fill every chest with gold, and quests only reward you with experience and gold. No loot rewards, just experience and gold. This in itself discourages players to explore the world or complete side quests since there’s no point if your reward is so insignificant.

Speaking of quests I wasn’t all that impressed with the variety that this game had to offer either. You can tell that some of these quests were forced into the game to drag the game on longer than it needed to be. There’s rarely any creativity shown in the main quests, they all seemed to be strung together, sometimes barely having relevance to the story. The majority of them are fetch quests which get boring very quickly, and if you have to travel a far distance then you’ll be traversing mundane open forests before even starting the boring quest.

Every time I respawned from dying I was unable to move at all until I had opened and closed any menu. After starting the expansion pack the screen would occasionally flash blue when someone would talk to me.

Thankfully, when a soundtrack does play in the background it’s very distinctive and atmospheric to make the place either feel like it’s been overrun by dark forces or light and cheery when you're in the villages. Sometimes when you're travelling outside of the villages there won’t be any music playing at all, just some ambient sounds of birds rustling in trees or the sound of the rain which is fine, but it just makes running through forests even more mundane. When transitioning between different ambient sounds it’s very jarring and quick, immediately stopping the current one and abruptly playing the next.

Sound effects are lacking as well, when you hit an enemy you have the sound as feedback to indicate how hard the enemy gets hit if there’s no visual feedback right? Well, I’m pretty sure there’s only two or three different sound effects and that’s it, this makes using powerful moves underwhelming as it plays the same sound as if you just used a regular attack.

The art style is probably the best aspect of this game overall, you’ll find beautifully hand-drawn artwork to illustrate the story both at the beginning of the game and at the end.

The classic RPG graphics really do pay tribute to the old RPGs back in the day. However, even the graphics lack variety in both the environment and colours. Everything's the same dull colour in the open world, and if you thought you might get a change of scenery every once in a while, you don’t. It’s a shame, you can have the most appealing art style ever, but if you overuse it, it gets boring quickly.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2052223937

The game also feels lifeless when traversing the world, it doesn’t make you feel like you're part of a living breathing world. It severely lacks animation from any of the characters in the open world, everything is still and motionless. The only animations that you’ll see (besides your character moving) are campfires, rain, swarms of flies and that’s it.

I really wanted to like this game, but there are just too many issues to look past from tedious quests, lack of loot, mundane and lifeless open world, ugly menus, poor pacing and writing there’s just too much. It lacks a level of polish and detail that holds me back from recommending this game. If you’re still interested then download the game on your phone (it’s free) and try it out there first.

This product was reviewed using a free key provided by the Developers

For more critically honest reviews of mine, check out Metro’s Review Corner

The game is great imo but sadly this game is free on mobile + it has a lot of content and online gameplay but on steam it has near zero content except main story and they're not updating it and they still sell it online here, wish I knew about this situation before I bought and played 20+ hours...

VF: O is basically a single-player exploration RPG with simple graphics and music. It was extremely fun until level 60. Everything felt rewarding and balanced. Once you hit 60, you basically hit a level cap where it now takes about 10000% more experience to hit the next level. Do the monsters give you any more exp than they did before? No. Do you get any more gold than before? No. The quest rewards, experience, gold...it all feels like nothing when you hit 60. In fact, the monsters just gain 2-3x more hp so your grinding takes 2-3x longer once you get up to that level. The game turns into a massive grind with no rewards. Now, there are people who will go on to grind out hundreds of hours just to get the the uber bosses that you get to on New Game + etc., but I'm not one of them. I feel like it could have been handled better, like just a slight bump to the next level, and perhaps you get 1/5 the level rewards, rather than that massive disparity between 59 and 60 and 60 and 61. It's a shame because I was having a lot of fun with the game until that point, but I've just got too many games to play to want to grind out hours and hours of levels.

The game is fun but lacks some serious things. The game is on mobile and sounds like it has way more stuff so obv thats a huge red flag. Dev needs to get steam game to same level. Makes 0 sense why you would sell a game with half the content and not just update it.

Secondly, there is a real lack of exploration, and reason to venture out and explore. The game is literally follow main quest, make money and buy equipment. There are no rare spawns, rare items to get as drops, etc. Just literally farm gold and buy. The game couldve been 10x better if you FIND your loot in the world..and there was alot more places to grind mobs for gear. But most of the world is walking and the places are only good for quest. Brutals is pretty much the only thing the game has going for it in real content other than story.

This game is a bootlet exiled kingdoms without the side content dungeons loot and amazingness.

I love the style of the game, the turn based gameplay and gear how everything works. Its just that the actual content lacks you know open world content.

add dungeons and legendary tree and i'll change this to upvote, otherwise no reason to pay for an inferior version of a free mobile game

I have played the game on mobile for many hours and I bought the game to support the developers.

The game itself is very good, but I disagree with the way the Steam version is handled by the developers.


You need some persistence to get some money and upgrade your gear but it isn't that hard and surely not a complete grind-fest. Some effort has to be expected if you buy a game of the classic-RPG genre. (in Pokemon (R.B.Y.G, S.Gold.C, Ruby.Saph.E) you had to grind your creatures a little too if you wanted an all around team of six, for example.)

The main and side quests are fun and there is a whole new area to discover after you finished part one of the main quests. Only focussing on the first 'main' quest-line will take you a good couple of hours alone (easily 5 or more when you play with a guide or have played before). The second 'main' quest-line would take another couple of hours on its own as well.

When you take into account all the side-quests (which offer you good exp and money by the way) the time you spend on a simple and single play-through would be worth the money in my opinion.

However, there is more value in the game still in terms of brutals (boss monsters that you can defeat a few times, each time becoming stronger), mazes (boss like 'open-air dungeons') with multiple strong monsters that you have to defeat in one go and a rebirth system that allows you to keep your armour and resources but resets all the quests and increases monster-levels, -loot and -exp gains.
Yes you have to play the main quest once more, but you also get more money and better items to progress faster, and get further (EG, have a chance at defeating those maze monsters in the first place because darn they are strong).


There is one thing that I don't like about the Steam version though, which is also the sole reason that I don't recommend the game at the moment:
The Mobile version of this game is free to play, supported by some advertisements if you want to open the 5 daily item barrels (not mandatory, not necessary, completely optional).
The Steam version is paid content, $10-ish dollars/euros or $5-ish when on sale, and has no advertisements nor microtransactions.

HOWEVER, the Mobile game has more content than the Steam version.
Mobile offers the following, for example:

• Legendary Bloodlines,
  
• Pets (when on the second quest-line),
  
• Dungeons,
  
• PVP*,
  
• Bloodmoon Events.

It doesn't help either, that the general feeling of the Steam community seems to be that this version is mostly forgotten in terms of content updates.

---

I like the game and bought it to play it on my pc as well as to support the developers, but I'm rather disappointed by the fact that I can't have the same content and gameplay options on the Steam version.

At the very least the Legendary Bloodlines, pets and dungeons should be added since they don't rely on multi-player functions and add a lot to the single-player game-experience.



*) PVP is on the maybe, sometime, ever, if we have nothing else on our hands and feel like it, list.

Unwilling to recommend game that is a paid version of free mobile game where the mobile game is advised to have more features.

There does not seem to have been any attempt by dev to address these concerns on Steam.

The cynic in me feels the missing features from the free version may be intended to have been released as paid DLC for PC, but with a near total communication blackout who knows.

I quite like the art style and gameplay, but this sort of carry on is a bit abhorrent.

This game unfortunately remains controversial after checking in on 12.2.23 The devs have responded to some of the negative reviews with what appears to be formulaic copy paste feedback which doesn't appear to actually respond to the feedback at all.

Wow... I don't even know where to start with this one...

The game kills its own atmosphere by putting stuff in there that would better be left out. Very terrible jokes, mentions to real locations in this fantasy world, really terrible side quests with very poorly written dialogue, etc.

I encountered 3 random encounters around the same tree within a few seconds of each other as I tried to get around the simulated physics of the tree.

You only ever fight 1 enemy at a time even when there are several next to each other. Not a huge deal there but odd.

Part of the main quest is to run around in a forest to fight 3 (randomly) encountered boars which could take hours. Yes. It's that terrible.

You can easily break the game by maxing hit points ASAP and then stomping everything in your path simply because you outlast them.

The graphics are okay, the writing is straight up done by someone with an elementary school vocabulary and mentality, the combat is HORRIBLY unbalanced, the quests are really dull and the story is bland and terrible. Didn't know rats could carry suits of armor and weapons either. The world is inconsistent - it mentions real life locations, yet it is supposed to be a fantasy world... Wtf?

Crafting is the most lazy set up I have ever seen. No parts required. Just wait... yes, literally stand in a town and WAIT for long periods of time ranging from 3 min to upwards of an hour for your items to complete.

I've had like 4 side quests so far that are just run around until you find something - no map marker whatsoever and it even says no map marker, but then the game is riddled with random encounters which are more annoying than fun. The humor in the game is REALLY just plain awful and makes me cringe. It takes away from immersion too.

VERY MINOR SPOILER:

There is a town that has villagers under a "stupid" curse and you have to go to a secret meadow with a stone that the curse came from. Okay, get to the stone, it gives you 3 sort of decent riddles and then literally laughs and says something like "hell yeah, those villagers are stupid, aren't they? it was a curse so they couldn't drink milk."

I'm sitting there reading that afterwards and I'm like "are you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ serious? that was absolutely retarded and I wish they'd left it out entirely because it totally ruins the atmosphere."

END SPOILER

There are stretched graphics and it looks terrible.

The only thing I think it actually good is the music.

Just had a quest needing me to kill 20 rats and another to kill 15 enemies at a haunted church. Totally lost interest. Who the ♥♥♥♥ makes a game like that? It's all terrible grind.

Refunding. Not worth it. You can get the SAME EXACT GAME FREE ON YOUR PHONE. I LITERALLY JUST VERIFIED THAT.

Why is this Steam version so incomplete than the mobile one... so disappointed