4.5/5 ★ – Just_Deli's review of V Rising.

I am glad to report its early access period was done very well, and this team has created arguably one of the best survival/crafting games I have ever played. I skipped out on coming back to this game after its initial launch to make the 1.0 update that much bigger for me, and I was rewarded. The sheer amount of new content in this was almost mind-boggling, and the quality of life updates were plenty. This game does have a PvP center, but it plays just as well on PvE-only servers. This is more of a shared world, like something akin to Rust, where you make a base somewhere in the world and you can run across other players gathering resources and fighting enemies. On a PvP server, obviously you could also fight others and raid their bases. We stuck to the PvE servers as we don't really like the idea of losing progress due to others.The world is handcrafted and designed to be explored as you progress through a chain of bosses, each giving you new abilities, resources and access to new crafting tools. Combat is super fun, and the leveling system is simple but well designed. The better your gear (bronze tools, iron tools, silver tools, armor etc.), the higher your level becomes, which allows you to hold your own with higher-tier enemies. I think the game's progression system makes every fight with enemies at your level engaging and just hard enough that you can't coast through groups of enemies until you become stronger than them. The base building is the perfect mix of design and function. Everything LOOKS sweet to build, and all of the new items you get to build fit into themes that tie to each room and make it easy to design super sick-looking vampire castles while also filling them to the brim with crafting tables and storage chests. The game has a very cartoony look to it at first glance, but it fits the world so well and is an overall really good-looking game. As you get later into the game with bosses having more raid-like abilities, the effects get turned up to 11, and everything looks so sick. If you are a fan of survival/crafting games in any way, or top-down ARPGs, or even if you were a fan of Battlerite, the MOBA hero shooter game they abandoned years ago, this will be right up your alley, I think.