Vampires Dawn: Deceit of Heretics

If you're going to play a game as a vampire, you want them to be cruel, ruthless and cool. Otherwise, what's the point? Fortunately, despite his name, Vince the vampire, the starring character in Vampires Dawn, is all those things. He hates humans, thinks nothing of latching his fangs onto trusting children and happily bullies fellow vampire Lara, a young girl who's only recently been bitten and hasn't quite come to terms with her new status as a blood-feeder.

So while there's lots of role-playing in this game, just wandering around, scaring people witless and then sucking them dry provides a good deal of the fun. Still there are plenty of other goodies too - the dialogue between characters is upbeat, even funny, while the fact the subject matter is a war between various vampire factions and doesn't involve orcs and dragons also helps.

The game begins when Lara and her family are unexpectedly attacked by Lara's father. She's only saved from death by Vince and his two skeleton companions, Romus and Manok, who decide - after some discussion about whether to eat her - to take Lara with them, which results in you gaining a party of four characters.

Travelling around the world, your tasks break down into fighting, talking to other characters and completing objectives to further the story involving a holy crusade against the vampires. The game world is divided into small areas which you travelled between in bat form. The system works well in terms of gameplay but isn't the easiest in terms of movement as the overhead map view isn't very clear nor is it labeled, meaning it's easy to land in an area you don't want to be in.

At least you usually have a few objectives in your diary to choose between. Completing them is simply a case of finding where you need to go and then fighting your way through the enemies who stand in your way. Combat is turn-based, with each member of your party getting an attack in whichever order you choose. Individuals are highlighted with an on-screen cursor, moved into position, and then they can attack, either with a weapon, or using a spell or item. It's a system that's well implemented, although the power level of the enemies is never clear until you're engaged in battle. Luckily, if you're getting slaughtered, you can always leg it.

As well as fighting, you have to spent time looking after the various needs of your group. Being vampires, Vince and Lara have to keep their blood supplies high in order to pull off special attacks. Similarly, the skeletons need life force that can only obtained by killing people. So, in between fights, you top up your reserves by chasing people down, although there's a balance to be struck as you need to husband the available human resources and not just slaughter everyone.

Other inventory management includes visiting the numerous shopkeepers to trade gold for potions, armour and weaponry. There's a lot to do, with over 200 items and 40 spells to handle. And, as well as using people as blood banks, you can steal from them, and talk to them to gain information.

Vampires Dawn isn't the easiest game to get into though. For one thing it's too easy to get lost, or to run into enemies who are at a much higher level than you. And, while in theory you always have the choice of a couple of missions at a time, you normally have to visit areas in order to level up enough to survive the next one, so your path turns out to be more linear than you expect.

With experience though, the plot opens up and offers a compelling backstory to keep you going through areas which involve lots of unavoidable and repetitive battling.

Combined with the anti-hero pleasures of sucking blood from children while their parents look on in horror, it ensures Vampires Dawn: Deceit of Heretics provides a thoroughly enjoyable RPG experience. All in all, something to get your teeth into then.