Video Games | Vampires
Vampire’s Fall: Origins is a de-fanged grind that will suck your patience and time
I was recently in the mood to tackle a vampire-centric game on my Switch. However the options currently available are limited. Without knowing anything about the game I took a chance on Vampire’s Fall: Origins from Swedish developer Early Morning Studio.
I probably should have sunk my fangs into something else.
While there’s enough solid gameplay to be found and enjoyed in Vampire’s Fall: Origins, some head-scratching design blunders prevent it from being a truly worthwhile vamp RPG experience.
VF:O is a 2D open world RPG with tactical combat, set in a medieval fantasy world inhabited by the usual assortment of humanoids, beasts, specters and undead. VF:O’s open world layout is reminiscent of the original Fallout games (not the bastardized Bethesda monstrosities). Your character can traverse the environment freely, visiting towns, cities, mountains, forests, swamps and deserts.
As with all RPGs, players create their characters first and thankfully VF:O allows a full range of customization factors to help make your vamp exactly how you want them to appear and perform. There are several “vampire houses” to choose from, with their own brief backstories and unique buffs, although I didn’t encounter a single story line or conversation in the game that alluded to the house I chose for my hero.
Characters are introduced to the game world as an unwilling human volunteer, asked to help protect their home settlement against incoming hostile invaders. Through a series of unfortunate events the player soon faces the nominal “big baddie” of the game: the Witchmaster, accompanied by his horde of ghostly warriors.
The player then awakes from a battle in which the Witchmaster and his army have massacred all villagers, including you. However you quickly learn that, amidst the losing battle, you have been involuntarily transformed into a vampire. You are also given clues as to where and how to advance with the game’s main plot line: tracking down the marauding Witchmaster and seeking your revenge. Along the way the player will meet a multitude of characters across a rather enormous game world, completing tons (!) of side quests and slaying a decent variety of enemies before reaching your goal.
Despite its obvious RPG nature, VF:O contains very bare bones role play elements. Story and quest decisions are completely black or white. There’s zero nuance or middle ground to be found. And while the game’s main story offers a little narrative substance, almost every side quest is mired in unimaginative, overdone RPG tropes (i.e. fetch this, fetch that, kill x type of enemies, talk to so and so, etc).
One aspect of the game that is hilariously refreshing is the depiction of the poor, mistreated populace of the game world. The people in VF:O are the most miserable, cynical and sarcastic NPCs I’ve ever encountered in any RPG to date. I found myself chuckling non stop at not only the villagers’ dialogue and actions but the names assigned to them by Early Morning Studio. Just take a gander at some of these choice screenshots for evidence:
Enemies are not represented on the world screen in VF:O, rather combat engagements will pop up randomly while your hero is outside human settlements (and sometimes within). Combat can be fun, although the fact that VF:O was built primarily with mobile gaming in mind shows how knee-capped the combat looks and feels on consoles and the PC.
Battles in VF:O are always one vs one engagements. You will never have NPC co-combatants and you will never face more than one enemy at a time. There are some fights in which you are tasked with dispatching 2, 3 or even 5 enemies at once — but all singularly; I find this amusing to picture in reality…a queue of monsters patiently waiting in line for their next chance at a quick death.
As stated previously, combat in VF:O is turn-based and your hero will always move first. You are allotted an upgrade-able bank of “focus points”, which you may expend for supplementary actions, moves, spells or buffs. A vampire warrior in VF:O who wants to survive will quickly learn when to use these focus points and when to reserve them for the “Combo turn” round. That is when the game provides the player with the ability to use several extra special combat skills, which can change depending on the type of weapon(s) you wield. Combo turns are your best opportunities for inflicting the most damage. They are the game’s strongest tactical feature and I loved being able to customize the order of combo actions.
Your vampire’s most essential combat move is the bite option, which accomplishes two goals at once: considerably harming the enemy and healing your fighter. Since VF:O doesn’t allow you to utilize health potions mid-combat, the bite should be the first of your special abilities to upgrade to its max when leveling up. I can’t stress this enough: if you play this game you absolutely must allocate earned ability points into the “bite” bucket first and foremost.
The enemies in VF:O are numerous and varied, and are generally area-specific. Each baddie type possess their own weaknesses and a victorious vampire hero will rack up the experience points easily by exploiting said weaknesses. Boss fights are a bit tougher, especially against those enemies who can cast the heal and thorns spells. VF:O also features non-quest-related “Brutal” challenges; these guys are rare, super difficult monsters spread throughout the map that are instant defeats to any player foolish enough to take them on at lower levels. While not necessary to complete the game, brutal duels are tough to win but reward many of the better gear and loot in the game.
Speaking of loot, VF:O contains a ridiculous bounty of weapon, armor and accessory options. Most gear can be purchased (and sold) at the various blacksmiths in towns and some are gained from combat. All gear can be upgraded with bloodstones, rare red gems that can be harvested or picked up in chests sprinkled throughout the map.
VF:O has several fatal design flaws holding me back from crowning it with a recommendation. One weakness is the inability to teleport to more than a few locations on the map. VF:O’s world is massive. Very massive. Running from one end of one continent to another takes forever. Thankfully there are teleportation potions that can be purchased or crafted which will whisk you immediately to other villages or important locales (I guess Early Morning Studios didn’t want their vampire protagonists to simply bat-ify and fly). However, there are only 3 cities on the first continent you can teleport to and only 6–7 locations on the second, bigger continent that can be instantly transported to. This makes navigation and quest-back tracking, often across vast stretches of copy-pasted mundane landscapes, dull and tedious.
There is another odd game mechanic that I couldn’t believe the designers went with — and this one completely derails the flow of the endgame progression. Leveling up your character from levels 1 to 60 is a smooth, natural evolution. However once you hit level 60, the amount of experience needed to advance to 61 is multiplied several times over. Same goes for every level past 60 to the cap of 99. I know vampires are traditionally immortal but even immortal beings might die from the excruciating tedium of trying to reach level 61 and beyond.
Seriously, what was Early Morning Studios thinking.
Another peculiar design decision? Player death in VF:O carries the most minimalist penalty I’ve ever experienced in any RPG. When you “die” in battle your character is transported to the nearest town or safe zone and an extremely inconsequential fee is deducted from your coin purse (and while the fee will increase as you level up, it’s never truly punishing considering how easy it is to generate income in the game). That’s it. You keep all of your inventory and are “resurrected” with full health.
Maybe Early Morning Studios figured since vampires can’t truly die (at least not by this game’s rules of play) death shouldn’t be too over-punitive. Yet I felt the easiness of overcoming failure in combat erases any bit of tension or apprehension that might organically arise in moments where you encounter enemies clearly out of your league, level-wise.
Lastly, V:FO is a bit stuttery, even in docked mode. The game will freeze up when loading new world areas, even when there’s no clear demarcation between locations. Even worse, V:FO crashed no less than five times during my entire play through. I must stress that I’ve owned my Switch for 4 and half years and played close to 30 different titles, and V:FO is the only game to crash on me. Ever.
All that being said, I think VF:O’s worst crime is that it just doesn’t feel all that vampire-y. Aside from the ability to bite, drink blood, summon bats and fight vampire hunters, the game’s vampirism comes off as nothing more than a surface level afterthought (i.e. “hey let’s make a standard medieval fantasy RPG and slap fangs and blood on the cover and call it a day”).
This dearth of vamp content would be forgivable if the game didn’t also stake its own heart with all of the aforementioned design flaws. As it stands, V:FO is simply a blood-draining bore.
PROS
- Lots of game to be had for the price, even if most of the side quests are cliched fetch errands
- Pretty deep customization features
- Combat excels in tactical strategy against tougher opponents
- Tons of loot
- Fog of war for the game map is a cool touch
- Amusing dialogue from humorously depicted NPCs
CONS
- Level progression beyond 60 becomes needlessly tedious
- Lack of teleporting locations considering how large the world is
- Player death carries very little consequence
- Repetitive music and sounds
- Glitchy and prone to crashes
- Noticeable lack of vampirism in a vampire RPG
