Blood of Dawnwalker Isn't Just Witcher 3 With Vampires

Ever booted up a new RPG and thought, "yep, this is just The Witcher 3 again"? That's the vibe a lot of people got from The Blood of Dawnwalker at first glance. But after 26 hours with the game, one writer is here to tell you those comparisons are getting less and less accurate the deeper you go.

Here's the thing: Coen, the game's protagonist, simply doesn't need to stand in Geralt's shadow. The source piece makes the point bluntly — they're very different action heroes. That's not a knock on either one. It's just that the surface-level similarities people latched onto early on don't tell the whole story.

We get it. Dark fantasy setting, monster-hunting energy, a brooding lead — the Witcher 3 alarms go off instantly. But 26 hours is a serious chunk of playtime. That's long enough to see past the first impression and actually feel how a game moves, fights, and tells its story. And according to this take, the longer you play, the more the Witcher 3 parallel starts to fray.

What does that mean for you as a player? Mostly good things. It suggests The Blood of Dawnwalker is carving out its own identity rather than borrowing one. If you've been on the fence because it looked like a Witcher clone, this is a nudge to reconsider — the experience apparently diverges in ways that matter once you're properly invested.

It also raises an interesting question about how we judge games before launch. A trailer, a screenshot, a familiar genre — and suddenly we've decided what a game is. The Blood of Dawnwalker seems to be a case where that snap judgment misses the mark. Coen isn't Geralt, and this isn't his story retold.

Of course, 26 hours is one person's journey, and everyone's mileage varies. But the takeaway is simple: give a game room to be itself. Comparisons can be a handy shorthand, but they can also box in something that's trying to do its own thing.

So if you wrote this one off as "Witcher 3 with a different coat of paint," maybe it's time to look again. The deeper you go, the less that label seems to fit. What do you think — are early comparisons fair, or do they do more harm than good? Will you be giving The Blood of Dawnwalker a proper chance?