The Blood of the Dawnwalker is finally getting New Game+, a feature players have begged for ever since the RPG arrived and received high critical praise. The highly anticipated mode also arrives with several quality-of-life features in the game’s Update 1.2 patch, including new soundtrack options, balance fixes, and improvements to the physical world of the title itself. However, the biggest highlight is clearly New Game+, which circumvents an intentional gameplay limit that is at the core of The Blood of the Dawnwalker‘s design.
Gameplay of developer Rebel Wolves’ first big hit is centered around a time-based mechanic, where players only have a certain number of in-game days to save their family from vampires before a curse takes hold. The story of Blood of the Dawnwalker is shaped by what you actually choose to engage with, as every quest consumes time, making it impossible to discover everything on a single playthrough. Through New Game+, players will have the resources and knowledge to encounter more parts of the title, exploring areas they couldn’t the first time around.
Update 1.2 for Blood of the Dawnwalker is arriving to the game next week, allowing players to directly jump into New Game+ if they have completed the Epilogue section of a prior playthrough. All player skills, levels, and inventory items are retained, while the overall level cap for the game will get raised to 100 on a New Game+ run. Meanwhile, enemies are balanced and scaled upward dramatically to match your higher level, making New Game+ a greater challenge than players might imagine. However, unlike something like Dark Souls or Bloodborne, Blood of the Dawnwalker‘s New Game+ doesn’t loop endlessly with gradually increasing difficulty scales.
Items in the New Game+ version of the game will also have modified stats to match the higher levels, letting a player’s favorite gear still remain useful. In fact, some items may have completely new New Game+ versions, making them slightly different from what players have equipped in the past. This helps add to the evolving feeling of the game, rather than it being a stale loop without any effort to differentiate it from the base experience. Update 1.2 is also planning on adding the following features:
These updates are much smaller, but that matter a lot for New Game+, as players will be dealing with enemies more often and exploring at a greater rate by simply having more hours of time in the title. New Game+ is the perfect compromise to player complaints in Blood of the Dawnwalker surrounding the time-based quest systems, as it still keeps the narrative weight of individual choices, but gives you more room to go back and see what you missed. In fact, those on New Game+ might have an even better journey, with stronger skills to help them accomplish goals they couldn’t do on the first run.
New Game+ is an opportunity for players to see all sides of Blood of the Dawnwalker, beyond just the quests they might have skipped due to in-game time constraints. Players can choose to do an “evil” run in New Game+, fully embracing their vampiric powers rather than trying to contain them as they go through Vale Sangora once again. Alternatively, perhaps players who made mistakes early in their first Blood of the Dawnwalker playthrough have a chance to right some wrongs, saving NPCs they couldn’t spare originally.
Unlocking new vampire paths and finalizing a character build might be another reason players engage with New Game+, using newfound strength to unlock all the trophies or achievements for the game. It’s unclear right now if some achievements do or don’t apply to New Game+, but clarity from Rebel Wolves will likely arrive soon on that front. The biggest problems of open-world RPGs is that players get lost in direction, but New Game+ might help those who would get lost in an otherwise hands-off story approach.
The latest update provides players with the means to explore this RPG fully, removing restrictions without taking away the game’s core direction. Players are still challenged by balanced, upscaled enemies, and quests don’t take any longer or shorter amounts of time to complete in relation to your main goal. For this reason, this may be one of the smartest New Game+ modes added to a game, turning the already acclaimed Blood of the Dawnwalker into an even better experience.
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