Review: Is V Rising a Good Gothic Horror Game?
Last Updated on March 16, 2026 by Michael Brockbank
One of my favorite survival crafting games as of late is V Rising. If you like vampire-focused games and building a gothic castle from the ground up, this is probably one you should take a closer look at playing.
Of course, that is to say that you’re not offended by blood and consuming everything in your path. You are a vampire, after all. Whether it’s bandits or bears, the world is your smorgasbord.
Although there is a slight learning curve to the mechanics, V Rising is one of the better top-down games I’ve come across thus far.
What Is V Rising?
In V Rising, you are an awakened vampire on a quest to reclaim a lost bloodline as well as the lands that once belonged to your kind. Whether adventuring alone or teaming up with other vampires, you provide a history lesson to the inhabitants of why vampires once ruled.
In this gothic horror game, you gain power and unlock skills and recipes by conquering your foes. You don’t necessarily level up as in a traditional game. Instead, you level up gear and gain powerful spells and abilities.
Perhaps one of the more unique traits of playing V Rising is keeping an eye on the quality of blood you consume. Feeding on more powerful foes gives you bonuses. But beware, those bonuses don’t last forever, and you’ll have to find another foe to feed on.
Build your castles, defeat your enemies, and rebuild your empire as the dominant species of vampire.
Pros and Cons of V Rising
Large, Open-World Map
V Rising has a very large open-world map that you can explore. However, the enemies become considerably more difficult the further north you travel. So, you can adventure the entire map, but it’s not advisable until you level up your gear and abilities.
There are also areas that you’ll want to revisit once you level up. For instance, there are some cave entrances in the Act I area that will need “Frog Form” to reach, which you’ll get much later in the game.
After more than 20 hours in V Rising, I haven’t finished Act I yet. That’s mostly because I am an explorer and love to craft. The map is quite large with a lot of respawning enemies. And since I like the grind, it takes me considerably longer to beat any given survival game.
I try to explore all it has to offer.
Lots of Unlockable Recipes
As you progress through the game, you’ll unlock a variety of recipes. These include structures for your castle, decorations, gear, and more. You can also buy some items from the Shady Merchants if you collect enough coins.
By using the Simple Workbench, for example, you can craft your weapons and armor to level up your vampire.
Some of the better recipes in V Rising come from defeating the main bosses of certain locations. This is how you’ll develop most of the beginning elements of your base.
You’ll also come across recipes by defeating some of the more powerful foes. Periodically, you’ll come across books that you’ll use at the Research Table to unlock something new to build or create. Or, you can unlock the Paper Press and unlock recipes on your own, which takes a while, considering you need more sheets of paper with each recipe revealed.
If you explore and grind, though, you can unlock a wide variety of recipes to build yourself an amazing castle before you finish the first act and explore outside of the Farbane Woods.
Lots of Places to Build Castles
V Rising has a lot of locations to build castles. You don’t have to start each game in the same location, and eventually you’ll move to new areas or else spend the better part of 20 minutes running across the map to progress in the game.
Luckily, you can move your castle using a Castle Relocation Heart. This will save a lot of time in deconstruction and moving your decorations from one area to another. It’ll also save resources, considering you won’t have to completely build your castle from scratch by harvesting wood, stone, and copper.
In any case, there are plenty of locations to build, some grouped closer together in the event you’re playing with friends.
Great Castle-Building Function
Building a castle in V Rising is quite easy. Once you start unlocking the tiles and decorations, you can spend a great deal of time constructing something quite elaborate. You can also build multiple levels on your plot.
When building specific rooms, you’ll need to pay attention to the types of flooring you’ll need for various crafting stations. Essentially, some of them will need a room of their own to get the maximum benefits.
For instance, let’s say you build the large chests and place them in a room with Treasury tiles. When crafting, materials are then pulled from those chests instead of your inventory. This makes crafting and building so much easier in V Rising.
Just keep in mind that it’s going to take a lot of wood and stone to build something grand. Luckily, you can mine quite a bit by traveling back and forth to the bandit mining camp near the middle of the map. You’ll also collect a lot of copper while you’re at it.
Collecting Servants
Like all good vampires, you can collect servants as you level up your castle and unlock the coffins. These servants will protect your castle, or you can send them to attack certain camps on the map.
You can equip your servants with the same gear you wear, which increases their chances of success when attacking those camps. And the gear makes the servants more difficult to kill in a PvP environment.
Using your vampire powers, you can control the minds of many enemies, bring them back to your castle, and then intern them in the coffin to turn them into servants. Once they are ready, you can give them unique names, and they’ll immediately be on castle guard duty.
Unfortunately, trying to drag your mind-controlled person back to your castle can be a pain. I was bringing back a higher-level mob when she died from an errant arrow from a random boss on patrol. While controlling those who want to become servants, you are limited in what powers you can use, making for a more difficult travel back to your castle.
Lots of Unique Enemies and Bosses
V Rising has quite a long list of unique enemies and bosses scattered on the map. They have a variety of powers and abilities, and you’ll have to study their attacks well to avoid getting walloped.
To give yourself the best chance of survival, you’ll need to level up your gear. This improves your life, how much damage you’ll deal, and other abilities. Just make sure you keep your gear in good condition. Your items in V Rising have a durability meter, and you’ll need to periodically repair them.
In any case, be careful when exploring the map in the beginning. You might inadvertently stumble across a boss that is far beyond your abilities to combat.
Sometimes, you can get the bosses to fight each other. I had three going at it at one point, where I was essentially helping the weaker enemies. By the time the higher-level boss beat down the other two, all it took was a couple of swipes from my axes to finish the job.
Great Repeat Gameplay
Although it’s the same map, V Rising has great replayability. Mostly, that comes from the ability to build different castle designs in a wide variety of locations.
I know I could spend hours crafting the “perfect” domicile for my vampire.
If it seems too easy, invite a friend for some PvE or PvP action. Build yourself a clan of vampires to run roughshod over the entire landscape. There are several ways to play, and you could easily dump hundreds of hours into the game, especially if you’re into crafting.
There are also DLCs you can download that expand what V Rising can offer.
Keyboard Controls Have a Learn Curve
Although V Rising supports controller play, I often use my keyboard and mouse as a preference. Doing so has a bit of a learning curve, as some of the controls are a little wonky to get used to.
ASWD controls which direction you’re moving while the mouse dictates which way you’re facing. It’s much like the setup for Gauntlet in that regard. It’s not impossible, and eventually you can get used to the movements and what keys control which abilities. It just might take a bit of trial and error.
So, I don’t know if I would actually call this a drawback, really. You might have an incredibly different experience using the controller than I do with the keyboard and mouse.
No In-Game Pause Function
Perhaps the biggest drawback to V Rising is that you don’t have an in-game pause function. The game was meant to be a persistent server, allowing other players to join your adventures, whether friend or foe.
So, if you pause out in the wilderness to go to the bathroom, you could return to having been killed by sunlight hitting you while you were away. Make sure you’re somewhere safe before walking away from your computer. Enemies and sunlight will still kill you.
Even if you disable social joining, you are still unable to pause the game. The only way around this is to save and exit to the start screen, which can get annoying if you have to pause several times throughout your play.
Occasional Overpowered Enemies
As you’re adventuring and exploring areas that are deemed “safe” according to your gear level, you’ll come across enemies that are very overpowered compared to you. It’s upsetting to be fighting level 10 mobs when a random level 44 boss comes out of nowhere and curb-stomps you.
Bosses in V Rising aren’t the only thing you can stumble across that are overpowered for the area. Sometimes, you’ll run into regular mobs that are well beyond your abilities. They’re not as common, but they can easily put a damper on your plans, especially if there is one sitting in a spot where you want to build a castle.
This isn’t a deal-breaker drawback for me, though. It’s more of an annoyance, and you can work your way around such things by being stealthy and smart, which is probably why the devs put them in there in the first place. You don’t want the game to be too easy, now.
Would I Suggest V Rising and Why?
Overall, V Rising is great for those who love survival builder games. The gameplay is enjoyable, there are plenty of recipes to build unique castles, the storyline is unique, and it’s easy to dump a lot of time into the map while building your castle.
In fact, the only real drawback for me is the fact that you can’t pause the game. The controls aren’t too bad once you get used to them, and the overpowered mobs can be dealt with by other means. I just wish I could pause the game without fear of getting wiped out before I got back from the bathroom.
If you want to take the gameplay even further, you can always buy the DLCs that are available, including the Legacy of Castlevania, which contains Alucard’s gear.
For only $34.99, you get quite a bit of mileage out of V Rising, especially if you’re an explorer, builder, and grinder like me. In reality, I think I’ve spent more time designing my castle and collecting building materials than actually following the plot.
So, long story short, yes, V Rising is a game I would suggest for those who enjoy survival builder games. The crafting controls work very well, and the list of design recipes is quite extensive. Plus, it’s a lot of fun to turn mobs into vampiric servants.
What Gothic Horror Games Do You Like?
I’ve been a huge fan of the gothic horror genre ever since I played Dungeons and Dragons: Ravenloft (The Black Box edition) back when it came out in 1990. In fact, I still have all of those books on my shelf.
Anyway, any game that dives a bit into the gothic realm is appealing to me, and this is one of the big reasons why I enjoy V Rising so much. The premise was well-executed with great gameplay and mechanics. Stunlock Studios did an incredible job on the game.
What gothic horror games stand out to you, and why should I play them?
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