While I’m excited to see Vampire Hunters leave Early Access and launch on console, I had hoped it would improve significantly during early access; unfortunately, that is not the case.
When covering an early access release, we do so by slightly different criteria than we would use if covering a full release, and a title must be judged by how feature complete/polished it is for an unfinished product often; this means that performance issues or visual issues are treated less harshly than if they were present in a full release.
Curiously, in the case of Vampire Hunters, such deductions were never made, as frankly, it runs like butter during early access on PC and runs about as well as you can expect on all platforms today. As expected, PS5 and Series X|S appear to run at 120FPS while running closer to 60FPS on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch.
Visually, it’s not visually impressive on any platform; however, the developers never intended it to be.
That said, it is a very attractive-looking boomer shooter, and I have no issue with the visuals. I have played and enjoyed many titles when visuals like those used in Vampire Hunters would have been called “cutting-edge.”
So, with all that out of the way, you may wonder why we rated Vampire Hunters slightly lower for its full release than the perfect score it received in early access. That is a very good question that deserves an equally good answer.
Firstly, we felt the developers did not do enough to smooth out the rough edges from early access. While the progression system is as good as it ever was, it still feels slow compared to titles such as Vampire Survivors.
Secondly, in an age when people understand more than ever the importance of tolerance and not offending others simply for the sake of doing so, I feel the developers erred in using religious iconography for weaponry, such as turning a crucifix into a crossbow and boomerang.
While this might have been innocent, it is deeply offensive to billions of Christians and goes against established horror lore, something we discussed in our original review of Vampire Hunters.
Thirdly, Vampire Survivors is still struggling to sell enough copies to ensure long-term development, something we pointed out in our original review.
This problem has not been addressed by the developers, such as including Vampire Hunters in a subscription service or lowering the price, and as a result, it has worsened, with fewer people playing the release of 1.0 than the original early access build on Steam.
Finally, one of the main reasons we lowered the score is that the developers have done nothing to balance bosses in any meaningful way.
Unlike most games, where bosses gradually become more complex, players can face bosses in any order. This results in premature defeats because more powerful bosses with more complex mechanics show up before players have the firepower to handle them.
The new elite units, such as the shield bearers and small attack helicopters, are a much-needed change of pace that ensures players do not huddle in a corner and “cheese” their way through the game.
I would love to see the developers continue to shake things up by introducing new enemies and weapons to counter them in the future.
Vampire Hunters is a action rogue-like video game developed and published by Gamecraft Studios, it was released on 30 October 2024 and retails for $14.99.
Vampire Hunters is available on the following platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
The following peripherals are officially supported:
Vampire Hunters is rated PEGI 12+ and contains:
I like Vampire Hunters. It’s a fantastic game, and while it is not perfect, fans of the action rogue-like genre will enjoy playing a “Vampire Survivors clone” that charts its own course and borrows little beyond inspiration from the current market leader, a refreshing change of pace, that I hope we see more of in the years to come.
