Embargoes dropped 31 August 2026. The disc followed.
The Blood of Dawnwalker Review Scores
The Blood of Dawnwalker’s review embargo lifted on 31 August 2026, three days before the dated launch. This page is a launch-week snapshot, not a living Metacritic widget. Aggregates move. Individual outlets do not. If you need a number: OpenCritic sat at 85 (Mighty, about 92% of critics recommending) across a large sample. Metacritic sat generally favorable in the low-to-mid 80s depending on platform. That is a hit with a spread, not a 95 and not a 60.
The IGN video review is embedded here because Travis Northup’s 9/10 is the quote storefronts grabbed. Read the caveats anyway. A 9 and a 6 both exist in the same week, and they are usually arguing about combat repetition and launch performance, not about whether the month is a real idea.
Launch-week scoreboard
| Outlet | Score | The sentence that mattered |
|---|---|---|
| IGN (Travis Northup) | 9 / 10 | “An impressive, bloody cocktail of interesting ideas and well-written characters.” |
| PC Gamer (Shaun Prescott) | 83 / 100 | “A resolutely miserable horror RPG with some great ideas of its own.” Also: one of the best blockbuster action RPGs he has played in years. |
| Eurogamer (Robert Purchese) | 4 / 5 | Familiar dark fantasy, bold ideas, mostly enormously successful. |
| Destructoid | 9.5 / 10 | Combat, time pressure, world — with a knock on vampire reactivity. |
| VGC | 4 / 5 | Focused RPG, strong writing, performance issues on the version tested. |
| GameSpot | 8 / 10 | Quests written well enough that you want to do everything — which the clock forbids. |
| Hobby Consolas / GameRant / GamesRadar | Low 70s to 3/5 | The floor of the spread: scope, combat, or both. |
Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz called the wait “nerve wrecking” and the result “a great relief.” Former CD Projekt colleagues lined up in public. Metacritic’s 83-ish band matched PC Gamer’s own 83, which is a coincidence of math and a useful sanity check: this is not a 95 debut and it is not a disaster. OpenCritic’s 85 / 92% recommend is the cleaner “should you bother” number.
What they agreed on
- The 30-day budget works in practice more often than it sounds like a gimmick. PC Gamer’s earlier hands-on about ignoring a quest survived into the review.
- Characters and court writing. Brencis as administrator, not cape. See characters.
- Day and night as a class change, not a brightness slider. See day and night.
- A sealed valley that is dense on purpose. See map.
What they argued about
Combat repetition and directional-fencing taste. Launch-build performance and technical jank — Tom’s Guide called it a rough gem one patch away from greatness; VGC and Destructoid both logged frame-time complaints. Some critics wanted more vampire reactivity from NPCs. A few wanted a smaller game. If 60 fps is your buy condition, that conversation now lives on performance with a day-one patch, not in a 40 fps trailer comment section.
A 9 and a 6 in the same week usually means you already know if you hate timed RPGs. The clock is the feature. If you hate the feature, no aggregate will save the week.
Frequently asked questions
Is this a 90+ Metacritic game?
Not at launch week. Low-to-mid 80s aggregate, high individual nines, a visible floor in the 60s–70s. Treat OpenCritic 85 as the headline.
Should I wait for patches?
Console 60 fps was already a day-one patch promise. If reviews you trust led on jank, wait a week and re-read performance. If they led on writing, you already know.
Steam user score?
User reviews unlock after you can play. This page will not invent a percentage on launch morning.