Vampire Survivors Review – Perfect at Any Price

It may have slightly altered Castlevania assets, no story, and minimal gameplay, but here comes the best vampire game of all time.

I may have bought it twice before, but I was no less excited.

Just Another Roguelike?

I’ve been pretty critical of roguelikes in the past. It’s a formula that’s been overused in the past few years; mainly to add perceived replayability and mystery to an otherwise short and shallow experience, BUT this isn’t like that.

Vampire Survivors is as basic as a roguelike can get: there are no controls outside of movement and all of your weapons are used automatically. The key to being good at Vampire Survivors is game knowledge.

While other roguelikes would need for you to acclimate to the controls or the lightning pace of the game, Vampire Survivors just asks for you to take your time, to remember why you died before, and to try different item combinations to try and stay alive next time.

No Victory Without Planning

As I’ve mentioned, weapons are used automatically. Some cover the screen in dazzling flashes, but leave you vulnerable to any enemy able to withstand the smattering of damage, while others are focused, close-range attacks which sacrifice range for damage and cover.

There are obviously variations, but these are the two main types of weapon; especially early on.

Aside from weapons, you also have items. These are passives directly affect the stats of your character for that run. Some can multiply the number of projectiles you fire at once, while others can make xp easier to obtain.

Every time you kill an enemy, they will drop a little crystal. These crystals, once collected, fill your xp bar. Every time you level up, you get to either choose a new weapons/item or upgrade one of your current ones. Upgrades can also be gotten from chests which drop from boss enemies which appear once every minute.

What you’re mainly looking out for are combinations of items and weapons. Once you’ve fully maxed out both a weapon and a specific item within a single run, you then have a chance (upon opening a chest) to get a vastly more powerful weapon.

I won’t spoil any of the combos here, but this is your main motivation for experimenting early on.

The Slow Climb to Infinity

Everything you get within a run is only available during that run. Sure, if you’re able, you can unlock certain secrets within levels that you can use again, but when you die you mostly leave everything on the table.

That is true of everything except gold. Gold is gotten from doing almost anything, and whenever you die, you get 500 just for being a good sport. XP is the currency of the main game whereas gold is the currency of everything else.

Gold lets you buy characters, permanent passive boosts, and eggs (even more permanent passive boosts).

Cash is king, so hoard all the gold you can carry.

Levels & Replayability

The base game has about 20 stages. All of these are not only visually different, but have their own gimmicks, secrets, enemies, bosses, and items.

Each stage can also be adjusted in a number of ways to tailor the game to your preferences. Are you impatient and want that 30 minute timer to move twice as quickly along with all of the enemies? No problem. Would you like to get rid of the timer completely and play until your console overheats? Go nuts.

This is a game with so much variety and so many secrets that, were it not paced so well, it would feel overwhelming.

I have over 600 hours in this game across Steam, Switch & Playstation, and I can guarantee that there are things I haven’t discovered yet.

Go in blind if you can, but go in.

Conclusion

The game is $5.

If you were to buy the game along with all of the dlc, it would be about $14, but all of that would be more than doubling the amount of base game content.

For reference: I have the Steam version along with 2 of the 4 dlcs and I have more than 500 hours played.

As well as that, the game also has couch co-op. If you’re looking for a quick after work destresser then there really is no better option.

You should have already bough it by the time you’re reading this, but if not, then buy it now.