Vampire Survivors PS5 Review. A roguelike shoot-’em-up created by the folks at Poncle, Vampire Survivors is at a first glance, not the most pretty offering you will ever see, but its stylish pixel art will eventually draw you into its addictive gameplay loop. Vampire Survivors is brimming with content to unlock; if you like old school games that are packed with goodies to obtain from completing different challenges, then this is definitely going to be right up your street.
Vampire Survivors PS5 Review
You Are Here Forever
I would love to say that Vampire Survivors is very pick up and play, and something you can just engage in for short periods of time, but that isn’t necessarily the case. The gameplay at first might not last too long, but eventually as you unlock new weapons and combos, with different equipment, you will eventually hit the cap of 30 minutes. At this point, the game will try to force you to end the play session. However, each time you play – and believe me, you will play a ton – you will unlock more varied content, encouraging you to keep going even if you happened to have only played 10 minutes. That next playthrough becomes another, and suddenly, you’re looking at the time and it’s 4.00am in the morning. I swear, Vampire Survivors’ ability to keep you hooked is far more dangerous than any enemy in the game.
You only start off with a couple of characters; some will be unlocked with gold that you get from different bosses or unearthed from destructible environments. Each character has their own weapon and passive. For exmaple, you start off with the whip-based character called Antonio, but eventually you will unlock Garlic as a starter weapon character with Poe. Every character you unlock will have a different starter weapon, and each one also has unique passives, so everyone feels slightly different from the start.
This can make some starting points more challenging than others but also allows for more unique weapon builds later on. And talking weapons, many of them feel varied, from garlic, which will be your best friend early on and repels enemies in a circle away from you, to Santa Water, which throws random jars of water around the map and damages enemies that come into contact with any of the puddles left behind.
As you’d expect, weapons can then be upgraded by levelling up in the match. Upgrades are only earned during the match, and you can eventually unlock combo weapons by combining weapons to make new variations. Going back to garlic, if you combine that with pummarola, you unlock the weapon Soul Eater, which gives a circle that drains enemies health when they are hit. These weapons are unlocked by levelling up during the match or by killing bosses that spawn every five minutes; each level for weapons can give increased stats or effects. Though you can only get six weapons and six passives, maps also have items on them, so if your inventory is full, you can go past this limit by picking up the map items after reaching the cap.
Unlock The World
It’s not just weapons and characters can be unlocked during sessions, however. Vampire Survivors has so much content under the hood, from a bestiary, music selection, and even different maps. These maps, when unlocked, also have content that can be unlocked; basically, when you first start playing this game, all you are going to see at the end of the match is your unlocked achievement. This is great, as it genuinely feels like it rewards your time and effort far more than many other titles do. I will say, however, that a slight downside to this is that it can feel a little daunting when you see just how much is available. If you take your time and try to do different achievements in the same run though, the list will shrink.
Elsewhere, you can also hide unlocks that you have already completed, allowing for an easier view of stuff you have left to hoover up. As I mentioned earlier, you can obtain gold, which can be used to unlock characters. This currency can also be used to unlock different upgrades ranging from bonus attacks to extra lives for your character during the run. You can even unlock the ability to make enemies harder, which can give you slightly more of a challenge, but of course it’s best to save this for later. However, if you do decide that you want to change what you unlocked, you have the ability to reset the board and reuse the gold again. You can eventually, with enough grinding and gold, buy everything on the menu.
Together We Are One
Vampire Survivors also features up to four players offline co-op mode, which shares progression as you play through the match. There are talks of adding an online component, but currently it is not available. Though I was unable to test this in the review, I do look forward to a possible online version to play with my friends or maybe with matchmaking.
Even with everything that I have mentioned, the game has so many more things to do. You have adventures, which are separate side missions that have their own stat buffs you can grind out, as well as Arcana’s you can get that give permanent stat buffs you can select at the start and during certain points of a match.
Overall, this game is incredibly addictive and cheaper to buy than a meal deal, with its price being under £4. You even get a discount with PlayStation Plus. The base game has tons of content from all the previous free patches that the developer has rolled out since launch on the PC version. But if you do want even more content, there are also several different DLC packs that are really cheap and also discounted with PlayStation Plus.
Vampire Survivors offers so much to do, but what is even more rewarding is that it’s paced in a way that you feel like you are achieving something, and it doesn’t just scare you away with everything being there from the start. The game slowly eases you into the challenge and fun; it is probably one of my favourite games of all time, and I highly recommend it as a result.
Vampire Survivors is now available for PS5 & PS4.
Review code kindly provided by publisher.