Vampire Hunters is a game that is a Vampire Survivors clone that would have been called Vampire Survivors but the name was already taken. Now usually, I don’t review Vampire Survivor clones because the ones I have played, usually are quite boring to me. However, Vampire Hunters is unique, as it’s a first-person shooter where you can have a bunch of weapons.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Fun action-packed gameplay where you can get tons of weapons
Different upgrades and trinkets for your characters
Each stage has a different objective for you to complete
Cons
The game can get a little repetitive
Bosses are a little underwhelming
End credits are remixed with AI music
Gameplay
Vampire Hunters tasks the player to fight hordes of enemies, you have guns, melee weapons, etc, that you can get by leveling up. To level up your character, you must collect a certain amount of orbs. Then you can select an upgrade for your character unless you have a certain constellation equipped but more on that later. The game has auto-fire on by default, so all you have to do is point, aim, and move. You can turn off this feature off if you want to but I kept it on because I don’t want to be constantly clicking.
The gameplay is very fun and is action-packed, you will have a limit on the amount of stuff you can carry on you but you will get damage upgrades for the weapons instead. They will also scale to the later parts of the stage you are on but you will also come across stronger enemies as time goes on. The maximum amount of stuff you can hold in the game for your character is 14 different weapons, which weapons you get is up to you and is randomized.
Besides upgrades for your characters, there are also permanent upgrades and skill trees for the characters. Permanent upgrades go through all the characters but will only affect the one you choose to play as. You will need these silver coins to get these upgrades and the amount to get another upgrade on it will increase. So for example you put one silver coin into damage, you will need two of them to get damage to level two. Then there are the trinkets, which you can get from the skill trees and these will give passive effects. Like more crit damage, health, shield, etc. Each character has their own trinkets they can use and to unlock these, you will need to boss souls. To get them, you will need to take out bosses in the stages, which are also randomized.
The bosses work in that you will fight one at first after a certain amount of time but later down the line, you will face up to two, or three, with a max of four bosses to fight at the same time. Although at that point you can just take the boss out with no problem, as normally your Blood Rage meter will just take it out. Or you never have to waste it because said boss just shows up and doesn’t do anything, like they showed up to a party and just said nothing.
Now there is more than just surviving the stages, you see, after 30 minutes, you have the option to complete the stage by doing a simple objective. Like closing portals or doing some other small but simple objective. That being said you can just ignore and keep killing enemies to build up your combo meter, which will also build up your Blood Rage ability. Your Blood Rage ability is where you will do extra damage for a few seconds, and it helps clear out a bunch of enemies and just melts bosses no matter who they are. To build it back up, you will need to kill a bunch of enemies it also helps if your combo meter is very high too. The only way for a combo to break is if you didn’t kill an enemy after a few seconds or you get hit. One of the two will end it if you can get yourself on a straight pathway. Have fun if you have the correct guns because no enemy is getting through to you.
Although as much as the game is fun, it does have its fair share of issues, the game can get stale, it is a Vampire Survivors clone, so it suffers from this exact issue. There isn’t much to do afterward but get a higher score, which is fine, but the issue is there. Speaking of things that do nothing, the bosses do nothing. They just show up and don’t do anything, mind you some will go out and find you and will attack you and others do have gimmicks. However, there is this boss called Slayme, which is a nod to Ghostbusters, and this scarecrow-like boss that will hop on one leg and put down these totem poles and that’s it. Mind you Slayme one will leave this green goo behind and slow the player but it’s more of a minor inconvenience than anything.
Stages do have their gimmick bosses, but they also don’t do much, like in this one stage, there is a dragon boss. But here is the thing, this boss, only affects half of the stage, if you go inside the castle, the dragon can’t hurt you. There are other examples of bosses not doing much but if I had to say, they just all seem like giant enemies. Now to be fair, Vampire Survivors bosses aren’t anything special either, they are just giant sponges.
Graphics and Performance
Vampire Hunters uses old-school 3D graphics, they are nice to look at and I like them. I tested the game on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, AMD Ryzen 5 1500X Quad-Core Processor 3.50, and 16 GB of RAM, I had no issues while I was playing, and the game ran fine.
I should at least talk about the soundtrack a tad bit, the game uses copyrighted free music for the game's soundtrack, they even have a remix for a TouHou song so that’s cool. However, the end credit theme is AI-generated, and the Steam store page does not state this at all. Now using copyrighted free music is fine but using an AI-generated song is pretty sad. It's not enough to get this game a negative review but I will point it out. The devs do need to update the Steam store page saying that AI is used in the game as per their rules.
Final Verdict
If you are looking for a casual but more action-packed Vampire Survivors clone, then Vampire Hunters is not a bad choice. There is something to be had here that is enjoyable, with its fun gameplay, weapons, and other upgrades you can get. The references that the game has is also a nice touch, something I enjoyed.
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