The Blood of Dawnwalker PC Performance Review

The Blood of Dawnwalker is the kind of game where I occasionally forgot that I was supposed to be staring at an FPS counter.

Published by Bandai Namco and developed by Rebel Wolves, the RPG drops you into a dark interpretation of 14th-century Europe, where war and the Black Death have weakened humanity enough for vampires to seize power. You play as Coen, a Dawnwalker who remains human during the day but becomes a vampire at night, with the two forms opening up different abilities and ways of approaching the world.

And visually, the game absolutely sells that premise. Vale Sangora is a stunning place to explore. Dense forests give way to medieval villages, castles, and mountainous landscapes, while nighttime completely changes the mood of areas that can look almost peaceful under daylight. There is a very deliberate dark-fantasy character to the world, and considering the game runs on Unreal Engine 5, I was curious about exactly how much all of this was going to cost on PC.

Quite a lot, as it turns out. I tested The Blood of Dawnwalker on an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 at both 4K and 1440p, moving between the Ultra and Medium graphics presets and comparing completely native performance against DLSS paired with 2x Frame Generation.

Rating:

4.0/5

The Blood of Dawnwalker PC Performance Review

Photo Credit: Bandai Namco / Rebel Wolves

Testing Rig

For testing, I paired the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 with an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, running on the MSI Z890 Gaming Plus WiFi motherboard. The system also features 48GB of Kingston Fury Renegade DDR5 RAM clocked at 4800MT/s, a 2TB WD Black SN850X NVMe SSD, and an MSI MAG A1000GL 1000W power supply. This is the same test bench I've been using for my recent PC performance reviews.

There's one new addition to the setup this time around: the Acer Nitro XV275K P5 gaming monitor. It's a 27-inch 4K Mini LED display with a native 160Hz refresh rate, 1,152 local dimming zones, and VESA DisplayHDR 1000 support. It can also switch to 1080p at 320Hz through its dual-resolution mode, although for The Blood of Dawnwalker, I primarily took advantage of that native 4K panel for testing.

I've only just started putting the XV275K P5 through its paces, but it has been an interesting upgrade to the test bench, especially for games where HDR, dark scenes, and high-resolution visuals matter. I'll have a full review of it coming soon.

As for The Blood of Dawnwalker, I tested six configurations in total. The Ultra preset was tested at both 4K and 1440p, while Medium was tested at 4K. Each resolution and preset combination was tested natively as well as with DLSS and 2x Multi Frame Generation enabled.

One slightly annoying quirk I noticed during testing is that enabling DLSS and Frame Generation requires the game to restart. It isn't a deal-breaker, but when you're constantly jumping between settings to compare performance and image quality, those extra restarts quickly become tedious.

The Blood of Dawnwalker PC Performance

Before getting into the numbers, it is worth clarifying that these benchmarks were not recorded using the early review build. Rebel Wolves released an update for launch that addressed a number of the issues highlighted during the review period, including rare crashes, performance problems in certain areas and scenarios, the display mode reverting from Windowed to Borderless after a restart, and a crash caused by leaving the map open after scouting an area.

That is also why I took a little longer with this performance review. Rather than publishing results from a build that people would never actually play, I reran the tests using the final version available to the public. This should give us a much more useful picture of how The Blood of Dawnwalker performs on PC at launch. With that out of the way, let’s start with 4K performance.

Before getting into the numbers, it’s worth quickly talking about the graphics menu itself. The Blood of Dawnwalker gives you the usual preset ladder, including Low, Medium, High, and Ultra, so there’s a decent amount of room to scale the game depending on your hardware. DLSS is available as an upscaling option, and Frame Generation is supported too, but there’s an important limitation here: the game only offers 2x Frame Generation, with no higher MFG options such as 3x or 4x. Another small annoyance is that enabling or disabling Frame Generation requires a full game restart, which makes switching between configurations more cumbersome than it should be.

4K Performance

Graphics	DLSS + 2x MFG	Avg FPS	1% Low	CPU Usage	GPU Usage	GPU Temp	GPU Clock
Ultra	Off	27	15	15%	99%	81°C	2760 MHz
Ultra	On	69	39	31%	98%	75°C	2782 MHz
Medium	Off	43	39	25%	98%	79°C	2775 MHz
Medium	On	94	45	36%	98%	79°C	2797 MHz

Native 4K Ultra is simply too much for the RTX 5070. I recorded an average of just 27 FPS, while the 1% low dropped to 15 FPS.

That latter number is particularly important because it tells us that performance isn't merely sitting somewhere around the high-20s. Heavier moments can cause much steeper drops, and that makes the experience feel noticeably less smooth.

The GPU was also sitting at 99% usage, so there isn't much mystery about what's happening here. The graphics card is essentially being pushed as hard as it can.

DLSS combined with 2x MFG changes the situation dramatically. Average performance climbs to 69 FPS, while the 1% low improves to 39 FPS.

Photo Credit: Bandai Namco / Rebel Wolves

That's a massive difference, although there is an important caveat here. Since I tested DLSS and MFG together, I can't tell you exactly how much of the uplift comes from DLSS itself and how much comes from generated frames. And, as always, a 69 FPS Frame Generation result isn't the same thing as rendering 69 completely native frames every second.

Still, compared with 27 FPS, this is easily the configuration I'd choose if I absolutely wanted to stick with 4K Ultra.

The more interesting result, however, comes from Medium. Dropping from Ultra to 4K Medium raises native performance from 27 FPS to 43 FPS, while the 1% low jumps all the way from 15 FPS to 39 FPS.

That's a very healthy improvement, especially because Dawnwalker still looks great at Medium. The art direction, environment density, lighting, and overall atmosphere do a lot of the visual heavy lifting here, so dropping a preset doesn't suddenly make the scene look lifeless.

And with DLSS and 2x MFG, 4K Medium reaches 94 FPS, making it arguably the most attractive 4K configuration I tested.

1440p Performance

Graphics	DLSS + 2x MFG	Avg FPS	1% Low	CPU Usage	GPU Usage	GPU Temp	GPU Clock
Ultra	Off	43	39	42%	99%	79°C	2812 MHz
Ultra	On	98	53	39%	97%	75°C	2812 MHz

1440p is where the RTX 5070 starts to feel much more comfortable. At Ultra settings with DLSS and Frame Generation disabled, the game averaged 43 FPS, with a 39 FPS 1% low. What makes that result interesting is how closely it matches native 4K at Medium settings, which gave me almost identical numbers.

That essentially gives you two fairly sensible options. You can stick with 4K and lower the preset to Medium, or drop the resolution to 1440p and keep everything at Ultra. Personally, I think the latter makes more sense if you want to hold on to the extra visual detail without pushing the RTX 5070 quite as hard.

With DLSS and 2x MFG enabled, performance improves considerably, taking the average up to 98 FPS, while the 1% low rises to 53 FPS. The game still looks excellent at Ultra, while performance gets close enough to triple digits that it feels much smoother to play.

The numbers also make it fairly clear that the GPU is doing most of the heavy lifting here. Utilisation stayed between 97% and 99% throughout my testing, while temperatures generally remained between 75 and 81 degrees Celsius. Clock speeds were also fairly consistent at around 2.8GHz, so I never really saw anything that suggested the card was being held back by the rest of the system.

Should You Buy The Blood of Dawnwalker?

After spending time with The Blood of Dawnwalker across 4K and 1440p, the biggest takeaway for me is that this is a demanding game, but not one that feels unreasonable once you start adjusting the right settings.

Native 4K Ultra is easily the toughest workload I tested, with performance dropping to 27 FPS on average and a 15 FPS 1% low, and that’s really not shocking. That makes it hard to recommend unless you are willing to lean on DLSS and Multi Frame Generation. Even then, I think there are better-balanced ways to play.

Dropping to 4K Medium made a much bigger difference than I expected, pushing native performance to 43 FPS while still keeping the game looking excellent. With DLSS and 2x MFG enabled, that figure climbed to 94 FPS, which feels like a much more sensible target for anyone playing on a 4K display.

1440p Ultra was just as interesting. Native performance again sat at 43 FPS, while DLSS and 2x MFG pushed it to 98 FPS. Out of everything I tested, this felt like the best balance between image quality and performance, especially if you would rather keep the higher graphics preset than chase native 4K.

The rest of the build also behaved pretty much as expected. GPU utilisation stayed close to full throughout testing, CPU usage remained comfortably lower, and temperatures and clock speeds stayed fairly consistent. So while Dawnwalker is definitely heavy on the graphics side, the system handled it predictably once I moved away from native 4K Ultra.

And that matters because this is a game I would rather not strip back too aggressively. Vale Sangora is a genuinely striking place, and the day-and-night setup gives the world a noticeably different feel depending on when you are exploring it. Coen's human and vampire sides also change how you approach situations, while the 30-day structure forces you to think about which quests and decisions are actually worth your time.

So, should you buy The Blood of Dawnwalker? Based on what I’ve played so far, I’d say yes. It has plenty of Witcher 3 DNA, which isn’t surprising given the talent behind it, but the directional parry system, vampire abilities, and the way time affects your choices give it enough personality of its own. I’ve genuinely enjoyed my time with it so far, and while the PC version can be demanding, finding the right settings makes it much easier to appreciate just how good this world looks.