With so many exciting games both releasing and on the horizon every single month, I find it particularly difficult to make time for older titles. There’s one exception though, and that’s Vampire Survivors. For me the First Survivaton is just the perfect game to play when you just want to unwind, with flashy effects and automatic attacks enabling me to use the game as a digital fidget toy when it’s close to bed time. That’s not how Vampire Survivors always felt though, because before you pay for loads of upgrades there are all sorts of tense moments and scrappy situations to manage. One of my favourite elements of all the DLC is that it takes you back to those early runs, with new weapons you don’t understand and evolutions to discover. Vampire Survivors: Legacy of the Bloodmoon provides this perfectly, and gave me hours more enjoyment because of it.
Unlike the more recent DLC offerings from Vampire Survivors, Legacy of the Bloodmoon isn’t based on a well known franchise. Castlevania and Among Us weapons are nowhere to be seen here, and instead this original content functions as a darker twist on the franchise. I don’t really come to Vampire Survivors for the story, but if you do then this one is all about an ancient cult. None of this really affects the content of the DLC otherwise though, besides ensuring plenty of blood red items to collect.
The most exciting part of new Vampire Survivors content is always checking out the new weapons, and it’s no exception here. Highlights include the Scarlet Needle which stabs nearby foes, and evolves to rain blood and pain on the entire screen. There’s also a haunted scream AoE attack which activates an extra time whenever you take damage, which works really well if you ensure lots of healing upgrades. Despite sounding a bit basic, the best of the bunch are probably the trio of fire attacks that explode in different ways. Especially when evolved there are some ridiculous screen clearing attacks that make my brain happy to watch, and I’m delighted to have them thrown into the selection for all my future runs.
Just like previous DLC offerings, Vampire Survivors: Legacy of the Bloodmoon is best experienced first in its dedicated adventure mode. This features eight individual stages with different quirks and lengths of survival time, which limit the pool of weapons to mainly include the new ones. I love that this is how they introduce new content, for two reasons in particular. The first of these is that your permanent upgrades reset for each adventure, so you have to actually be a bit careful not to die. The second is that because of the limited weapons it’s not too tough to work out the new weapon evolutions, because there are thankfully less combinations to experiment with. It’s just a clever way to make it more appealing to try everything new, and set you up better for the massive new stage in the main game.
Once you’ve completed the adventure in a few hours, you’ll probably be hooked on Vampire Survivors all over again. This means it’s the perfect time to jump back into the classic mode, and unlock some new characters, weapons and stages. The new Bloodmoon stage is one of the massive ones where you’ll need to unlock the map to navigate appropriately, and it has tons of secrets tucked away in its blood soaked hallways. It’ll take you hours to tick all those check boxes and unlock everything new on your save file, and if you love Vampire Survivors as much as me you’ll relish the opportunity.
There’s so little to complain about when it comes to Legacy of the Bloodmoon, but I must admit it’s a little hard to go back to more generic DLC offerings after being given Contra, Among Us and Castlevania. It’s not really fair to judge expect all your favourite franchises to come next to your favourite Survivaton, but when the bar is set that high it’s easy to feel ever so slightly let down in theming.
Vampire Survivors: Legacy of the Bloodmoon is yet again a practically perfect slice of new content for Vampire Survivors, which as usual costs practically nothing to obtain. If you love Vampire Survivors you’ll love the new weapons, characters and stages, and quite frankly probably didn’t need me to convince you to spend less than a pound on it. I’ll likely never stop playing Vampire Survivors, and appreciate every treat thrown my way from poncle.
