Vampire Survivors' First DLC Offers Pleasant (But Diminishing) Returns

Expand / Welcome back my friends, to the horde that never ends. In our Vampire Survivors review, we noted how it seems like "you're always unlocking cool new toys or characters to play with". Unfortunately, that's not literally true. After dozens of hours, most players will be able to find all the secrets and unlock each of the game's many unlockable characters, maps, and weapons.

The game doesn't instantly lose its hypnotic, epileptic appeal at this point, of course. But once you've finally achieved all of the game's many "official" goals, it becomes a little harder to come up with new self-imposed challenges.

Enter Legacy of the Moonspell, the first official paid DLC for Vampire Survivors. While we welcome any new content for one of our favorite games of the year (especially when it's on offer for just $2), this addition feels a bit limiting, especially for a game that's seen dozens of free updates since its launch in 2021 in Early Access.

mountains of madness

As the name suggests, one of the highlights of this DLC is its new stage, Mt. Moonspell. The developers of Poncle boast that this map is "25 times larger than other Vampire Survivors maps, but that's not the case in practice. That said, Mt. Moonspell looks a lot more complex than most previous Vampire Survivors maps.

Enlarge / Open areas like these are rarer than ever on the DLC's new Mt. Moonspell map.

On other Vampire Survivors maps, accessing a specific item on your map usually involves walking in the correct cardinal direction for a period of time. That's not necessarily true on Mount Moonspell, where you're likely to run into a cliff edge or impassable walls that force you to turn around and find a new path through rock-like corridors. labyrinth. There are plenty of dead ends to get trapped in (or to trap invading enemies), as well as several new "interior" areas, where entering through a door makes the roof disappear so you can see the rooms inside .

While there are a few new enemy types in Mt. Moonspell, most of them are fodder that are difficult, if not impossible, to tell apart from existing enemies. This doesn't apply to the stage's handful of mini-bosses though; giant beasts with fast ranged attacks require all your dodging and positioning skills.

wild weapons

The new weapons in the Moonspell DLC are mixed. I particularly liked the "108 Bocce", a set of eight brown balls that spin around your character in a hypnotic half-spiral, whipping any enemy who dares to get too close. The Silver Wind also sends tiny white particles hissing past just above your character in a particularly satisfying pattern that I never tire of watching. I also enjoyed the Four Seasons, a weapon that sends particularly flashy bursts of fireworks to the four corners of the screen, forcing you to carefully position enemies from a distance.

Summon Night is a powerful new weapon that rips multiple vertical slashes across the screen slightly above your character's position, burning any enemy that wanders into its lingering burn. I found it a little frustrating to position myself, however, especially in situations where the environment made it difficult to lure enemies above me. The Nightsword is much less interesting, performing seemingly automatic slashes on any enemy that gets too close (and possibly stealing health in the process).