Dawntide: First Impressions

At time of writing, Dawnlands has an entirely undeserved Steam rating of Mostly Negative. What the hell are those people on?! Seriously, though. What does it take to satisfy people these days? 

Okay, if someone's got their hand up out there to say "Originality", then yes, you got me. Not only does Dawnlands not have an original idea in its pretty little head, it's turned up to the party wearing the clothes of all its favorite games. At once. 

It shouldn't work but somehow it just does. 

So far, I've seen Dawnlands compared to Valheim, Genshin Impact, Breath of the Wild, Craftopia and even Minecraft. I'd also throw in New World but chances are you can find a bit of every survival-crafting-open-world game you ever played in there, somewhere.

Bow-kiting a troll... sorry, a giant.

Does it matter that everything here has been seen before somewhere else? Of course not! 

Everything feeds off everything else, always. Imagine if bands weren't allowed to sound like other bands or writers to write like other writers. Reviewers would be out of a job for a start, since all most of them ever seem to do is try to match new with old like a game of temporal Pelmanism.

So, no, Dawnlands is staggeringly unoriginal. Let's get that out of the way for a start. There's literally nothing here you won't have seen done before and much that you've seen done exactly the same. 

When people say it's like Valheim they really are not kidding. Certain aspects are functionally identical. For instance:

• The first thing you see when you wake up is a bird. Get used to it because it's going to follow you around and tell you what to do.
• You don't just get to make a bed, set it as your respawn point and sleep in it to avoid the dangers of night - you even get the same dreams with the gnomic intertitles and the bad poetry. 
• When you chop down trees they fall and roll and leave stumps and trunks you chop again for more wood. 
• The first creatures you see when you start to explore are annoying little three foot tall gits who swarm you and throw rocks at you. When you kill them they drop resin that you use to make torches, which you use to drive them away at night because the only thing they fear is fire itself.
• At night the skeletons come out to play and boy, are they tough! 
  
• When you die you drop most of your things but you can come back and get it later.
  
• If it rains you get wet and if you're wet you can't sleep. If you get cold you can't sleep either so you need a fire near your bed. You have to keep feeding the fire with wood or it goes out.
• You can make a spit to roast meat but if it rains the fire goes out so you have to put it under cover.
• You can make a raft. I haven't done this yet so I don't know if it wallows like a drunken hippopotamus or not. I bet it does, though.
  

Any of this sounding familiar? Because if not I could go on...

Down! With just one arrow left...

So, yes, it's anime Valheim. The question is, does that matter? Well, only in the sense that Valheim famously had the capacity to draw you in and make you feel part of it. That's the hard part to copy. I think Dawnlands pulls it off but many seem to disagree.

For me, it has exactly that "I wonder what's over the next hill?" quantity that made playing Valheim so moreish, coupled with those "Okay, it's not that late really, I could just fix it before I stop" moments that come when you notice the way you've set the roof on your hut isn't quite right. When I woke up this morning I found myself really wanting to play Dawnlands and as I write this post I kind of wish I was still playing it instead of writing about it.. 

That's very much how I felt in the early days of Valheim. I wanted to play it but I wanted to write about it but I wanted to play it... Then again, I felt a bit like about Palia a week ago. But definitely not as much.

Dawnlands is undeniably "inspired" by Valheim but it isn't just a Valheim clone. It's prettier. A lot prettier. 

No, no stop it! Valheim has a weird, fuzzed-up beauty all its own. Dawnlands, as has been observed, looks not unlike Genshin Impact. Or a Hanna-Barbera cartoon circa 1969. Your choice.

Which look, if either, speaks to you is something only you can know. Both work very well for me. I wouldn't necessarily say either was prettier than the other. Not to their faces, anyway.

No, Hedi. I do not have any mice.

Other than how the two games look, what are the differences? I feel another list of bullet points coming on.

• That bird? It's an owl, not a raven. And it's sweet, not spooky.
• Those rock-throwing creatures? They aren't grey dwarves; they're goblins.
• When you die you don't leave a grave, you leave a backpack. Maybe. I'm not sure. I can't remember. Maybe it is a grave. I'm not going to log in and get myself killed just for science.
  

Hmm. Those differences aren't all that different, are they? Okay, then, how about these?

• You can catch, tame and ride horses.
• There are NPCs all over the place and they give quests, just like in a regular MMORPG.
• There are Achievements and plenty of them.
• There are vendors. 
• There's a cash shop. It sells stuff for both in-game currency and real money. Different stuff, mostly.
  
• You can sit on your shield and slide down hills on it. Try that in Valheim and see how far you get!
• In Valheim, the more you upgrade your armor, the less of yourself you can see. In Dawnlands it's  the exact opposite. (Seriously, what is this? Every time I make something "better" I end up wearing less. I'm going to have to make a male character just to see if the same happens to the guys. (You know it doesn't.))

I suppose we'd better get on with it, Sparky.
This land won't cleanse itself.

One of the more obvious departures from the Valheim model is the part that seems to have been lifted almost verbatim from New World, although I'm more than willing to be told it's actually from Breath of the Wild. I wouldn't know. Never played that one.

Very early on you get told about some sort of evil that's spreading across the land. Dawnlands was developed by a Singaporean team and the English translation is somewhat idiosyncratic, so I'm a bit vague on the details but the gist seems to be that I'm the chosen one and I have to go sanctify anything I see that's turned purple.

If that reminds you of cleansing the corruption in New World, well it did me too. The good news is that, like just about everything else in Dawnlands, it's a lot easier than wherever you saw it last time. 

With the caveat that it's very early days and it might get a lot harder later on, the thing I haven't really mentioned yet is that Dawnlands is a more accessible, faster, easier version of Valheim. There's always the possibilty that it only seems that way because I've done it all before but I think that's just a small part of it.

Dawnlands seems much more interested in being entertaining and approachable than being gritty or  challenging. It's the fun parts of Valheim without the long slog. I suspect that will translate into "without the engagement or the whole point of the damn thing" for a lot of people but not for me. 

I was looking forward to going back to Valheim when the update that lets you set your own difficulty levels drops but now I've played Dawnlands, I'm not sure I'll bother. I wanted Valheim-lite and now I have it.

Home is where the hearth is.

This is a First Impressions post and I think it's obvious that Dawnlands has made a very good one with me, if not with most people. (To be fair, that "Mostly Negative" rating on Steam does split two-thirds against, one-third for, so there's a sizeable minority that feel the way I do about the game.)

I probably should mention that one of the main thing a lot of the Steam reviewers have against Dawnlands is that it's an obvious mobile port. That really seems to get people's backs up, somehow. 

There are a lot of moans about the UI and the intrusive monetization, neither of which am I finding problematic in any way whatsoever. I actually find I really like the kinds of UIs I'm seeing these days that have been lifted almost verbatim from Android. I'm used to them and I find them comfortable and intuitive. I prefer them to a few purpose-built PC interfaces I've struggled with over the years.

As for the demands for money, as usual I barely notice them. I'm not going to be spending anything, anyway. I'm sure I'll get everything I need just from playing. I do in every other game so why should this one be any different? If anything, Dawnlands seems quite restrained in the way it holds out its hand. I've seen a lot worse. I'm playing a lot worse (Looking at you, Dragon Nest 2!)

Um... Sparky? It's getting dark. How far from home are we?

There's also a good deal of kvetching about bugs. So far I've only seen one of note, when I got stuck in swimming animation and had to flop along the ground like a seal. That was pretty funny. Relogging fixed it. Other than that the game's been very well-behaved.

I guess the big question is, how long will this love affair last? Is it going to be a brief fling or a long-lasting relationship? Well, if I knew that...

One thing seems certain. If I do stick with the game I won't be running out of things to do any time soon. 

Among the many useful pieces of information you're given as you log in is the percentage of the map you've explored so far. (Oh, I guess we can add Guild Wars 2 to the list of games Dawnlands borrows from...) After four hours I've explored 0.29% of the gameworld. 

If I played for two hours a day, every day, it'd take me nearly two years to see everything. And that's assuming Seasun Games never add another lake or hill. I'm pretty sure I'll lose interest long before I hundred per cent this thing but I'll also take a bet that I won't  be losing interest for a while.

Maybe someone should run a sweepstake.