Vampires Dawn 2: Ancient Blood

Vampires Dawn 2: Ancient Blood is the successor to Vampires Dawn: Reign of Blood. It is a German freeware RPG created with the RPG Maker.

The plot continues the events of the predecessor, in which the three vampires Valnar, Alaine and Asgar killed Vincent Weynard and stopped his holy crusade against the vampires of the world. Afterwards they found a mysterious magic book with which Asgar, the evil vampire of the trio, wanted to conquer the world. To stop him Valnar and Alaine killed their comrade. When a vampire is killed his spirit goes to something like a vampire hell where they suffer enormous pain forever. But Asgar finds a way to return back to life... Meanwhile Valnar and Alaine have decided to live peacefully among the humans. To complete their happiness they decide to have a daughter and that's where they cross the life of Nyria and her little sister Jayna. They turn Jayna into a vampire and live happily together, at least until Asgar appears. Summarized, he pulls Jayna on his side and uses the magic book to destroy the world and convert it to a state of the past. This new old world is ruled by evil magicians called the Elras and their enemies, the clan of the holy warriors which owns nine pieces of a powerful spell. The Elras want this spell, the clan wants to keep it and now Valnar and Alaine are ordered by a mysterious prophet to get them if they want to restore their own world.

In some parts of the game you control Nyria, who tries to orientate herself in the suddenly changed world but most of the time you follow the plot of Valnar and Alaine who are soon supported by Asgar again. The look of the game is similar to the early games in the Final Fantasy series. You wander and later fly as a bat over a world map, where several towns, castles, dungeons and secret areas can be found. When you find a new area or enter a town the perspective changes from top-down to isometric and you can explore the area, where you can talk to people, buy weapons, armour and healing potions. Some people have quests for you. When you help them with their problems you get rewards and more importantly experience points.

For killing monsters you get experience points as well. You meet them as random encounters on the world map or in areas outside of towns. At the beginning of each battle you can choose if you want to fight on your own or let the computer do everything. The fights occur in real-time. When the time bar is completely filled you can use items, spells or simply use your weapon on your enemy. For every spell a specific amount of blood is needed. You get blood by drinking blood potions, which can be bought later in the game, killing animals or simply broaching humans or your enemies.

Being a vampire has several advantages. You can't die (you can always be revitalized), you can read the thoughts of humans and convert people to useful items or to vampires who fight for you. Your main quest is to get the nine pieces of this mysterious spell. These pieces are hidden in the catacombs of nine castles possessed by the Elras and the Clan. Before you can look for each piece you have to find a key for the catacomb and more importantly conquer the hostile castles. To defend your own castles and conquer new ones, you need armies. For this task you can hire cheap but weak mercenaries and create vampires.

On a tactics screen you decide which castle you want to attack and choose your fighters. The conquests run automatically and after being successful you control the local area and collect taxes from the townspeople. That's why you shouldn't convert every person into a vampire. Eventually nobody is left to pay you...

Asgar's castle is your headquarters. If you don't want to use one of the rare save stones, you can save the game there by paying five souls (for every killed enemy you get a soul), restore your health points, plan the conquests, hire mercenaries, buy blood potions, torture prisoners to win information, take money from your treasury, create new spells or improve some of your skills like lockpicking or finding secret passages.

The game features more than 700 different maps, hundreds of different spells and monster types and in total six different endings - two for each difficulty level.