Image: Rebel Wolves & Bandai Namco Entertainment

While our man Noah might have jumped right into The Blood of Dawnwalker (and loved it) last month, I like to let my big open-world RPGs mature a little before taking a bite. Once again I am vindicated, as the vampire RPG (coming from a team of ex-Witcher developers, and it really shows) just received its first major update, addressing many of the pain points brought up by reviews thus far.

But none of that matters, because the update not only adds the option to finally pet all the very good cats and dogs around the world (you might be an immortal bloodsucking creature of the night, but you're not a monster), but also uses some of the directional animation tech used in the game's combat.

You can see the full patch notes here, but beyond the petting, there's a respec system now. The Draught of Mind Rebirth resets all your skill trees and lets you pick fresh. There's a new extra-casual difficulty mode with combat assistance, and the subtitles now scale properly throughout the whole game, so no more squinting at tiny words on smaller screens.

Combat has seen some tune-ups too. Shadowstep and Planeshift should behave better, and targeting in general has been improved. Plus the vitally important tactical option to hit da bricks has been added for when things suck. While practically impossible to retreat from combat at launch, now you can disengage from most encounters if you find yourself biting off more than you can chew.

Beyond that, there's a lot of little fixes, tweaks, and improvements. Quality-of-life features in merchant screens, the ability to equip the same items in both day and night presets (well, duh), and you will no longer be hounded by immortal, all-seeing Boar patrols that react to you biting animals. There's also a massive slab of spoiler-tagged patch notes for tweaks to quests throughout the game. Read those at your own peril.

The Blood of Dawnwalker is currently available only at full price - a hefty £60/$70 for the basic version and more for the 'Eclipse' edition with a soundtrack, comic book, and compendium. If you're eyeing this one, I'd suggest waiting a few more days, as once the Next Fest ends, the Steam Halloween sale begins, potentially bringing discounts to all things spooky.