The Castlevania chapter of Dead by Daylight had its playtest beta (or PTB) a bit ago. YSK DbD runs its PTBs by letting those interested access a beta version of new upcoming content for about a day, for free; it's then killswitched for fine-tuning, and after a few weeks, the 1.0 version of the content is released as paid DLC. This may be a bit redundant, as the DLC's full launch is in a couple days, but I thought I'd share my interim thoughts!

If you haven't seen it in action yet, a video overview (of both survivor and killer, despite the video title) from the foremost DbD streamer, Otzdarva, is below. Obviously, he's going to be focused on gameplay intricacies from the perspective of a long-term DbD fan, but it's a good, comprehensive, relatively-concise visual showcase.

It seems they leaned heavily into the vampire aspect of the experience over the Castlevania. Players have been demanding a killer who's a vampire for a long time - it seemed like an obvious oversight in their murderer's row of, er, murderers - and it turns out they couldn't pull the trigger on that with an original character because they had a popular pop-culture incarnation of the ur-vampire in their licensing sights. Dracula's powers revolve around a vampire's traditional transformation abilities - like that German intro to Rondo of Blood promises, he has the power to turn into a bat, for mobility, and a wolf, for, um, also mobility, but you can't hunt or down survivors as a bat. (You can know not only pet the dog, kind of, in Dead by Daylight, using pointing emotes, but you can play a killer who's a dog.) Drac also has his sometimes first-stage final boss fire pillar ability (no triple fireballs) as a standard attack while in bipedal form. I can't play killer to save my life, so I can't give any test drive notes, but the experience of playing against him seems focused on recreating the experience of trespassing in a vampire's domain, hearing his cackles and wolf-form howls in worryingly closer variants of "the distance" throughout the battlefield, until his talons are around your neck.

Dracula's castle will also materialize in the background of outdoor stages, and it looks terrific:

...but I think this brings us to a problem with this DLC: it needed a stage. In the U.S., at least, the franchise is called Castlevania, not Dracula; the man needs his home. This might have been a problem with timing: the last DLC the game had was for Dungeons & Dragons, which itself introduced a castle stage for its lich killer, Vecna. I've heard a number of folks online label this stage as being "too complicated" with its portals and magic tricks (I haven't played it myself; I took a vacation from the game shortly after the switch to Unreal 5 due to comp issues), and they weren't keen for a new castle-themed area. Perhaps this had some influence. Maybe DbD's developer, Behaviour, also wanted to avoid going toe-to-toe with Nintendo given the Smash Bros. stage, but come on. Behaviour could have gone toe-to-toe with Nintendo, given the quality of their past work in this area.

I'm also not crazy about the chase theme - it's not bad, not actively bad, but it doesn't live up to the musical heritage of the franchise. It sounds like someone just running their hands back and forth across a pipe organ keyboard. (The wiki says it references the final boss theme of the first game, but I'm hearing it only very faintly; maybe my ears are broken.) Otherwise it's a passible Castlevania Dracula - the use of sounds as detailed above is excellent, the different forms hunting you are neat, they've got the look down. There's also a hilarious trap you can trigger at the endgame exit gates with using one of his rarer items:

Castlevania old-school difficulty rears its head! The performance for Dracula is also all right, but there's not much in his lines that screams Castlevania Drac to me - they're quite generic, in writing and delivery. Given with how Behaviour usually knocks it out of the park with franchise DLCs - Brad Dourif & Jennifer Tilly contributing tons of voicework for the Chucky DLC; Nick Cage rambling on about getting to meet Sadako; creating the best version of Michael Myers outside of the original movie in the content that put the game on the map - "passable" is a disappointment.

Also I know DbD's all about the gory moris now, and they had to work in the goblet smash somehow, didn't they, but it's odd that a vampire doesn't bite his victim for his finisher. C'mon, Behaviour. There's been rattling about you selling additional moris for months now. Let Drac have a good chomp.

Trevor is Trevor.

Reception from fans of the show - at least, from DBD players who know the franchise from the show, as those are the streams I'm watching - seems positive but a bit confused. Otzdarva, the premier DbD streamer, introduced the content as being from the show when what we had in the PTB was clearly game-based. I've seen other streamers wonder why Dracula has white hair - after all, in the show, his hair's dark, right? I don't know what show fans think about this incarnation of Trevor Fucking Belmont yet, pre-Warren Ellising. I can understand why the Curse of Darkness/Pachislot design was used, as it's the one that has the most recent assets on which to base a DbD character, but I'd bet he's a bit pretty-boy for show fans. I mean, the man has absolute territory. I imagine there will be a cosmetic for show Trevor (additional costumes weren't revealed in the PTB).

I've also seen fans of the games dismissive of these concerns, but as someone who loves the games and actually didn't watch the show due to the anticipated EDGE, I don't think show fans should be dismissed; it's by far the most prominent incarnation of the franchise right now, and a lot of people really love it. They should come away from the DLC with a good experience - not only just on general principle, but also for the health of DbD and Castlevania.

So, in conclusion, we now have a game where Trevor Belmont can join forces with Ash Williams, Jill Valentine, and Nicolas Cage, or Ellen Ripley, Cheryl Mason, and Steve Harrington, or Lara Croft, Laurie Strode, and Alan Wake, to face off against Dracula. Or Michael Myers. Or Ghostface. Or Leatherface. Or Sadako. Or a Xenomorph. What a time to be alive.

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