- Release
- 3 September 2026, Rebel Wolves and Bandai Namco.
- Platforms
- PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC via Steam, Xbox on PC and GOG.
- Difficulty
- Five presets since Update 1.1 (22 October): a new Story mode with combat assistance, then Forgiving (the old Story), Fair, Challenging and Duelist; start on Duelist for the trophy.
- Length
- Story only 10–15 h on the easiest launch preset (now called Forgiving) up to 40–50 h on Duelist; 60–70 h completionist. 40–60 h to the platinum.
- Missables
- 18 trophies marked missable, plus 10 prologue side quests that close for good.
- Trophies
- 47 — 1 platinum, 3 gold, 5 silver, 38 bronze.
Decide before you press start
Duelist from the first frame, or not at all
Uphill Battle, one of the three golds, asks you to "Complete the entire game by saving people of Laslea on Duelist Difficulty preset", and it is marked missable because it has to be Duelist from start to finish — raising the difficulty halfway does not count. The roadmap therefore opens with starting on Duelist and finishing the prologue there. There were four presets at launch (Story, Fair, Challenging and Duelist) and there are five since Update 1.1, which renamed Story to Forgiving and added a new Story mode below it. The choice costs hours: 10–15 for the story on the launch Story preset, 40–50 on Duelist.
Update 1.1 added an easier Story mode
Update 1.1 arrived on 22 October 2026, according to Rebel Wolves' patch notes on Steam. The old Story difficulty is now called Forgiving, and a new Story mode below it adds combat assistance — the preset the director had described as "for people who don't want to experience the combat, they just want to learn the story". The same update improves targeting and disengaging from fights, adds a Draught of Mind Rebirth to relearn Swordmastery, Witchcraft and Vampirism abilities, a merchant buyback, rebalanced upgrade costs and fixes for several quest-blocking bugs. New Game+ is not in it: the director has said one is coming, with no date. If you are going for Uphill Battle, none of this changes the rule above: it is Duelist from start to finish.
Saves are the whole strategy
There is no New Game+, no free-roam after the story and no mission replay: reaching an ending returns you to the title screen. A New Game+ is coming later: the director has said so twice, with no date, and it is not in the October patch. Whether free roam continues after the epilogue has been read both ways, so that point is not settled — but both readings lead to the same habit. The answer is manual saves, and the game is generous with them — 54 manual slots plus five rotating quicksaves and six rotating autosaves. The advice is to save in a different slot every in-game day, after the prologue, before and after the main bosses, and before the final quest. With that habit the missable list stops mattering: with frequent manual saves you can do everything via save reload and nothing is truly missable.
Omniblock or directional, and it is not only a difficulty knob
Newcomers are best served by Omniblock and Omniattack, which automatically handle the direction of your weapon swings and parries so you can focus on spacing; Directional Combat is for players who want the depth. There is a trophy consideration underneath: Untouchable wants five Perfect Blocks in a row, and Perfect Blocks come from directional blocking, where a correct direction costs no stamina while Omniblock always spends it. Unblockable attacks, marked with a red skull, must be dodged in either mode.
The prologue is the only timed stretch, and it takes ten quests with it
The prologue quests are all timed and missable and disappear after the prologue, and so do the prologue's ten side quests — PowerPyx closes them when the prologue ends, Vandal earlier, as soon as Sacred Covenant moves the story on. After that, everything else remains available permanently — with one nuance worth knowing: some objectives within quests are time-sensitive once started and show a blue clock icon in the journal, but as long as you don't start the quests they can still be triggered at any time. So the open world is safe to wander; a quest you have already opened is not.
The prologue, step by step
All Good Things
The opening: the tutorial stretch for learning the basic and advanced mechanics before Coen's transformation. Every list gives the same six quests in the same order.
Withering Away — the medicine, and the one thing you can lose here
Craft the correct medicine for Esme (your mother) with hot water and three spoonfuls of herbs; if you don't complete this quest before time runs out, she will die. Of the three water options, boiling and cold both kill her. The same quest offers to practise Latin with Anca: agreeing starts Page-Turner and costs 2 Time Segments, refusing costs 1 and locks Page-Turner out — which matters later, because Page-Turner is the first quest of Anca's chain and that chain carries the missable Sins of the Past.
Like Father, Like Son · Sacred Covenant
Third and fourth. No branching decision inside either one.
Bad Blood
Fifth. Game8 lists a secret ending of this name — defeating Brencis during the prologue in Laslea Glen, which it says awards The Folk Hero; PowerPyx does not list it, and treats Bad Blood purely as a story quest. Both readings are on the Endings tracker.
Smoke and Ashes — the door closes behind you
Finishing it opens the world and pops A Dawnwalker is Born. It is also the moment the ten prologue side quests — Live Bait, Someone Needs A Lesson, Dead Drop, Disturbed, Deep Down, Enter Not, Blasphemy, On the Run, If a Tree Falls in a Forest… and Bandits's Treasure Map: Laslea Glen — become permanently unavailable. If you want them, they have to be done before this quest.
The pacing the roadmap is built on
Its steps put numbers on the 30 days, and they are worth having before day one rather than day twenty. Through the open-world build-up: "Stay below 15 days in-game time during this step", with "At level 20 you should be strong enough to run around the whole map". For the finale: "Finishing the story takes 7-10 in-game days" and "Aim to reach the ending by day 22". After the credits it drops the pretence of urgency — "you can keep playing past the 30 day limit" and "lower the difficulty to 'Story' to make the cleanup easier" (written before Update 1.1 renamed that preset Forgiving), once Uphill Battle is already banked from the Duelist run.
What the reviews say, and where they split
- The reception is strong and consistent: Metacritic 84 on PC, 83 on PS5, 84 on Xbox Series X|S, and OpenCritic at 94% of critics recommending.
- Named scores: Destructoid 9.5/10, IGN 9/10, GameSpot 8/10, PC Gamer 83/100, Eurogamer 4/5.
- The writing is what critics single out — some called it possibly the best in the genre — along with Coen's two forms.
- The 30-day clock is the argument. Critics split plainly: some found it "brutal" and central to the game, others called it "largely illusory". IGN described the trade-offs as wonderfully stressful and the best part of the adventure; GameSpot's line is that not being able to do everything is part of what makes it compelling.
- The most repeated criticism is combat variety rather than combat feel: you unlock plenty of abilities but may lean on the same couple for long stretches, in a game with a lot of fighting.
- Eurogamer's highlight is night-time rooftop traversal — which is also, practically, the Shadow Roamer trophy accruing while you move.
Cross-checked
Cross-checked on 22 September 2026 and re-checked on 26 September 2026 against the guides of PowerPyx, Game8, Fextralife and Vandal, Wikipedia, the launch reviews, and MP1st's and GAMINGbible's reports of the director's Eurogamer interview; re-checked on 23 October 2026 against Rebel Wolves' Update 1.1 patch notes on Steam; re-checked on 5 November 2026 against those notes and Steam's achievement list. Not from a playthrough: cross-referenced against official announcements and verified community databases. Still to confirm in-game.