Victor Vran

[CoolColJ 87]

Hmm a new ARPG, still in early access

Has gamepad support

So when I first jumped in, I expected the kind of gameplay you saw in Van Helsing. Except the movement is altogether a bit weird at first. Using the keyboard to roam around, when your brain expects to use the mouse is jarring and extremely weird. Once you’re done through the sort of tutorial type area, you’ve basically learnt most of the concepts in the game. You can dodge roll, you can equip two weapons once you’ve unlocked the slot, you have cards you can equip to provide passive bonuses, and you have demon powers. Added on to that, you can jump as well as wall jump off of flat facing walls. The best thing is, the wall jumping isn’t a sort of “here’s a predetermined wall we made for you to jump off of”, you can literally jump wherever you please (within map boundaries), and jump off of just about any wall-like edge. Once you’ve learned the basic concept of movement, dodging and jumping, the overall movement in the game is bloody glorious. I’m going to go back to PoE at some point and become frustrated with what I’ve seen incorporated in a dungeon crawler. I don’t know how best to describe it, you need to play the game to realise how well keyboard control, rolling and jumping works in this kind of genre.

 

Edited April 3, 2015 by CoolColJ

[gogoblender 3,069]

The effects look good, I also like how "fast" things behave

 

gogo

[Flix 5,116]

So I finally got around to playing this one.

First impressions: The story, characters, aesthetics, and overall design are a blatant rip-off of Neocore's Van Helsing series.  The mix of supernatural and steampunk, a vampire-hunter in a wide-brimmed hat coming to a fictional gothic eastern European country. It even has a ghostly wisecracking companion (though this one is invisible disembodied voice).  Even the character names and maps are copy-pasted.

  

But... while Van Helsing leans into RPG elements like dialogue options, quest lore, and hidden secrets, VIctor Vran goes all-in on the combat aspect. All the emphasis is on the "action" of the ARPG.

Victor runs, dodges attacks, jumps up walls and onto ledges, like in a platformer. He can change his "class" on the fly at any time, by choosing "outfits" and different weapons, each of which has its own set of attacks.  Success in this game is more skill-based than stat-based. It's less about finding the perfect loot or character build (there aren't any skill or attribute points), and more about learning enemy patterns and timing your attacks and dodges just right.

It took about 10 hours to beat the main campaign. There aren't really any quests, just random "challenges" that are generated for each map (kill 100 skeletons with a hammer, etc.). If I'd done all the optional dungeons it might have taken closer to 20 hours. I wasn't really itching to replay it.

I was ready to leave it at that, until I realized the "Overkill" edition that I had bought came with some more campaigns.  One is "Fractured Worlds", an endless dungeon. Meh.

The other is Motorhead: Through the Ages.

And this is where everything clicked.

 

Holy. Crap. This should have been the main game. Playing this campaign is just like the trailer above. It's non-stop spectacle. You get to wield an electric guitar as your weapon, for crying out loud. Time your attacks right and you literally play a guitar solo that makes enemies helplessly headbang. There's bombs and giant robots and Motorhead is blasting, the entire time.

I feel like someone at Haemimont Games played the Blind Guardian quest in Sacred 2 and was like, "that was good, but what if we made a whole game instead of one quest?" It's just so fun.

[Timotheus 416]

My quick 2cts on this game: I got bored with it real quick. I managed 7 hours and at that point I was done with it.

I might revisit that campaign as I apparently have the Overkill version as well, but the base game indeed felt like much of a ripoff and very uninspired story-wise.

[Flix 5,116]

7 hours ago, Timotheus said:

My quick 2cts on this game: I got bored with it real quick. I managed 7 hours and at that point I was done with it.

I might revisit that campaign as I apparently have the Overkill version as well, but the base game indeed felt like much of a ripoff and very uninspired story-wise.

Yeah I can see that. I had to force myself to fire it up the final few nights, and even then it was just cause I wanted to say I had finished the campaign. It doesn't help how shameless the copy-paste from Van Helsing is, since that game is one of my beloved recent finds.  The whole game is also really hard. I had to keep the difficulty on Casual (lowest setting) the entire time to keep things rolling along smoothly. And I'm no slouch with the old keyboard and mouse.

I will say, to like Vran's Motorhead expansion, you probably need to really, really like Motorhead. The entire OST is their greatest hits and it plays constantly. The levels, enemies, weapons and such are all based on lyrics and artwork from their discography.  The 3 maps are: WWII industrial battlefield, Weird West, and Dark Ages.  All told it's about 5 hours to play through the campaign, probably double that if you do all the optional dungeons. I'd say that's just long enough not to overstay its welcome.

[gogoblender 3,069]

motorhead through the ages is over the top!! Remember that scene in AI where all the toys get dragged to bright lights and bizarre brazen explosions, music and strange circuisdelights... it was a terrifying but heart stopping place... this has to be homage!

gogo

[Flix 5,116]

On 7/10/2023 at 6:07 AM, gogoblender said:

motorhead through the ages is over the top!! Remember that scene in AI where all the toys get dragged to bright lights and bizarre brazen explosions, music and strange circuisdelights... it was a terrifying but heart stopping place... this has to be homage!

There actually is a level like that: it's called the Freakshow, and it's the PvP arena!

Having a circus arena is also sort of ripped-off from Van Helsing, but like everything else in Victor Vran, there's a lot more... spectacle to it.