The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing

Fun, I am enjoying single player. It has good complexity in building your character, good graphics for its age and a fun story. If you're looking for a game similar to the Diablo series, Grim Dawn and PoE - go for it. I got all 3 of the Van Helsing games for a good inexpensive price with DLCs.

After spending seven intense hours diving into The Adventures of Van Helsing on Heroic Hardcore, I found myself completely engrossed in its challenging yet mesmerizing world. The gothic-steampunk setting, combined with Lady Katarina’s sharp wit and humor, created an atmosphere that was as captivating as it was chaotic. Right from the beginning, the difficulty gave no sh-ts — my first playthru coming to a halt within an hour due to me not being locked in and my second being the strong willed for 6 hours and counting. Every encounter demanded focus, and survival felt like walking a razor’s edge, because no sane man is supposed to start on this xD.
With permadeath constantly hanging over my head, each choice, from exploring the next area to engaging a tough enemy, came with a palpable sense of risk and reward.

Throughout the session, I became fixated on perfecting my build to handle the relentless waves of enemies and the formidable boss fights. The adrenaline of barely scraping through battles kept me hooked, and the satisfaction of upgrading my gear and clearing challenging areas was second to none. Despite the constant tension, the game’s rich, treacherous world kept drawing me further in, making it impossible to put down. Those seven hours flew by, leaving me both exhilarated and nervous to see what the next session holds. Heroic Hardcore mode isn’t for the faint of heart, but it’s a rewarding gauntlet for anyone who loves a high-stakes adventure. Oh, and dont forget to grab the Excalibur early on in one of these playthrus, It is a great weapon to start out on. PS: dont immediately fight Gruumish like i painstakingly did at level 4 xD.

Played this originally with friends a few years ago but we ended up stopping for 1 reason:
Only one class UNLESS you buy the DLC so variety was very limited, unlike most ARPGS I've played solo or with friends you had the options to pick from to make different builds. Here if you just do the standard Hunter, you get two builds: Range and Melee that's it.

In terms of game play, it's over all solid. Dying is pretty forgiveable and for a good reason. There will be at times they will throw a barrage of foes at you, sometimes will nearly overwhelm you. Your companion depending how you build her is overall useful (except the final fight which tends to drag on...wasn't hard just dragged on).

For a solo play, I recommend it as it reminds me of Dungeon Siege and that was a very fun solo play.
While you can play on multiplayer, unless you willing to drop extra cash or your friend to pick a particular build. I'd recommend just solo play.

The story was decent although the ending was pretty disappointing concidering it was nearly a 30 hour adventure.

Cheesy pop culture references added some silly humor.
Final boss they really tried to be corny..it was kinda...forced.

Overall 6 out of 10 mostly because I did want to play with friends but being locked behind a paywall really stinks. Most ARPGS offer 3-4 classes at least, then optionally buy DLC classes...and DLC classes usually comes with even more ground to cover in the game. In this, it doesn't.

GOOD

fun monster-hunting action!

fun but can be repetitive at times

I'm sure 99% of people don't read reviews. That's why I confess that I love young, beautiful women.

:)

the settings for getting the game to run at the right resolution are damn near impossible. makes it almost unplayable

Ну це один з діаблоїдів, 5 з 10. Можете пройти один раз заради стім-панк...уватого світу і діалогів, вони атмосферні. Дерево навичок мені не подобається, зброя не подобається, вороги жирні і тупі, боси жирні і тупі, є пара навичок і білдів які вивезуть по сюжету, і то все.

I have no clue what I am doing, but I am having fun. I am playing on casual, so that might be helping me.
The world is lovely, but there seem to be more commands than my poor old hands can manage. May have to experiment with changing the key-binds.
There sure does seem to be a heck of a lot of game here though, and I'm having fun, so an easy thumbs up.

Man, I have to say: I was about to give the game a negative review.

Then, I remembered that, from the very beginning, I didn't expect much from it: I took it on sale, it was released in 2013 and I never heard of it. Then, I enjoyed fair 10 hours of it, really:

asu

Good :)

I found is as very tematic game, I sugest to play on heroic, and enjoy. The game itself a nice looter, arcade shooter, and roleplay, there a great music, tho its a bit repetitive... and.. its all. Plus I want to say to devs.... Its not called challenge to outspam player with mobs, there a few maps, that I couldnt spawn at the enterance and spawned in the middle of the map, because of the amout of enemies. Plus conroling with left button the caracter, and also shoot with, its bad Idea... all the teleporting units, makes your caracter to stand like an idiot and shoot, at the moment of dodge.

In their own category
Special in its own way
Among the best
A lot
Very much
Liked
Was cool
Managed to finish it....... had enough fun to give it a like though
I tried....

What I wouldn't do, doesn't apply to this game. The difference between character guidelines and player guidelines are hardly hardy.

The game was okay, but man... It is so boring, the enemy design so ugly, the combat system so dull.
Story? Boring. I have a hard time to love this game. 2/10

Vlado: How would you like to die van helsing?

Van Helsing: On a bed, with belly full of bourbon and lady katerina's mouth around my cock

This review targets people that would normally scroll passed games like this:

To be honest I hear "action RPG" and then I am like "hell yeah!" but then I see it's Western and go ): This is a great WARPG Diablo game for people that don't typically play these types of games but enjoy horde spectacle gameplay. You have lots of monsters on the screen with satisfying contact and well made particle effects. If like action JRPGs but have never played Diablo or Torchlight, then you'll like this.

You NEED the DLC for the full fledged experience.

One of these days I'd like to finish this one, but what I did play was a fun looter ARPG. The environments are great and the gameplay is pretty fun. It's what you'd imagine from one of these games.

A Classic Hack and Slash with good Story

This is a neutral review.

This game is not a bad game, it's an average Hack and Slash RPG. When you analyze it superficially, it has decent graphics, soundtrack, gameplay and story. It's polished. It's entertaining, but only until midgame when it becomes a chore.

But, there were things I didn't like.
1) If you didn't buy the DLCs, you can pick only 1 class! the bounty hunter. I'm a gamer since the 80's and never in my life have I seen a RPG that limits you to 1 class in the vanilla version. This is, in my opinion, unacceptable.

2) The story could be better.
- In the game you are not the famous Abraham Van Helsing, but his son. Abraham got a call to help the region of Borgovia, but for some reason he wasn't avaiable, so he sends his son, who is the main character.
- You have only 1 companion in the game and it's the ghost of a woman. That ghost fights with you but it doesn't make any sense that a ghost fights against material creatures. Also she is practically useless in battle. The story is about the war between Borgovia's aristocracy and technocracy. The story forces you to take the side of the aristocracy ( and to even be ally with a vampire?! ). It would have been better if you could take the side of some people's liberation movement against both the aristocracy and the technocracy.

3) It has long loading times.

4) The skill system is well made but like in all similar games, you have limited skill points and you can fully level up only a limited amount of skills ( you will end up having just a few active and a few passive skills ). Like in all Hack and Slash RPGs, you have to be very careful what to level up, some builds will be efficient, some will not. You have to research beforerhand if you want to beat the game.

5) The game consists of a gazillion of battles against large packs of strong enemies. All enemies are grouped in large packs, and when you trigger 1 enemy in 1 pack, all the other members of the pack will charge at you like the blood lusted orcs from Warcraft 2. So combat for me (Bounty Hunter being the only class) de facto consisted of kiting enemies, which means firing and retreating, firing and retreating until you can thin the horde and finish the few remaining enemies. 28 hours of doing just that! Also it was frustrating to die always at the same manner: when a large pack of monsters surrounded me, I was blocked, and the health quickly fell down to 0 due to being overwhelmed. It was always the same thing. Luckily, the penalty for death is only a percentage of money you have, and it can be 0 if you agree to respawn in the town base.
For ranged characters the game does not give you a precise way of targeting, so it's hard to target the enemy you want, and it's even hard to point to the way you want to move when there are many monsters around you because the game would target a monster instead of targeting the ground to move out.

6) You can't manually save. The game saves automatically. So basically it's just 1 save file. That means you can fail quests, withouth the possibility of loading and retrying. Luckily, I failed only 1 side quest. I also didn't like that sometimes you find some some mysterious items/suspstanses you can eat. Some times they permanently give you bonuses to attributes, and some times they take away something permanently. There is no way of knowing what the consequences will be. For example, I ate something and it took away 50% of poison resistance permanently. And you can't load.

7) The game has 3 chapters. At the beginning it was quite interesting and fun, with interesting quests and side quests. To me it's clear they invested most of their creative energy to produce Chapter 1. Chapter 2 and 3 are not as interesting, they are rather dull story wise and quest wise. At a point in Chapter 3 I was really bored and couldn't wait to finish the game. It's like they either run out of ideas mid way or started rushing the game. The ending is a cliffhanger, because they want you to buy Van Helsing 2 and 3.

8) There is a tower defence mini game there is very poorly implemented. The only thing you can do after beating the game - scenarios - consist of doing the same maps against the same monsters - only super charged with extra health and damage. That was poorly implemented as well.

I played at hard difficulty, so somebody could ask me why I didn't play at normal if I found the combat tedious. Well, I'm an experienced RPG player so I often like to play such games at hard difficulty for the extra challenge. I read in the forums that even at normal the game is quite challenging, so there is no big difference. I was able to beat the game at hard, it's just that it was very tedious.

Again, it's not a bad game, it's ok. Players who like this genre might enjoy it. One thing is sure thou, there are much better Hack and Slash RPGs out there.

Love it ; it"s one of my fave"s, so cool! :)

Bleh

yes

Unironically the most frustrating game i have ever played. The setting is great, voice acting is great and overall monster design is amazing, however the balance is completely fucked. You constantly get bombarded by 50 billion enemies with 50 billion health each, so you just hit them 50 billion times for 50 billion minutes until eventually they maybe die. Death is meaningless, you just respawn so the game really isnt difficult, ist just incredibly frustrating to stand there, swarmed by 50-60 enemies, you cant accurately aim at individual enemies because they cover your screen like a swarm of flies, you cant move, you can just trade blows for 50 minutes of kite for 50 minutes while doing minimal damage. Seriously, why do they have so much health, some mini-bosses are completely ridiculous and its just not fun, its tedious, frustrating and unrewarding. Also you CANNOT CHANGE THE DIFFICULTY OF A PLAYTHROUGH. I started on normal, balance was good at first but now its a slogfest of 50 billion hp per enemy and i really wish i could tone it down, not about to start a new palythrough, absolutely pathetic balancing.

I really like this game. my biggest issue is combat..It never actually feels like am actually hitting anything. Almost like swiping at air and then things die but with no real impact

descent diablo clone with a nice story

The play style is like a better version of Diablo 3 & 4 part 1 of 3 and the game art is kinda gothic horror steam punk. The mythos follow more European legends and lore than mesopotamian mythos and lore. Expect more things along the lines of vampires and other similar monsters. Characters from the first transfer to the second game and parts of your progress from number two will transfer to number three.

NO

Forgot to review it, it seems. I played it some time after playing Diablo because I wanted something similar. The game was good, although also a bit buggy, I completed it without any bigger issues, though.
I wanted to get some good builds for this game, but I didn't seem to find any, so I made a custom one that was basically an engineer spamming mechanical spiders.

I loved my spiders.

TLDR: A dungeon crawler where you always have a companion to help you on your journey, be it with going to shop for pots or selling your junk. The max lv is 30, and that feels too low as many abilities will stay unused and most likely untouched. If you like Van Helsing, you may like this. But the gameplay itself is repetitive and lacks challenge. I have explored every single map fully and have completed every secondary quests and this game took me around 13 hours to beat.

Story: A letter arrives and summons your father for his assistance. I suppose you like opening your father's mail because your bratty self goes instead. The game has 3 chapters, each with its flock of mobs and sidequests to complete. The story itself isn't amazing, but it is nonetheless easy to follow. The casual banter between your companion and yourself is pleasant. No NPCs sound out of place and I have to say I appreciated the many subtle easter eggs.

Gameplay: While this isn't Diablo 3 or PoE, it manages to remain interesting until you start getting just enough levels to realise that you've found a working combination and you're going to stay this way until the end of the game (This reminded me when in PoE you just buff the ever living crap out of one gem to carry you through the game).
There are 3 classes if you've purchased the DLCs, which is a joke if you ask me, it should come with the base game. I've played as the base one and enjoyed the game without much difficulty. I barely touched the others.
You have a companion named Katarina, who can aid you in your fights, has her own equipment and her own inventory tab, meaning you can use her as a mule. Better yet, you can send her to sell unwanted junk and even buy health and mana pots.
The leveling system is simple and works well, though I would say it is overly simple and reminds me more of Diablo 2 with even less options for spells.
The interesting thing is that each strike can be modified on the fly; it's a bit weird at first, but once you get the hang of it its much easier to manage your health , rage and mana. For instance, I may choose that on my next swing, I use some of my rage to hit harder, or if I'm low on health, use a spells and more rage to recover health per enemy hit.
I also found the lack of movement during combat to be a huge hindrance. While there are a couple of ''Tricks'' to learn to warp through enemies or to phase through them, it shouldn't be so difficult to relocate.
I didn't quite get while you could only use up to 2 attacks unless you tabbed, or switched weapons. But whatever. It might be why I poured all my skill points into 3 spells instead of scattering them around the skill trees.
You can modify equipment with enchants, enhance it with essences if the equipment allows. And while there is more to do once the game is beaten, like beat it again with stronger mobs or play specific parts of the game that may drop higher lv loot, but.... that's simply not enough to me.

Graphics: Acceptable. However I found the spells and general actions of the main character boring and too similar. Each action should be very unique and not all look alike.

Audio: The dialogue is good, the sound effects are okay and the music and ambience all fit with the Van Helsing universe. However I found myself without music too often during boss fights. I'm not sure if they're trying to be dramatic, but it felt more like a bug than anything else.

In short, this IS a decent game... I just can't recommend this title over Path of Exile, which is free. Diablo 3 also has many praises and for good reasons. I should also mention there's a bug when moving inventory around and using the lab guy that can make whatever you're upgrading disappear. That's a big no no that was never fixed.

Lots of glitches. Forging weapons is hard to understand and is not needed anyway. It took around a 1 minute t finish final boss fight on normal difficulty level. I didn't change weapons for around a half of the total game play (20 levels). There was no need for it. Some locations for missions were simply copy-pasted from previous play run. No idea why when you're already level 30+ you receive unique/epic/legendary (aka the coolest) level weapons of level 12 :). I was already at the end of the final stages of the game.

Well, not a bad Hack&Slash at all. Combats are pleasant, weapons interesting. A good game to play while I was waiting for Diablo III.

Too short. Put it on hard mode and felt the last boss was cheap.

Imposible que este más bugueado, tres días intentando crear un personaje y cuando pude se borro sin ninguna razón

i didnt expect the story is to short, i know for the next story in other game. but actually this is great game.

For €1,49, you can have an absolute blast. It's not sucking me in like Grim Down has, but it's really close to it. I can already tell it has awesome replayability with various classes and game modes, so I absolutely recommend it. It's a steal!

If you like Van Helsing - you will be proud tp play as his son
If you like old school games - you'll like the game
if you like diablo-like games - you'll like the game
if you like good friendly banter with your companion - you get the idea
just play this, it's cool!

Full of bugs, unplayable

Game is terible, the stoy seems nice, but the glitched and the optiization are terible, you want it stable? it lock at 53 fps, in some regions of the game from max fps its goes to locked 30, no vsynk, game may be good, for those who can make it work.

a really good action game

fun

abrupt ending, otherwise recommend just for a good alternative to diablo.

БУГАГАГАШЕНЬКИ Я НАСАДИЛ ЭТУ НЕЧЕСТЬ НА СВЯЩЕННЫЙ КОЛ!

nice game

Really good.

Dangggg this game was incredible