Score: 8 out of 10

Victor Vran is an isometric, dungeon crawling, action RPG. Victor Vren was developed by Haemimont Games AD who are mostly known for the later Tropico games. It’s very similar to Diablo III and Dungeon Siege, with a hack-and-slash action combat and pretty good story. Victor Vran is just recently out of Early Access on Steam.

Following the Van Helsing motif, Victor Vran is a monster hunter and part of the Hunter Order. Victor is a unique Hunter; he made a pact with a Demon and has Demon Powers. At the start of the game Victor arrives in a Victorian-era city looking for his friend and fellow Hunter Adrian. Right away Victor knew something was wrong because most of the city was on fire and there were monsters and demons flooding the streets. Everyone in the city was either dead or had run away; except for a small few at the castle. Adrian was not among them. Meaning he’s somewhere in the city fighting his way through the endless hordes of monsters. It becomes clear to Victor that this city is a trap for all Hunters. It’s up to Victor Vran and his new best friend, the “Voice” in his head to find Adrian and find out who is bringing all the worlds Hunters here and killing them.

Voice is the best character in the game. Voice is like a slice of banana (if you like bananas) on top of a milk shake. It’s something you don’t except from a game like this but it is welcomed. Voice’s sense of humor is great from calling Victor “Vicky” and going on and on about Victor’s hat and at one point calls him “Hat-Man” to singing “Bravely Bold Sir Victor” a slight take on a song in Monty Python and the Holy Grail [side note; I immediately had to pull out my copy of Monty Python and the Holy Grail of that], as well his best Stanly Parable impression. There are tons of pop culture references made by this lovely character. This is why the ending made me a little sad. If you want to know why that is, you’ll just have to play the game.

The combat in Victor Vran is pretty easy to understand but can be frustrating at the same time. There is controller support and is how I played the game 99.9% of the time. The other .1% was trying the mouse and keyboard, while mouse and keyboard are the best way to manage your inventory; it feels like the game was meant to be played with the controller. Each category of weapon has three different attacks. You start out with only one weapon slot, one demon power slot, and one potion slot. As you gain levels you go up to two of said slots. There’s another kind of equipable that increases beyond two slots, Destiny Cards. Destiny Cards are modifiers that you can equip as long as you have enough slots and Destiny Points (DP). The amount of DP a card uses is on the card. The higher the DP points the higher the stats on the cards are. There are also Wicked and Divine Destiny Cards that add an additional stat.

There are seven different types of weapons; Hammer, Shotgun, Sword, Scythe, Rapier, Hand Motor, and Lightening Gun. Each weapon has a prefix and a suffix that determines what the extra stats on the weapons are.  There are 19 prefixes and 13 suffixes. Although they seem random I found a Spider Slayer hammer in an area with a lot of spiders, a Gargoyle Slayer scythe in an area with a bunch of gargoyles, and a Vampire Slayer rapier in an area with a lot of vampires. I’m not sure whether it was a coincidence or I was just lucky. At this time there are 40 legendary weapons. Each type has 5 Legendries except for swords which have 10. The stats on these weapons are not random and they level up with you as you play. Some of the legendries are quite serious and deadly like the Dervish scythe that I came across which increase the base and max damage by 22% and has a 25% chance of making the enemies vulnerable and when using the scythe’s Whirlwind attack it releases a second and third spinning scythe that circles you and does more damage. The stat says only a second but there was a third one in that death tornado. Some of the legendary weapons can have some silly stats as well. Like the Finger of Chaos rapier which unleashes balls of rainbows at the enemies. If one of those rainbow balls kills the enemies they turn into exploding chickens. There are couple different ways to obtain these legendary weapons. One is to buy them off the traveling trader that shows up every so often. I only encountered him twice in my playthrough and he sold one different legendary each time. He also had a legendary demon power and a legendary destiny card.

Co-op Mulitplayer is included in Victor Vran. You and three other Victor Vrans can fend off the evil horde. The enemy difficultly did seem to increase a bit when I played it with another reviewer. Loot is separate from each other, as it should be. We couldn’t find a way to trade items to each other. Difficultly did seem to increase but not enough so where it was just as hard as when you were solo. I ended up beating the last four bosses while in a party. When someone in the party dies, instead of spawning back at the checkpoint a 15 second countdown appears on screen until you can revive and spawn at the spot you died but only if at least one person in the party is still alive. If you all die then you all just spawn back at the checkpoint just in like in solo mode.

There is a PVP area of the game. You have to find in a certain area to unlock it on the map. I did not test this out but I have a pretty good idea what it is. You can only do it while in a group. I’m thinking that you and your friends walk into this area and just start swinging away at each other. I don’t find that very appealing in these types of games.

After you beat the last boss in the game a new location opens up on the map, Endless Dungeon. You then can fight waves of enemies on a small platform until you die. You can either do this solo or with friends. There are other places in the city to visit and kill monsters in besides the ones from the story. I personally still have at least a dozen or so place that I haven’t even been to yet. And with free DLC coming in the future you could easily spend more hours playing after you finish the story than you did actually playing the story.

Victor Vran is aviable on Steam for $19.99

*Code Supplied by Publisher*

Written by: Stuart Pitchford Writer