Victor Vran - Two new Reviews

Our Eye spotted two new reviews for the action RPG Victor Vran:

PixelJudge:

Victor Vran is the Action RPG from developers Haemimont Games. Haemimont have made a name for themselves as strategy specialists with Tropico 3, 4, and 5, as well as other management games too. So this begs the questions: what can a team of strategy specialists bring to make a genre that has very little strategy? And why did they then decide to ignore well established trends for that genre, removing even more strategy from it? Are Haemimont just pulling our chain, like an artist who’s thrown some paint at a canvas and called it abstract, or do they have an actual plan at work here? Are Haemimont the new Monet?

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Victor Vran is an excellent entry into the action RPG genre. The focus is definitely on combat, with satisfying weapon abilities and direct keyboard control of Victor coupled with active dodge and jump functions make it feel more engaging than other ARPGs. You're restricted in the amount of stuff you can equip at once, limiting your options to a handful of possibilities so it's a welcoming game to genre newcomers but deep enough for veterans to get a kick out of it.

Hexes, challenges and secrets provide plenty of value for completionists and masochists alike but the main story on normal difficulty never really impedes you so long as you keep your equipment and spells up to date with the various drops. Similarly you'll never really be short of gold, it's a game that wants you to worry about how you're going to smash the next group of enemies, not worry about how you're going to afford a new sword or fit it into your bag.

Co-op play is also an absolute blast but not without its glitches, from invisible characters to quests not completing for one character it made for a little confusion and backtracking but never really got frustrating, even when playing on hard with all the hexes active. Overall it's a game worthy of playing solo or with friends, at turns both light and dark in tone thanks to voice actors from The Stanley Parable and The Witcher basically playing the same roles and even lampooning those, and other games.

Score: 4/5

PC PowerPlay:

At first glance Victor Vran looks like another entry in the Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing series of action RPGs, but in reality it’s a very different kind of animal. While there are similarities when it comes to the faux-Gothic seriousness of the story, the overall look of the game and the reliance on pop-culture references for humour, the way the two games play is very different. Victor Vran is about combat, not about character building. There are no classes, no skill trees or unlockable abilities. All skills are tied to equipment. What the eponymous character wears, wields and equips directly affects the way he functions.

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A streamlined action RPG with the emphasis placed firmly on the action.

Score: 8/10