Review of Victor Vran – The Vampiric Clone of Diablo is Quite Enjoyable

We’ve seen more than our good share of Diablo clones over the last few years but apparently a good hack & slash never gets old. There were many trying to upstage Blizzard: the very good Titan Quest, the slightly less so Sacred, Dungeon Siege with its somewhat controversial third installment, the free Path of Exile, the slowly losing its credibility Adventures of Van Helsing and finally, Grim Dawn and many other challengers trying to bring down the big D. Among those we find Victor Vran from the Bulgarian Haemimont Games, perhaps known to some of you for the Cuban-themed Tropico. That may be so, but when taking breaks from the adventures of El Commandante, the studio developed some sides projects, including The First Templar - a hack & slash game I had a pleasure of reviewing a few years ago. At the time, the developers proved themselves to be quite talented when coming up with interesting ways to smear walls with your enemies. In Victor Vran instead of the Saracens and Templar secrets we visit the Principality of It-must-be-Transylvania. This time the famous, wretched hive of vampires and other undead villainy was renamed to Zagoravia, which most certainly sounds like a country far away beyond the misty mountains where you go when you want to kill some things by the moonlight. It’s a fitting association and I found Victor Vran to be a pleasant piece of black cloaked entertainment, despite the mediocre first impression…

Your name is Van H… Vran, Victor Vran and you’re a demon hunter headed to Zagoravia in search of your old friend. This friend of yours came to this kingdom, or maybe rather a polis, ruled by a beautiful yet troubled queen, some time ago and nobody has heard of him since. Victor picks up the trail in no time and discovers that the hunters from far and near are being lured to Zagoravia by someone, or something, only to find eternal rest in its crypts and back alleys. Who would do such a thing and why? Does the queen have some uncomfortable secrets? We’ve all heard that one before, haven’t we?

Choosing demonic powers on the inventory screen.

The game doesn’t allow you to create your own character. Your name is Victor Vran. Period. The creators completely abandoned the classes allowing the player to choose at his own discretion. You can use any weapon you acquire (offering different attacks) and any skill represented by passive effect Destiny Cards and demon powers found in caches or as loot from mini- and full bosses. The system may look complicated at first but don’t let it fool you; after gaining a few levels and fiddling with the inventory you will get the hang of. To help you, the creators introduced a Codex containing explanation of key terms and information about weapons, recipes and enemies.

List of secrets in the location.

The weapons are divided into several groups: rapiers, swords, scythes, hammers, shotguns, lightning guns and mortars. Each type possesses 3 different attacks and requires a different gameplay style. Rapiers are fast and ignore armor bonuses but pack no real punch; scythes have a wide range of attack; shotguns are devastating against a single opponent (or painful against a group) and mortars are used to deal with large crowds. The sad thing is that, while there are quite a few types of weapons to choose from, the diversity of weapons themselves leaves a lot to be desired. We get only a handful of different attack bonuses. I, personally, was very fond of those that exploited vampirism like leeching life from your enemies to heal yourself. It proved to be a painless way to complete the game.

Gabe?

The game’s replayability is reinforced by different, passive effect Destiny Cards. Each one gives us a bonus like increasing movement speed or buffing your attack power, hit points, critical hit damage and many, many other helpful effects. Each card has a cost and the sum of your cards can’t be greater than the number of Destiny Points possessed by Victor. We receive Destiny Points when gaining a new level. The number of card slots available to Victor changes with his attire; and the attires sometimes mean a complete image makeover. At times you will be playing as a top-hat wearing gentleman only to become an Indiana Jones wannabe in an instant. The one thing that doesn’t change is the presence of a hat – you’ll always end up wearing some kind of hat and sometimes a voice from inside the protagonist’s head will even mock you for it.

Demonic Kingdom.

In the castle – the hub of the game – you can buy supplies, talk to NPCs or pick your destination on the map. One more thing you can do are the transmutations. It’s a kind of crafting that allows you to upgrade your weapons’ stats with rune stones acquired throughout the game or combine demon powers to make them even more powerful. Transmutation requires recipes to work; a detailed list of recipes can be found in the game menu.

I can’t really say I liked the interactions with the game’s NPCs. A static screen showing only the NPC your character is speaking to and a written dialogue smells like cost-cutting to me. Character voices, on the other hand, are well matched and pleasant to listen to. All in all, the soundtrack, including atmospheric tracks and battle tunes during combat, is actually quite well made.

Almost like Indiana Jones.

The demon powers are the last element to the gameplay. Victor can possess up to two powers, chosen from the inventory, at the same time. There are many different options to choose from, i.e. protective shields, AoE attacks or a berserk mode that doubles your damage output. There’s a catch, however. The Overkill bar is filled only when the character deals a heavy blow to an enemy. The attire you’re wearing can have an impact on the behavior of the Overkill bar – that’s one more gameplay variable offered by Victor Vran. The aforementioned features, together with how fluid the combat is, will allow the gameplay to fit your preferable style with ease.

Boss fight.

The game mechanics are nothing short of superb. The combat is fluid; the environment takes damage and Victor himself, with his impressive rolls and tumbles, could easily find a job as a star circus acrobat. This makes the combat look dynamic in a way fitting an arcade game. Furthermore, Victor must have taken lessons in the Prince of Persia School of Wall Bouncing. This makes me wonder, why wasn’t this game developed with consoles in mind? I mean, the game was made to be used with a controller and trying to play it on a keyboard + mouse combo just plainly sucks. At least you can choose one of the two control schemes available when playing on keyboard: the traditional, in which you point the mouse at were you wish the character to go and the action-oriented one, in which you control the character with WSAD keys while the mouse allows you to attack, choose targets and control the camera. Perhaps it’s not really as bad as it looks and some of you will find the controls quite agreeable but at least my fingers weren’t made to manage all of this. Left mouse button on the enemy, Q + E for special attacks, numbers for consumables, space to jump, mouse roller to roll and right mouse button while moving the mouse to control the camera. Just thinking about it makes me shiver; and when you compare it to using a controller… say what you will, the combo just doesn’t cut it.

Circus - one of the most colorful locations.

What Victor Vran excels at is the number, diversity and the looks of your enemies. First thing: there are plenty of them. Several types of skeletons, vampires, gargoyles, elementals and way too many spiders (seriously, if you’ve got arachnophobia, steer clear of this game) are more than determined to protect the cause of this calamity. And don’t forget about the demons. I’ve noticed some of the monsters have something like a second mode. If they take enough damage they change their form or attack pattern. I’m not saying this is a tactical game changer but it’s true you should deal with your guests in appropriate order.

Demonic attack.

The second thing I like are the animations. Enemies’ and hero’s alike, maybe except for Victor’s somewhat stiff running. The animations are fluid and diverse in a pleasant way. This doesn’t mean they’re flawless. I have trouble understanding how, while having such attention to detail, can you not notice that a projectile flies in a direction opposite to the one it was thrown in. I’m looking at you, big skeletons that kept throwing your small, freshly exhumed brothers at me.

Finally, the third thing are the boss fights. They may not be as diverse as they could be but they definitely are an eye candy. For a hack & slash, that is. You can trust me, however, that you won’t forget that one time when you faced a gigantic spider surrounded by dozens of its smaller brethren on an equally vast arena. Not for a while at least.

Slowing down time in a fight.

About the replayability I mentioned earlier - thanks to challenges available on every stage we visit, it may become a serious threat to your sleep. The challenges may constitute of many different things like, for example: finding all the secrets, killing a set number of specific enemies in a set time frame, killing a boss without the use of healing potions (I know, you can put grenades in potion slots but let’s forget about that for a moment) or winning the fight using a specific weapon. There are over 200 challenges with increasing difficulty level. Then there are the hexes, as the creators call them, or “handicap” as you may want to call them. Their role is to make the game more difficult at your wish by buffing the monsters, making them level up to become champions or constantly lowering your character’s health

Are you afraid of spiders?

Co-op should make things easier; good thing the creators thought about that and made it a strong point of their game. While the experience may change accordingly to the person you’re playing with or accessories you possess (microphone really helps since it is not easy to play and use the built-in chat at the same time), I had fun and, what’s more important, haven’t run into any problems in the process. Victor Vran works fine and is reliable for an early access game. I did witness some small performance issues from time to time, but only in a handful of locations. Let’s hope that patches will take care of it. On my GeForce GTX 970 the game, set on high-end settings, ran on smooth 60fps for most of the time.

Sadly, there is one big fly in the ointment – the world design could have been much better. With some scarce exceptions, the locations we visit feel dreary and unimaginative. The streets cross at 90 degrees, exactly like the tunnels in the dungeons. The buildings are bland and the interior design would better be left unmentioned. All in all, the game is pleasant to watch but the creators obviously failed to catch the right kind of mood. There is absolutely no sense of dread. The locations are somewhat gloomy but at the same time dull and lacking in both refinement and good ideas; and a bit too barren, if you ask me.

Utter chaos.

More than a dozen hours during the single player campaign and multiple dozens in multiplayer I spent playing the game make Victor Vran a most interesting option to spend this summer. Clichéd plot and some minor issued are not enough to overshadow the pleasure of dynamic combat and the amusing mechanic used to define our character. Although the game design could have been better, the game’s “fun factor” is big enough. The game delivers a good price-to-fun ratio and I think you won’t regret it, should you decide to find out why I even bothered writing this review.