“I am bringing the party to you.”
“I don’t see how that’s a party.”
“Wheew, I am going in to snipe out the breeders otherwise we will be overwhelmed!”
“I’ll keep the dreadknechts busy.””OOooooooo I’m dead.”
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is an ARPG by NeocoreGames where the player takes on the role of the famed monster hunter’s son, Van Helsing Junior, and has to fight mad scientists in Borgovia, a generic Eastern European country, while everybody keeps mixing him up with his dad. Will our hero be able to get past all the daddy issues? Can hunters and magic fight mad science? Let’s find out.
The story starts with Van Helsing Jr arriving in Borgovia with his ghost companion, Katarina. She is a deceased Borgovian noblewoman, who apparently decided to spend eternity making snide comments on everything Van Helsing does. After multiple harrowing quests, the hero makes it to Borgova, the main city of Borgovia (yes, it is as confusing in the game as expected), where he needs to uncover the sinister plot of demented men of science to save the city.
There is one main class in the base game, the hunter, and you can buy two more classes through DLCs: thaumaturge and arcane mechanic. You can have two main abilities linked to your mouse buttons and a couple more to number hotkey. The main skills are special, because you can use your rage to enhance them during combat. While Van Helsing is fighting he gathers rage points that he can use to add up to three effects to his two main skills. For example, the icicle shot could all of a sudden freeze the enemies.
The game has a fairly involved and big skill tree, you can put multiple points on each skill, and consider the rage power-ups and skill bonuses. There are also passive auras you can level up and also tricks which are additional skills that are not directly related to your weapons and fighting. On top of figuring out what to do with the main character you also need to level up Katarina, who has her own skill tree. Overall, plenty of options to choose from so everyone can customize their own duo.
As with all ARPGs you get copious amount of loot of different levels and item types. Some are class specific, most weapons can be used by one class only, some are more generic, for example everyone needs gloves. Katarina also needs has her own garments and firearms. However, picking your favorite out is not enough, you can also consider adding essences, enchanting them, or forging new artifacts.
The Good
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing may have a cliched name but it has a unique look and feel because it uses Slavic and Hungarian themes throughout the game. The clothes of the NPCs reminisce of traditional Hungarian garments and the music of folk songs. Borgova is modelled after Budapest, the capital of Hungary, you can even recognize some monuments. The monsters will be familiar for players who spent hundreds of hours on the Witcher series, since both games rely heavily on Slavic folklore to conjure up these creatures.
The story is fairly interesting, not too complicated, and more importantly, there are no cosmic entities involved. You are a simple monster hunter who gets pulled into the rebellion of Borgovia and needs to save the country/city from some bad guys. During the game the quests and goals are clear, there is always a sense of progress as you get closer and closer to defeating the evil mastermind behind the doomsday machines.
The environment and maps are well designed, partly because it is not procedurally generated. This means that you don’t end up in a cathedral the size of a city and exploring the whole map is actually quite entertaining. The scenes just look good, you arrive at a hill, looking down over the treeline over the fields scoring with monsters, start the climb down and more creatures lurking from the treeline or climbing up from gorges.
As with most ARPGs, during combat you don’t just fight one or two enemies, you need at least fifty colorful blobs running around while the whole screen lights up with spell effects. You would think that it is impossible to distinguish between your enemies and yet, and yet somehow, this game manages to do exactly that. I could list at least ten different unique monsters that we encountered during the game, and not many ARPGs can achieve this.
The game is also full of little easter eggs and fun little elements. For example when you enter the romani camp the fiddler starts playing and the music score changes with it. You can also meet Saffi in the game, who is a beloved character from a Hungarian animated movie. There is a message board in the first village and one of the notices talks about a one of a kind ring, part of a set of twenty, and more importantly you can find this rings later and it will give you -10 willpower.
The game is also genuinely funny, like the constant banter between Katarina and Van Helsing, or there is a quest where you can learn blacksmithing, and obviously failing at it since you are a monster hunter.
The game also has some pretty good non-traditional ARPG mechanics. For example, to deal with the abundance of loot you can command Katarina to just gather all the magic items so you can concentrate on the rare ones, and once your inventory is full you can send Katarina home to sell your stuff. Pretty convenient. On top of all the things listed above, all the different little mini-games, The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing also has a tower defense segment in it. And it is fun!
Unlike most new ARPGs, this game is actually challenging. I don’t know how they managed to do it, but the difficulty is just right. You need to kite, use your potions, and you will still die a number of times. Thanks to this, all the messing around with attribute points, the sizable skill trees for Van Helsing and Katarina, the tons and tons of loot is actually fascinating, because I care about my damage.
The Bad
First and most important, something I can’t believe they didn’t fix through numerous patches, something that keeps this game from being exceptional: it is buggy as hell. And the bugs are not minor, sometimes you might get locked out of an area, some spell effects are invisible, there was a whole area where the monster were missing. We tried reloading it, fixing the quest with commands, nothing worked. We walked though one map of the game without any enemies. I am not sure if these are only multiplayer bugs, but still, it really undermines the experience.
Secondly, the multiplayer. There is one, with up to four players, but you all play as Van Helsing with your own Katarina. This also means that the story will never ever reflect on the fact that there are multiple Van Helsings in the universe. It feels like the multiplayer was just added as an afterthought, just because most ARPGs have it. Also, not having the option of one player taking on the role of Katarina is a huge missed opportunity. For our game, we made up a story where I am Van Helsing, and my partner is actually Jakub Hess, a German arcane mechanic helping me out in my time of need, and the two Katarinas are just a weird coincidence (Wow, you also have your own ghost? What are the odds).
The base game only has one class, and the cost of additional classes equals to 25% of the game’s price. Also, the game was clearly designed with only the hunter class in mind, most epic drops are hunter only, and most NPCs call you a hunter throughout the game. Not cool Neocore.
Some people might also find the constant remarks of Katarina annoying, if you give a beggar 50 golds Katarina will be outraged every single time and will reward you with a witty comment. And you have to repeat that at least twenty times if you want to advance with the hidden beggar quest.
The Co-Op
The game is incredibly entertaining together and is a great co-op experience overall, if you take out all the bugs. The combat is challenging, you need to help each other and resurrect each other. You can build completely different characters and have completely different playstyles.
The Recommendation
Despite all the bugs, we still wholeheartedly recommend this game. Imagine how good it must be that we are willing to look past getting stuck in walls, invisible spell effects and missing enemies! The story is good, the enemies are memorable, the maps and the environment is quite unique. If you like ARPGs, play it. If you have Eastern European roots or are just simply familiar with Hungarian themes, play it play it play it! However, if you are the kind of person who only tolerates meticulously written games and absolutely cannot endure bugs, well then, you should probably skip it.
Info
| Release Year | 2013 |
| Genre | ARPG |
| Difficulty | Medium |
| Number of Players | 1 to 4 |
| Length | 15 hours |
Rating
| Overall | Great |
| Story | Good |
| Co-Operation | Good |