[Megathread] The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing

[Rooflesstoofless]

'The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing' is an upcoming ARPG from Neocore Games (release is later this month).

Setting:
The game is based on one of the main characters from Bram Stoker’s Dracula and set in Borgovia, a fictional dark kingdom where the mythical monsters once roamed. You play young Van Helsing, son of the world-famous monster hunter, who follows his father’s footsteps and finds new adventures in the fictional land of gloomy Borgovia. In the wilderness among colossal mountains you can fight mythical creatures and determined, wicked outlaws and even in the safe haven, in the village of Markovna you have to keep your ears open because of the dangerous conspirations. In the gothic-noir metropolis of Borgova you can explore huge buildings with giant, unknown machines, abandoned experimental laboratory working by evil creatures and mad scientists, sewers filled with poison gas or the Dreadworks factory grounds.[*]

Gameplay:
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is an isometric Action Role-playing hack and slash video game. You can move and interact with point and click controls or hotkeys. You have a beautiful follower, the ghost of Lady Katarina, who is a great help for our hero and also his biggest critic at the same time. You can customize your character through a level-up system with improving different skills and combine them in several ways. You can tailor your skills on the spot with the game's unique PowerUp System: all active skills have 3 modifiers, called PowerUps. They are activated (charged) from Rage points that you gain as you kill your enemies, then you can boost your active skills in many different ways by combining these PowerUps. You can equip your character and also your follower with several items you picked up from the ground or bought from NPCs. The game also offers a co-op multiplayer campaign for up to 4 players, where you can hunt down the scientific nightmares with other members of the Hunters' Guild. In single-player mode you don’t need to stay online to play The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing.[*]

Talent Tree and Rage:




Companion (Lady Katarina):



I didn't see any threads on this so I thought it might be of interest to the ARPG/isometric fans on the forum. It seems like a cross between D2 and PoE.
*from Neocore Games.

[Surabe]

So far I love this game, I've been playing on the hardeste difficulty and its really fun.

But I dont know about end game yet, I've heared monsters won't respawn in single player, and it's a shame that you cant complete the game like in diablo (normal, nm, hell)

[Virandile]

I just started and I'm shocked that I never heard about it before. I love D3 but this game seems to me so much better. Story wise at least. There's no AH! I love my Katarina, she's so funny companion and really useful. The graphics maybe don't feel so artistic like in Diablo 3 but can't say they're bad. I still can feel the mood of the world. Going back to playin!

[Treeskee]

Was watching a stream for this and just couldn't get in to it. Yeah the story and setting are good, but there are so many games of this genre out already and this one doesn't really bring anything better to the table.

[Zao]

Played it with a friend and managed to get to level 8. Then I disconnected (as the host) and my friend had a rollback to level 2.

So now we're waiting for some patches before continuing.

[Deleted]

Played it with a friend and managed to get to level 8. Then I disconnected (as the host) and my friend had a rollback to level 2.

So now we're waiting for some patches before continuing.

Same. Played with a friend, he got disconnected, restarted, he was back at level 2 with no items. Someone on the forums was complaining they got to level 20 before the DC. If it's not saving online games, it's a pretty major issue.

[Dezerte]

Saw it on Steam the other day, but I'm holding of a purchase at the moment. I thought "Build and develop your hideout and place traps to defend it from waves of terrible monsters" on the Steam page sounded like an interesting idea of providing 'infinite' gameplay. But it's not?

[Virandile]

It's not infinite, it's just the quest where you have to protect your hideout from 3 waves of monsters.

[sircaw]

i really like the look of it but when i read the Main features on steam i could see nothing about items as in terms of drops. Is the game an item grind game like diablo and torchlight or is it just a play through once and your done?

[Yunru]

Ok 1.st look it looks like a mix of titan quest and torchlight (pet). Hardly close too diablo.

[Vespian]

Ok 1.st look it looks like a mix of titan quest and torchlight (pet). Hardly close too diablo.

Except for the fact that both those titles were copies of Diablo... The game plays very much like Diablo II and actually feels rather good, but only with one class, which limits the game to a handful of builds and thus you as a person. If you dislike how the main char plays, you won't like this game.

[Dezerte]

Maybe I'll pick it up once some of the bugs mentioned are ironed out.

[OrcsRLame]

Been watching Kripparrian play this for a few days now. Seems like a pretty cool game. PSA: the corpse exploding purple beam of doom spell that you can get has friendly fire, so you can kill yourself and/or friends with it. Kripp lost his highest level hardcore character to critting himself for 2500 damage.

[Vespian]

Personally, I wouldn't recommend putting on HC in this game, unless you're not planning on playing the hardest difficulty. The reason? The mouse pointer has a pretty large field in which it turns into a target pointer. When moving around, you start autoattacking things for no reason at all, especially during boss encounters (mob spawns) and against mobs with graple. It's so bad that you can't put your left mouse to movement only...

[Fencers]

Feels somewhat unfinished but I thought it was pretty fun regardless. $15 is not so bad for the game.

[kivipää]

What I've seen of it is that it's a great story/setting, but that's it. It looks and feels, even sounds really generic. Stock sound assets, mediocre animation quality, and gameplay-wise, zero originality.

[Vespian]

What I've seen of it is that it's a great story/setting, but that's it. It looks and feels, even sounds really generic. Stock sound assets, mediocre animation quality, and gameplay-wise, zero originality.

But you didn't buy or play it?

More to the point. Your issues aren't issues. You're just summing up things that can be said avbout any game in the indie/AAA- category and probably about 90% of the current AAA titles. In other words, don't comment when you don't really have to add anything.

The sound is good, the animations are good, the gameplay is a copy of diablo II and I would argue that the story is the worst part about the game, with one exception, the mouse and character pathing AI, specifically YOUR character pathing ai.

[Migey]

So is there really any reason to buy this, having already got PoE, Diablo III, and Torchlight II, and being lukewarm with all of them? (Lukewarm may be a bit generous towards PoE and Diablo III). I love ARPG as a genre, but can't seem to find any I really enjoy recently

[Fencers]

So is there really any reason to buy this, having already got PoE, Diablo III, and Torchlight II, and being lukewarm with all of them? (Lukewarm may be a bit generous towards PoE and Diablo III). I love ARPG as a genre, but can't seem to find any I really enjoy recently

Probably not.

The game has less complexity than Path of Exile, less polish than Diablo 3 and is narrower than Torchlight 2.

Just a decent game priced at $13 USD with a fun campaign. That is all.

Not meant to be overly serious, deep or a decade long play experience ala Path of Exile or Diablo 2.

[Skorpionss]

meh I played it but tbh I don't think it's worth buying because of the no respawn ... I was stuck on heroic somewhere and couldn't progress coz I didn't have enough gear and couldn't farm for it...