EDIT: unfortunately the game turns to shit in later chapters
Didn't find a thread for this one, so here is one. Basically I woke up January 1 with a massive action RPG craving, and in the last months I've chewed through Warhammer 40K: Inquisitor Martyr, Last Epoch and Wolcen. This one is 90% off on Steam currently meaning a total cost of 4,5 euros, so I thought "why the hell not?"
So far I'm very glad I did. Out of the four aPRGs I've played the past three months, it's shaping up to the biggest surprise in terms of expectations vs what I got out of it. Mainly because while it has decent combat and progression, it's quite a delight after playing three fairly modern, endgame-oriented aRPGs which focus solely on the meat and potatoes of gameplay and progression to be treated to a single player experience devoted entirely to hand-crafted maps with exploration, secrets and character that I just did not expect. Moreover, the quippy exchanges between Van Helsing and his companion, Lady Katarina (and more importantly, the latter's constant teasing of the former) often work quite well to fill out the empty spaces of exploration. Van Helsing is sort of the professional and effective killing machine to her scholarly and noble aloofness, and she wastes no opportunity mocking him for his shortcomings, which can be quite amusing and helps alleviate his gruff, edgy voice and super duper coolness.
The adamantly antiwoke among you needn't worry about what a strong, intelligent female mocking our masculine hero might mean for the game's politics - indeed, besides being unapologetically feminine, Katarina also has a model only sweaty gopniks could animate; complete with idle animations where she corrects her... ample bossom... as it jiggles about joyfully, like it had a will of its own to break free of a corset so squeezingly tightened it would make Lulu from FFX blush. 2013 sure was long ago.
The game itself consists of all the entries and DLC of the Van Helsing series scooped up and crammed into one, seamless game. So as far as the progression goes, it's crammed full of years of additive progression systems, but they've done the necessary streamlining (in the positive sense) here, so while you have a ton of systems, they all work together pretty well. You got your fairly large skill tree, you got your ability scores, but then you also manage the inventory, skills and stats of your companion Katarina, who can be kitted out to fill the roles you lack in - so if you're the tank, she's the ranged damage, if you're the glass cannon, she's the life-stealing frontliner, or if you're versatile she's a buffer and so on.
On top of this you got a perk system which is essentially like Feats from a D&D game - you unlock these very slowly through a reputation system.
EDIT: oh and I completely forgot power-ups. You got two resources for powering your skills in this game: Mana for casting skills and Rage for empowering them with power-ups that you upgrade in the skill-tree. Power-ups are a little weird and I don't recommend manualing them - pick one (_1_) power-up for each skill that you don't spam, then setup your power-ups in the menu and go into settings and set them to auto. This way you get the most bang for your power-up buck while not having to manually keep track of them.
It's actually kind of impressive how modern some of the progression feels - Diablo 4's skill tree is more or less a gutted version of Van Helsing's.
The item system is robust but very simple, however there's a fairly decent enchanting system on top which actually kind of reminds me a tiny bit of Last Epoch's (the best crafting system in any aRPG, it's not even close). Essentially there's a ton of different essence effects which cost different amount of Essence Points to put on an item, and each item has its own Essence Score. So you might find an average item with a high Essence Score making it a candidate for a substitution for a better item you're already wielding.
You also got a fairly simple crafting system where you can essentially combine two items to roll on a new one.
As far as I can tell, I haven't even discovered all of the progression systems yet, so there might be more than the above. At one point you get a hideout, and it looks like there might be some light base management involved as well?
As for the combat, I can only really speak to one of the game's six classes, which is the Bounty Hunter - your pistolero/rifleman archetype. I'm using dual pistols and while the skills are kind of mediocre, what elevates the combat is (1) the fact that you have 8 (!) active skills - an upgradable auto-attack, a right-click, and six additional skills on the hotbar - and (2) that the sound design is for the most part stellar. Firing mah pistewls just sounds good enough that I could do it all day.
One thing that is sorely missing, however, is a modern movement skill system with rolls and more activeness. My move skills are an invisibility button and a speed button, and it makes the combat much less dynamic than it could have been. The praise above also comes with the disclaimer that I'm nowhere near done with the game, so it has plenty of time to disappoint me and make me sour on it yet.
Besides the Bounty Hunter, the classes are The Protector, a mobile tank, the Umbralist, a sort of spellblade rogue, the Elementalist which is your mage, the Constructor which is your minion-class, and the Phlogistoneer, which is a mech-suit type of guy with traps and gadgets.
Like I said though - the main thing I’ve been enjoying so far is exploring the hand-crafted maps and uncovering secrets, often accompanied by the banter of the two main characters as they comment on whatever they discover.
On a final note, the world is very interesting. You don't find goblins and zombies in this one - you fight mechanized alchemical robot tin soldiers and weird Witcher-universe like creatures from slavic myths. It's very difficult to describe the setting because it is such a hodge-podge of unique concepts. It's set in fantastical, renaissance Europe spliced with Steampunk combined with gothic horror and slavic myth. It's sort of bizarre, which I like.
There's a mod for it called Van Helsing: Enhanced which balances a lot of the systems - I played around with and without the mod for a short while, so I can't speak to the mod in depth, but for my money it seems to be especially effective at handling difficulty scaling on higher difficulties, where the main game is completely off its rocker soaring to insane heights of impossible down to laughable levels of snooze-fest.
Be sure to grab the semi-updated version from Agent Orange here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yS2h5chn-HHHtChBMBVXkAJsVBMT4jRC/view (by the way, agentorange, is that you?)
There's also a Quest Fix mod that has minor quest fixes, but I've left it out of my own install as it and Enhanced change some of the same files, and I didn't want to risk a conflict.
Didn't find a thread for this one, so here is one. Basically I woke up January 1 with a massive action RPG craving, and in the last months I've chewed through Warhammer 40K: Inquisitor Martyr, Last Epoch and Wolcen. This one is 90% off on Steam currently meaning a total cost of 4,5 euros, so I thought "why the hell not?"
So far I'm very glad I did. Out of the four aPRGs I've played the past three months, it's shaping up to the biggest surprise in terms of expectations vs what I got out of it. Mainly because while it has decent combat and progression, it's quite a delight after playing three fairly modern, endgame-oriented aRPGs which focus solely on the meat and potatoes of gameplay and progression to be treated to a single player experience devoted entirely to hand-crafted maps with exploration, secrets and character that I just did not expect. Moreover, the quippy exchanges between Van Helsing and his companion, Lady Katarina (and more importantly, the latter's constant teasing of the former) often work quite well to fill out the empty spaces of exploration. Van Helsing is sort of the professional and effective killing machine to her scholarly and noble aloofness, and she wastes no opportunity mocking him for his shortcomings, which can be quite amusing and helps alleviate his gruff, edgy voice and super duper coolness.
The adamantly antiwoke among you needn't worry about what a strong, intelligent female mocking our masculine hero might mean for the game's politics - indeed, besides being unapologetically feminine, Katarina also has a model only sweaty gopniks could animate; complete with idle animations where she corrects her... ample bossom... as it jiggles about joyfully, like it had a will of its own to break free of a corset so squeezingly tightened it would make Lulu from FFX blush. 2013 sure was long ago.
The game itself consists of all the entries and DLC of the Van Helsing series scooped up and crammed into one, seamless game. So as far as the progression goes, it's crammed full of years of additive progression systems, but they've done the necessary streamlining (in the positive sense) here, so while you have a ton of systems, they all work together pretty well. You got your fairly large skill tree, you got your ability scores, but then you also manage the inventory, skills and stats of your companion Katarina, who can be kitted out to fill the roles you lack in - so if you're the tank, she's the ranged damage, if you're the glass cannon, she's the life-stealing frontliner, or if you're versatile she's a buffer and so on.
On top of this you got a perk system which is essentially like Feats from a D&D game - you unlock these very slowly through a reputation system.
EDIT: oh and I completely forgot power-ups. You got two resources for powering your skills in this game: Mana for casting skills and Rage for empowering them with power-ups that you upgrade in the skill-tree. Power-ups are a little weird and I don't recommend manualing them - pick one (_1_) power-up for each skill that you don't spam, then setup your power-ups in the menu and go into settings and set them to auto. This way you get the most bang for your power-up buck while not having to manually keep track of them.
It's actually kind of impressive how modern some of the progression feels - Diablo 4's skill tree is more or less a gutted version of Van Helsing's.
The item system is robust but very simple, however there's a fairly decent enchanting system on top which actually kind of reminds me a tiny bit of Last Epoch's (the best crafting system in any aRPG, it's not even close). Essentially there's a ton of different essence effects which cost different amount of Essence Points to put on an item, and each item has its own Essence Score. So you might find an average item with a high Essence Score making it a candidate for a substitution for a better item you're already wielding.
You also got a fairly simple crafting system where you can essentially combine two items to roll on a new one.
As far as I can tell, I haven't even discovered all of the progression systems yet, so there might be more than the above. At one point you get a hideout, and it looks like there might be some light base management involved as well?
As for the combat, I can only really speak to one of the game's six classes, which is the Bounty Hunter - your pistolero/rifleman archetype. I'm using dual pistols and while the skills are kind of mediocre, what elevates the combat is (1) the fact that you have 8 (!) active skills - an upgradable auto-attack, a right-click, and six additional skills on the hotbar - and (2) that the sound design is for the most part stellar. Firing mah pistewls just sounds good enough that I could do it all day.
One thing that is sorely missing, however, is a modern movement skill system with rolls and more activeness. My move skills are an invisibility button and a speed button, and it makes the combat much less dynamic than it could have been. The praise above also comes with the disclaimer that I'm nowhere near done with the game, so it has plenty of time to disappoint me and make me sour on it yet.
Besides the Bounty Hunter, the classes are The Protector, a mobile tank, the Umbralist, a sort of spellblade rogue, the Elementalist which is your mage, the Constructor which is your minion-class, and the Phlogistoneer, which is a mech-suit type of guy with traps and gadgets.
Like I said though - the main thing I’ve been enjoying so far is exploring the hand-crafted maps and uncovering secrets, often accompanied by the banter of the two main characters as they comment on whatever they discover.
On a final note, the world is very interesting. You don't find goblins and zombies in this one - you fight mechanized alchemical robot tin soldiers and weird Witcher-universe like creatures from slavic myths. It's very difficult to describe the setting because it is such a hodge-podge of unique concepts. It's set in fantastical, renaissance Europe spliced with Steampunk combined with gothic horror and slavic myth. It's sort of bizarre, which I like.
There's a mod for it called Van Helsing: Enhanced which balances a lot of the systems - I played around with and without the mod for a short while, so I can't speak to the mod in depth, but for my money it seems to be especially effective at handling difficulty scaling on higher difficulties, where the main game is completely off its rocker soaring to insane heights of impossible down to laughable levels of snooze-fest.
Be sure to grab the semi-updated version from Agent Orange here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yS2h5chn-HHHtChBMBVXkAJsVBMT4jRC/view (by the way, agentorange, is that you?)
There's also a Quest Fix mod that has minor quest fixes, but I've left it out of my own install as it and Enhanced change some of the same files, and I didn't want to risk a conflict.
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