While Van Helsing isn’t exactly a bad game or broken mechanically in anyway, the only audience the game is likely to attract or spark up any real interest in, lies within those who have already played through the first game, and enjoyed it enough to continue the journey on through it’s sequel. Playing in a typical RPG fashion the base mechanics and gameplay here are all but too familiar, and there’s nothing to suggest the game would present anything of interest, or bring about any change upon going further on into it’s story. After spending a fair number of hours with the title, my earlier guess was correct and this didn’t surprise me.

"With a hovering ghost of lady named Katerina, floating beside the body of the main protagonist, who for some unknown reason is trapped under a rock, my mind immediately flipped and wondered what the hell just happened?"

Van Helsing 2 seems to present a steep barrier of entry into the series and this doesn’t lie within it’s gameplay nor it’s generic use of it. It lies within its story. After deciding between the five levels of difficulty and siding with a pre-made character over a custom created one, the story that was presented to me through the use narrative spoken cut-scenes, was about as mediocre as it was difficult to become attached to. The main problem with the introduction of the game is that it requires knowledge of what took place within the first game, and the flashback explanation as to why the sequel is taking place, didn’t present a justifiable reason for me to become invested. For those unfamiliar with the stories of Van Helsing, he’s a monster slaying tough-guy, son of Abraham Van Helsing, based on the Dracula novels written by Bram Stoker.

After learning of an ongoing war between inhuman creatures and Van Helsing’s return to Borgova, where he fought alongside members of a resistance compiled by humans and immortals, I still felt like I had a requirement to fulfill that would involve me playing through the first game. The good thing here is that the narrative dialogue that’s telling the story is great. The tone feels right and it attempts to take itself serious. Being flung directly into gameplay directly afterwards however, is where the tone and expectations of the game fell apart.

With a hovering ghost of lady named Katerina, floating beside the body of the main protagonist, who for some unknown reason is trapped under a rock, my mind immediately flipped and wondered what the hell just happened? Did I accidentally press skip during the opening scene? By the words of Lady Katerina “Now that’s what I call an explosion!”. The once serious tone that game placed over my initial perception had now disappeared. I had no idea who this woman was, what explosion took place, and how the two characters know each other. Again, the obligated feeling to know what happened within the first game, kept appearing mandatory.

"The missions that make use of these features fail to provide enough variety to make it all worthwhile. For the most part it's defending a location alongside soldiers and your ghostly companion, and attacking areas within the map that belong to your enemies."

During a conversation that takes place between Van Helsing and Lady Katerina whereby the game informs of you hints, tips and controls on how to play and interact. Van Helsing says something that ties directly into it’s gameplay, and honestly, I don’t know whether this was a credit to his skill of hunting, or a pun as to how generic and basic it’s gameplay actually is. The character is required to gather his items and weapons and Van Helsing responds with “It’s not the equipment that makes the hunter”. This ironically enough segways into it’s combat and to how I spent the rest of my time playing the entire game.

There’s nothing whatsoever within the game’s menus, skill charts, or combat choices that ever required me to press more than my two fingers by the use of the mouse. Every single thing within the game was quicker to access and simplified enough that I never needed to use keyboard shortcuts. If continuous clicking, dull gameplay mechanics, and the lack of sophisticated combat is what makes such a great hunter then my feeling of skill progression as the player is immediately invalid. The combat itself involves the use of ranged magical attacks such as lightning and fire, paired up with close-quarter combat with swords and pistols. While the game provides new gear and weapons for the character as you level up through the means of combat and looting, which in turn provides skill points.

The missions that make use of these features fail to provide enough variety to make it all worthwhile. For the most part it’s defending a location alongside soldiers and your ghostly companion, and attacking areas within the map that belong to your enemies. Side quests are also available for your time with the game and play fairly similar to those of the main mission goals. Van Helsing 2 does do well in involving the player with the game however, and this is through the means of player-based decisions where you can decide how the game’s tactical missions will play out, and this is mainly down to handing out orders, or having soldiers fulfil side quests. The more involved you are within everything that takes place the better the character is for skills and progressions.

"One thing that cannot be denied however is the visual properties of the game, and how well it scales accordingly to the output of it's performance."

As lady Katerina fights alongside Van Helsing , she too also gains progression and skill points, that are available for the player to spend so she can provide better assistance when fighting  enemy creatures within the game. While lady Katerina is directly controllable, you don’t ever feel the need to have this amount of control as she does a fairly good job of aiding you in battle. Personal play-style is something of a large and important factor in gaming, but more so to RPGs, it’s all about choice. Van Helsing 2 caters greatly to this is in it’s character classes. The Hunter is the most obvious choice for the game as that’s where game’s image is most prominent, and is also the image of Van Helsing.

Thau-Maturge which favors magical attacks as it’s primary choice, and the Archane Mechanic which makes more use of guns and explosions. Where gameplay appears to be something of a mixed bag in terms of enjoyability, that may lie solely in personal preference to how systems work in the game, this may vary with the game’s chosen difficulty. Progression and combat scale up or down accordingly, so this can have a drastic effect as to how different people take to the game.

One thing that cannot be denied however is the visual properties of the game, and how well it scales accordingly to the output of it’s performance. In it’s most basic and lowest graphical settings, Van Helsing 2 is by no means an eye sore, nor does it look outdated. Cranking the settings up however, with not much effect on how it performs, means the game is very scalable and will run and look great regardless of your system’s configuration.

"With the game's storyline aside and the barrier of entry remaining quite high, my only real gripe with the game is that it fails on a mechanical level of delivering anything new within it's skills, progression levels and combat controls."

Van Helsing 2 isn’t eye watering gorgeous and it isn’t intent on breaking any limitations for the best looking game of the year. But the visual effects of magic, fire, explosions, and the general atmosphere of the game has it’s own personal style, and molds in well with its own theme and setting. I have no doubt The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing 2 will capture the interests of those who previously played through the first game, and have been looking forward to it’s sequel. For those looking to join the party without the slightest of what’s exactly going on, my personal suggestion is to play through the first game and get yourself updated on the background information of what the series entails.

With the game’s storyline aside and the barrier of entry remaining quite high, my only real gripe with the game is that it fails on a mechanical level of delivering anything new within it’s skills, progression levels and combat controls. As I said previously there’s nothing new, innovative or ground-breaking that sets this game apart from other action-rpg. This is disappointing and not only to The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing, but to the genre as a whole. Some could argue that if it’s not broken don’t fix it, but to that I pose a more important question. Have top-down action-rpgs hit a brick wall for gameplay mechanics and innovation?

This game was reviewed on the PC.

If you’ve played previous games in the genre such as Diablo III, Path of Exile or anything of that sort then you’d know what to expect in terms of gameplay. You complete quests, kill monsters, collect loot and try to better your character and that’s the core of Action Role-Playing Games. The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II is rather disappointing when it comes to gameplay, instead of trying to be unique and adding it’s own flavor to the game (other than the fact that it’s set in the Van Helsing universe), the developers have decided to copy-cat popular game mechanics from other games in the genre such as the boss/elite monsters from Diablo III. Thankfully, though the game does have a stat allocation system that most hardcore players love and most importantly, some cool monsters to slay.

"What’s sad is that the game has cool visuals effect, but the actual gameplay is not up-to the standards. If everything was put well together, then the whole combat experience would have been a ton of fun. Unforutantely, that’s not the case."

The game’s combat system however, is a different story. It’s dull, unsatasfying and just not fun at all. It’s understandable that the game is in-beta, but by this time in development, the game should be at-least somewhat enjoyable in its own right rather than unispiring and not interesting. There was not a single moment where the game was fun in any shape or form. The reason that the combat feels so boring is because it’s too slow and because of that it’s not exciting or intense. What’s sad is that the game has cool visuals effect, but the actual gameplay is not up-to the standards. If everything was put well together, then the whole combat experience would have been a ton of fun. Unforutantely, that’s not the case.

The beta only lets you play on a single big map with numerous quests and a pre-built characters of your choice, you can also import your original character from the original game. I was unable to test this feature, because I never played the first game in the series, so I wasn’t able to import any characters. In the beta I was able to play as the following classes: Blade (Melee Warrior), Gunslinger (Hunter), Spellkeeper (Mage), Adeptus (Offensive Buffer/Debuff), Bombardier (Mid-range Nuker) and Contraponist (Engineer).

Classes are quite self-explantory, with each having different combat style, look, armor and weapons. Overall, the closed beta provived too little content for Early-Access pre-order and on top of that the character felt underpowered and it’s current combat system didn’t help it either. Hopefully, once the game releases majority of the issues are fixed and we’ll get the chance to give it a final and true verdict.

"The developers have a-lot of work ahead of them and I hope they can improve the overall quality of the game. I personally love Action Role-Playing Games and I think the game has potential to be good, but I fear it’s too late with the current combat system and gameplay flow of the game."

The only things that I liked from The Adventures of Van Helsing II are the soundtrack and graphics. Graphically the game looks decent and that includes visual effects look and art-style. Van Helsing‘s gothic and steam-punkinsh universe is a unique and interesting setup for the game. However, the graphics doesn’t come without its faults either, the animations still need work and there are also quite a few performance issues where the game was having frame-rate lag on a super rigged-up computer.

Again, it’s beta so I am not going to get upset about that and I will assume that this will be fixed in future patch/release in April. The developers have a-lot of work ahead of them and I hope they can improve the overall quality of the game. I personally love Action Role-Playing Games and I think the game has potential to be good, but I fear it’s too late with the current combat system and gameplay flow of the game.

Overall, we’re going to have to wait until the game finally launches on April 17th and give it the final judgement. Although, I can already safely say that the game left a bad taste in my mouth already due to it’s limited content that the beta provided and boring gameplay/combat. Fortuatenly, the unique setting and soundtrack are the only two things that still have me interested in this game. Stay tuned for our final review of The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II in April.