The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II is a sequel to last year’s The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing. The series is similar to games like Diablo III and Path of Exile, with the exception that it’s set in the ever-popular Van Helsing universe. We got access to the closed beta and with that bugs and performances issues are to be expected, however this game game goes way beyond a negative experience than most games do in their beta stages.
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.