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Victor Vran Review

by Greywolf00, 2015-07-23

Victor Vran is a Diablo type Hack & Slash game which sticks to the established formula while trying a couple of twists. It just went content complete on July 2nd with release scheduled for July 24th. This preview is based on 12 hours in game.

Character building

Character building is definitely different than the usual skill tree approach seen in the genre. The game presents your class choice when you're deciding between three different outfits. The outfit changes the look of the Vran doll used in talks and also decides how you gain Overdrive. Overdrive controls your demonic powers, basically a magic system. You start with one demonic power and slot and unlock another slot at level 14. Other powers are found as drops. One outfit builds overdrive as you fight ensuring you have your magic available in combat heavy situations. Another changes it so you only gain overdrive passively overtime regardless of combat creating a situation where you can always have your magic for the start of tough battles, provided you're willing to wait for it to fill if needed. The final outfit creates a situation where you only gain overdrive after landing a critical strike. At level 15 you're granted a choice between 3 outfits granting you an additional "class" to change to or use when it may be beneficial to do so. For my choices I was presented with the 2 starters I didn't originally pick and one that boosted HP, but made no mention of overdrive changes on the tooltip. It also sounds like outfits are offered several other times as a leveling benefit since there's an achievement for having 6 of them. At first glance this is a disappointingly simple system, but it meshes nicely with others like the destiny cards.

Destiny Cards

Destiny cards are items that add stats or effects. For example the Rogue card increases crit damage by a % while Strength boosts crit chance by a % making them obvious choices to pair with the crit overdrive outfit. Another creates a freeze pulse effect on a crit slowing monsters around the pulse and doing damage providing synergy for a ranged crit build. Destiny cards have various levels with higher level cards providing bigger bonuses. You unlock more slots to equip the cards (max of 6) as you gain levels as well as destiny points increasing the cap. For example if you have 10 Destiny Points and 3 card slots, the value of the cards combined cannot exceed 10. I didn't have a deck good enough to hit my cap till level 20. They can also come with enchants providing an additional benefit without rising the point value of the card making them valuable cards later when the cap does come into play. Cards can be purchased from a vendor or found from chests, as well as being a possible selection during leveling up. There's a pretty promising system for players not turned off by the limited skills and lack of a true class system. There's a bit over 20 different cards as well as a legendary card for each weapon type (and a couple miscellaneous legendaries) bring the total over 30.

Leveling up

Once you level up you get a bonus for the level, sometimes Hps, or items, or outfits, and sometimes additional points for your destiny cap. You then get to chose 1 of three rewards for your level. I've seen destiny cards, gear chests (which can be combined together for better gear and bombs. Because there's no mana you can use bombs in your second potion slot and they provide a variety of benefits from AoE stun to AoE life leeching and again layer with the other character customization mechanics. Some also have buffs like +50% damage for a bit. The Transmutation system allows you to improve gear and cards, but seems to require specific hard to acquire early items so it's probably geared more towards late game. The easiest Destiny Card formula just turns 3 of the same card into a better version of the card and is useful for powering up your passives if you don't have many Divine/Wicked enchanted cards yet.

Skills

Skills are determined by weapons like Guild Wars 2. Each weapon comes with 2 skills which are designed to add flavor to the weapon and really do a good job of distinguishing them from one another. A sword works very differently than the rapier which has a great gap closer and single target nuke whereas the sword is more geared towards crowd control and a melee crit build with knockback (refreshes on crit) and a single target daze (that spreads to surrounding mobs on a crit). Two hours in I came across 3 different ranged weapons and 4 melee weapons which all encourage noticeably different approaches to combat. It seems as though this is all of the weapon types available in the game which may be a turn off for some. You can have 2 weapons equipped at a time and easily switch between them (clicking the mouse wheel on the default controls). While I'd love to see more the current ones do feel distinct and enjoyable to play with. Legendary weapons come predetermined and at least the one I've managed to acquire adds an additional modifier to one of the existing weapon skills. They also level up with you, though it appears you have to unequip and requip to get the weapon damage to evolve properly.

Respawns

Many of the dungeons are accessed from a central hub map. Each individual map comes with 5 mini missions rewarding you for a variety of things like killing x mobs with a specific weapon, tracking down secret treasure chests (which occasionally are accessible only from a jumping puzzle), hunting down mini bosses, or challenges like killing x enemies without healing or within a time limit. Accomplishing one of the tasks rewards you randomly with an item and a chest of gold or XP. Completing more mini missions increases the quality of subsequent item drops. OCD type completionists may find the system annoying (especially when taken with the next paragraph) if there's missions they simply don't enjoy doing as it seems they will pop up quite a bit. Also, because of these mini missions maps respawn (sorry joxer) to allow multiple attempts to finish off goals.

Item drops

Speaking of item drops, the loot system is vastly different than the typical hack and slash as well. If you've played Diablo, Path of Exile, or Torchlight you're used to seeing oceans of items that require sometime to shift through the garbage to find an upgrade. This is not the case in Victor Vran, at least early on. You get 1 item for completing mini missions, killing bosses, or opening secret chests and that's it outside of very rare random drops. Smashing containers will yield gold or the occasional potion, but nothing else. Early on this mechanic makes most drops useful, but as the game progresses you do wind up with a lot of trash. Even when weapons are of similar damage ranges the enchant will be different because of the rarity of drops which can still provide an upgrade based on your chosen character build. I've stated keeping 1 of each weapon type in my inventory (for mini missions) and have never been in danger of playing inventory tetris. This is also helped by the inventory having individual tabs for weapons, consumables, demonic powers, and destiny cards making it very easy to find what you're looking for.

As I continued playing I finally realized one of the best benefits of this unique classless system. Normally when playing a hack & slash game you stumble across an amazing item, but your current character isn't the right class to use it. Victor Vran easily side steps this issue. I played the first 9 hours as a shotgun wielding ranged crit build. Suddenly I found myself with a legendary scythe weapon and the accompanying destiny card. Rather than having to throw it in the stash and level up an alt to play around with it I simply changed my outfit, equipped the weapon, and overhauled my equipped destiny card deck to better supplement the build. You don't have to worry about trading for Orbs of Regret, or a build becoming useless after a patch requiring you to shelf the character or spend a fortune to acquire new gear like in Path of Exile. It's as simple as equipping a handful of new items.

As I progressed further the item drop rate did noticeably pick up. Between my +20% drop chance weapon enchant and an additional +20% from activated Hexes I'm seeing a drop rate of about 1 in every 5 champions killed. The Hex system allows you to tailor the difficulty to your tastes by boosting enemies in some manner, such as making some champions, giving them boosted defense and HP regen, etc. at a bonus of 10% XP and 5% item drop rate per Hex for a max of 5 activated. After unlocking them I immediately turned on 4 of the 5 and the game really took that step to the right difficulty requiring regular consumable usage to survive. Playing on Hard turns all 5 Hexes on at all times with no way to toggle them off.

And...

The game also has jump and dodge mechanics which come into play for finding secrets as well as surviving combat. You will have to dodge (Shift or direction double tap by default) in order to avoid projectiles and melee abilities. Jumping also allows you to utilize height to stay safe or buy some needed time for a potion recharge (or overdrive special is playing the caster "class" outfit) by jumping over a small wall to create some needed space. Early on there's a pretty well populated maze garden where wall jumping provided a very useful survivability mechanic.

Maps are nowhere near as large as ones found in PoE or D3. It's been quite awhile since I've played Torchlight 2, but the maps are probably a bit smaller than many of those ones as well. They will funnel you to your ultimate goal, but do provide opportunities to pursue mini missions well spaced around the map, and truly empty spaces are rare. Starting at the second map hub there are side dungeons not linked to the main story that exist purely for diversion. The first one I wondered into contained a final boss with a very nasty surprise and I was very grateful I only had 2 hexes turned on for the dungeon.

The main plot is voice acted, but has a slight issue. All of the NPC voiceovers have an annoying static, but it turns out this is easily fixed by turning Reverb off in the Audio options. The main character sounds like Geralt from The Witcher series and it really goes well with the atmosphere since I'm already accustomed to that voice discussing monster hunting. The story is never a primary focus or really strong point of this genre. Victor Vran does put much more emphasis on this area than say Grim Dawn and it's presented better than Path of Exile. While it isn't a story driven masterpiece, it has thus far held my attention without skipping presented information. It starts out as a mystery and takes a few hours before you find out what's driving the problems. I was rather surprised at some of the comedy included in the game and did find myself laughing out loud at an unexpected arrow in the knee joke. The mini horde of Gangnam Style dancing skeletons chasing me around trying to rip my face off was another interesting touch.

Victor Vran also contains co-op and PVP modes, but I didn't test these features.

Conclusion

Overall, Victor Vran isn't going to convert gamers who despise the base mechanics of the genre.  For those of you who like the genre, it is a solid game with the willingness to try some things uncommon to the genre and does them pretty well. I will offer the warning that some people won't like the lack of a true class system or a skill tree though. It obviously lacks the production quality of Diablo 3 or the absurd character building potential of Path of Exile. It also lacks the depth of skills common to the genre. However, it does have solid mechanics with a deceptively layered character customization system that is put together fairly well.

Box Art

Information about

Victor Vran

Developer: Haemimont Games

SP/MP: Single + MP
Setting: Fantasy
Genre: Action-RPG
Combat: Real-time
Play-time: 20-40 hours
Voice-acting: Partially voiced

Regions & platforms
Internet
· Homepage
· Platform: PC
· Released: 2015-07-24
· Publisher: EuroVideo Medien

More information


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Summary

Pros

  • Much more focus on story than a usual game in the genre
  • Unique character building system deeper than it looks
  • Hex system allows for variable and customizable difficulty

Cons

  • Lacks a traditional class system
  • No skill tree
  • Limited number of skills which are determined by weapon type

Rating

This review is using RPGWatch's old style of rating. See 'How we review' link below

Review version

Version 1.03

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