The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut

An underrated gem of an ARPG game! The Final Cut of The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing series takes the strengths of all three games and combines them into one (almost perfect) package, while leaving (most of) the weaknesses of previous titles behind.
There are three important changes with the Final Cut: you have six classes to play, the level cap has been set to 100, and the three games have been streamlined into a single continuous experience, from Fulmigati's Doomsday Automatons, to Harker's attempt at seizing Borgovia for himself, to the mysterious depths of the Ink where an unknown power awaits a climactic showdown. No more resetting to level one and losing all your gear; the character you start with will be the one you finish with.
For those looking to take a crack at the series this is the version you want to buy. Being the best experience in the entire series and containing all of the content of the past three games, brushed over once again to work out (most) of the kinks. It may be no Grim Dawn of Path of Exile, but the Final Cut is brimming with gothic monsters-in-the-woods-and-alleys weird science driven monster killing fun!
Now being a decade old the game with only ~35 hours of content the Final Cut won't be justifying the $45 entrance fee, so waiting for a sale is as always a wise choice. Frankly, I'd say a more fair price would be around the $15-20 dollar range, weighing heavily toward the $15. Especially now that the Online Multiplayer no longer works, making it impossible to play with friends.

This will be a long one to cover... honestly I'm quite conflicted about this one, but here it is.
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut is the definitive edition of the complete TIAoVH series, containing all 3 games in a single playthrough, some fixes, quality of life changes and using the third game's graphics engine. If you want to experience this ARPG series, this is the perfect game to go to.
One of the two strongest points of this game is the atmosphere and the protagonists. Throughout the game you can explore all kinds of natural environments, steampunk city, alternative dimensions and so on. With these the enemies in these regions are different and most of them fit pretty well. Also, some of them are unique to see in general.
The other point I really like are the protagonists. In general, Van Helsing and Lady Katarina are not interesting characters at first, but their interactions and conversations with each other are pretty good, and you can genuinely smile about them. It's fun to follow their development throughout the games and how the story affects them, which gets more interesting in the final third of the game.
I also have to give credit for the many easter eggs and references this game has. At first I thought some of those are just really unnecessary, but it's fun to see all kinds of game and movie references, even to see some Hungarian or other cultural references.
Gameplay can seem overwhelming, mostly because of the various and big skill trees this game has, which can give you a lot of options to upgrade your characters. There are 6 different classes with similarly big skill trees, also Katarina has different skill trees as well which can be cool to explore. There are side missions to do, secrets to find. I was able to play through the game for around 30+ hours, so there is enough content to see, and also there is a post game gamemode and different multiplayer modes... and I didn't even mention the co-op mode.
Controls seem overwhelming at first, but after some hours of practicing you can get used to it. Sounds and soundtrack is pretty alright too.
However, as much as I try to say this game is a huge and varied experience, I must talk about the negative aspects, which I cannot ignore even though I have a bias towards this game.
Firstly, the overall gameplay can be really boring in different parts of the game. The first third of the game has larger maps which if you want to explore fully you will start to get bored by the same type of enemies and the lack of changes. Later thirds of the game gets better, as the maps get smaller and start to feature some more variety, but in general it can get old to kill a bunch of monsters and upgrade your characters when nothing much is going on.
Also, if I want to be honest the post game gamemode is not my favourite, which is just featuring repeating missions which are like different game modes and challenges. Sure, it can be interesting for some, but it was not for me, especially since there was no reason for me to play.
Then there are the upgrades. As I said, the skill trees for each class and for companions is pretty big, which can give you many options to work for, but at first the player has no idea what it should upgrade and what direction it should go. This wouldn't be an issue, if the skills would be effective, but not every one of them is any good, so you would need to experiment a lot, which can get you more frustrating situations when you die a bunch in that process. Luckily, later you can reset your points in exchange of gold, but this can be annoying to finally realize and start to figure things out again.
In my playthrough I felt that some things were underutilized in the game. One of them are the shops, which in my case I rarely used because the items you can get from there are even worse than what you could get from drops, so I always get hundreds of thousands of gold. Then there was the lair management aspect, which looked promising but it was only good for getting a few items and gold per mission. Same for the chimera element, which I felt was completely unnecessary, even though I try to utilize it as much as I can...
and probably the most annoying part for me, the game didn't add more ideas or work more on the existing ones. If the lair management and missions would have had more impact on the game, or if the chimera had more role at all, or if the tower defense segments would have more sense to do other than completing just another mission, the game would have been much more interesting.
Sadly there are other things, like how the graphics look not great quality wise, occasionally flickering on some parts of the game as well. Also, I died more times because my character attacked an enemy when I clicked, instead of moving to the location, because somehow the enemies' clicking area is bigger and you won't be able to move around them, unless you move your character with the arrow keys.
And I didn't even mention the fumbled final act and the final boss fight, which just felt like an afterthought.
This game is like a conventional ARPG, which seems varied and more bigger on the outside, however once you get more into it you will see it lacks on some parts, and either you stay to see some cool areas and go on with the protagonists, or leave the game as it is.
I can recommend it for those who know what they are getting into, because this is not for everyone. If you have the chance to play the game's first 6 hours and you still feel like playing more, then you should be fine. Otherwise, you can skip this one.
For me it was alright, but it could have been much more if the ideas are better utilized.

If you enjoy games like Diablo, Titan Quest, Griwn Dawn and Torchlight etc., you want to try this one. Get it while on sale or for free in case you already own Van Helsing 1-3. I prefer Final Cut over VH1-3 because of a) more playable classes (6 instead of 3) b) story of all 3 games in 1 with the same character (you cannot import chars from VH2 to VH3) c) skill tree rework d) available mods. incl. a few bugfixes.

Only recommended for casual ARPG players. For players who are into playing on higher difficulties + Hardcore, I'd stay away from this one.
Van Helsing left me with mixed feelings. The setting is great, the art style is nice. Lots of different types of areas to explore. The humor is cheesy but good enough to appreciate. Lots of different classes. Sadly, as a person who loves to crank the difficulty and always play my ARPG's on Hardcore it became a real struggle to get through it. The game is just missing some balance and the engine has some issues that ended up being too much for me.
Movement is weird. Some assets' hitboxes are just too big. You think you can walk/dash past them but you end up getting stuck on them anyway. Dashing up a slope or staircase doesn't work as it'll just treat it as a wall. This got me killed a few times.
The defensive stats don't seem to work properly. I've had a character with 30% poison resist and another with 75% but they both seemed to take the same amount of damage.
Too many enemies have abilities that hit you no matter what you do. Ranged enemies just lock on to you and several enemies have homing attacks that you won't be able to dodge out of most of the time.
But the worst thing is the hit detection. Usually in games, when you fight in melee you'll be able to see the enemy starting its attack animation and be able to move out of the way before it hits you. In Van Helsing, the moment the enemy starts its attack, the game has already registered that you'll get hit. This means that even if you dodge away at that point, when the enemy finishes the attack animation you'll take damage no matter how far away you are from that enemy. This is just terrible and I cannot fathom how the devs ended up releasing a Final Cut version without doing something about an issue such as this.
For these reasons I cannot recommend it for a Hardcore, high difficulty run. But if you're a more casual player who just wants to go in, kill some stuff and experience the Van Helsing world, then sure, go ahead.

Disclaimer: I haven't played the individual games. However currently running through this game with Prometheus Enhanced on Nexus Mods, which is apparently a much more less buggy, class-balanced and content true to the original trilogy version.
Highly recommend you install it before your playthrough for the most enjoyable experience:
As for the game, love the voice acting, the mobs, the environment. To be honest the graphics are dog**** and still look terrible on highest settings.
This is definitely more enjoyable than Diablo 4, and I'm currently favouring it over LE and POE 2.
Highly recommend if you like those games and Grim Dawn/Titan Quest too!

Van Helsing

Let me preface this by saying that you do NOT need to create an Account to play this game despite the first screen you'll be greeted with beeing a login screen. Simply press "Offline Mode" and enjoy the Campaign aswell as the Adventure Mode.

If you are expecting a dark and grim action-adventure, set in the World of Van Helsing, look elsewhere. This game plays similar to diablo, isometric view with mostly point and click trashmob mapclearing

While you can choose from several classes with a big skilltree, fighting feels very boring. They added lots of systems to customize your character and abilities. An intersting one was beeing able to use powerups for your skills that consume rage (obtained by killing mobs), but it was beyond annoying having to press a hotkey each time you wanted to buff a spammable skill. So in the end i decided to not use them and instead got perks that buff me when i'm at max Rage (which i perma was for not using powerups). I've read there is an option to save up skill rotations into a single button press macro, but if it was explained along the way, it wasn't explained well enough to easily use it.

You have a Ghost companion that fights besides you which you can level and equip with items just as much as your main character. You can choose wether she attack in melee form and acts as a pseudo tank, dishes out damage in range form or simply stays in ghost form providing you with passive buffs if you want to best the game by yourself. The banter between her and your character is one of the better parts of the game and carried huge parts of the story.

Later, you'll unlock the hideout that offers some interesting side-activities. Theres a tower defense mode, you can send out NPCs with individual skillsets on missions and you'll get access to a chimera that you can send hunting and obtaining loot for you while you are on adventures.

Loot is the typical 99% trash 1% upgrade formula, there are way too many different stats that can roll which is overwhelming to say the least. I played a Mage and at some point i just checked which item had better DPS stats and picked that one. You can teleport back to base at any point for no cost which is a plus, but also needed for the amount of trash you get. Alternatively you can send your companion to sell but for a short period of time she wont assist you in fighting. The constant switching of gear made using the essences (to upgrade your gear with additional effects) pretty pointless.

The + - 30 hour campaign is ok. Nothing groundbreaking, but interesting enough to have kept me playing. I liked that each chapter has hidden content and there were lots of references to other games or movies (batman, GoT, Titanic, Star Wars) which managed to make me smirk more than once, some might see it as immersionbreaking but to me it was clever humour in a game that didnt take itself too seriously. The endboss was a snoozefest tho and thatfor, in my opinion, the end of the campaign was anticlimatic and not satisfying at all.

After the campaign, i started playing the Adventure Mode as there was basically nothing left to do in the campaign. You can chose a mission and keep leveling your character and companion and obtain more loot. Each mission has qualifier and different objectives (escortmission, bosshunt, arena wave clear) but in the end it's more of the same that you've alrdy had in the campaign. What bugged me in the end was that despite you beeing able to travel to the hideout to sell items and it beeing the same layout as your base in the campaign, you arent able to use the same functions from the campaign hideout (example, sending the chimera on a hunt inbetween missions wasnt possible). So after 2-3h of adventuremode i closed the game for good.

Conclusion

Doesnt sound that great right? Well i'd only recommend this game to people that like the Van Helsing Universe and want to experience a chill little adventure. The dialog between Character and Companion carried it for me and i had fun playing through the Campaign. To anyone expecting an exciting, action packed RPG tho, don't bother, there are better games out there.

This is a weird Diablo clone. It has an excellent story with good writing and atmosphere. The developers had the great idea of turning your pet character into an actual, well, character named Katarina. The banter between her and Van Helsing is always amusing and it makes me wonder why other developers have never done this. As for the atmosphere, it nails the mix of old school horror (Frankenstien, the Werewolf, Dracula, etc) with steampunk.
However, the actual gameplay is mixed. It CAN be fun, but only if you're willing to put up with some odd design decisions. Half the classes are so poorly balanced they're not worth playing. Half the skills of the fun classes playing aren't worth using. The endgame is boring. And, most damningly, while the campaign is great because of the story, THERE'S NO NEW GAME PLUS. Want to replay the campaign with your maxed out character? Tough, start a fresh character (or level up in Adventure mode first, but that's boring beyond words).
Get this only if you're really interested in the story and when it's on sale.