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.

Works out of the box on the Steam Deck. Honestly, it's a perfect handheld ARPG. Good for short bursts. Just make sure to delete all the string files for languages you aren't using to reduce load times.

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.

It aged decently well for a hack and slash, but there is a distinct lack of fluid movement skills that makes it stand out from modern titles. I did not play the previous 2 titles and I likely never will, so I can't compare them with this one, but it is obvious at times that the game is laughably outdated.
It starts by asking you to log in using an account for a defunct service and (sometimes) ends by killing your hardcore character in an online arena.
What has aged well is the witty banter between the main character and the sidekick, on a level of Bard's Tale.
I am sure though I missed a lot of references to other fantasy media, cause there is a lot.
The gameplay is pretty mid, but the enviroments and unique ideas kept me entertained for most of it.
I have to admit that in absence of mods, I did modify the game's files to make grinding a little easier.
Especially after losing a lvl 75 hardcore character to some bullshit, I could not be arsed to play it to level 100 three separate times with standard exp rates.

An incredible RPG! definitely on the must play category
This is a truly underrated gem like Grim Dawn.
Pro's
- You get to play as Van Helsing what more do you want?
- Decent gameplay
- Content
- Decent Graphics
Con's
- Less enemey variety. Still fun to blast through them
- Maps could have been better
---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
---{ Gameplay }---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf
---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☑ Grandma
---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☑ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data
---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☑ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding
---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☑ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life
---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☑ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond
---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{ Bugs }---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☑ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10
---{ Author }---
☑

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.