Victor Vran

Sum-Up
In-depth analysis further down.
🟩 Pros
🟥 Cons
• The unique approach to skills and progression, based on items rather than ability trees, grants a high degree of build flexibility while keeping gameplay fresh.
• Excellent enemy variety: champions with many modifiers and plenty of named bosses in each map, all with unique skills and movesets.
• High challenge on the Hard difficulty. It balances well between character build and individual player skill.
• Almost all weapons and skills are viable, distinct, and can integrate into many builds, with few redundancy issues if any… at least until very late game.
• Melee-focused builds become borderline unviable in later game phases due to the obscene amount of one-shots, chain-stuns and hostile AoE.
• Certain enemy skills can outright stunlock and instant-kill you without any chance to avoid them or react. It feels cheap and unfair.
• The storyline and characters feel generic, uninspired and shallow, even for an ARPG.
• The optional Map Challenge system starts well, but later proves too restrictive; it cripples your experience by banning the use of many features.
🟨 Bugs & Issues
🔧 Specs
• Significant input latency, which can lead to button presses not registering.
• The mouse cursor’s scaling in 1440p and 4K is far too small.
• In co-op, shared challenges can sometimes lose sync between players.
• i9 13980HX
• 64GB RAM DDR5
• RTX 4090
• NvME SSD
• 3840x2160
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Content & Replay Value:
23 hours is what took me and another player to complete Victor Vran on the Hard difficulty, taking considerable extra time to find most secrets and clear most challenges. Given that there are no choices and you can freely swap any build, the replay value is minimal.
Do I recommend it?
Yes, preferably in co-op. It’s a decent ARPG that plays out differently than most on the market, just beware of how annoying some of its optional content can get.
Conclusion
Van Helsing at home, but actually pretty good. The unique gameplay design and solid variety carry it most of the way, despite a clichèd story and an uninspired setting.
In-Depth
Writing & Worldbuilding
Many a Hunter vowed to smite the dark forces, and journeyed to Zagoravia to rid it of its curse; none returned. Then again, they were not Victor Vran. The demon-smiting Van Helsing cosplayer ventures alone into the eternal night enveloping the Transylvan-esque city. He does fit the part: hard-boiled one-liners and a demeanor that has no damns left to be given.
You won’t have any of them left as well, about the story at least, mostly sooner than later. It’s a generic, trite tale of a jaded hero coming to the rescue when all hope is lost, despite himself being cursed by the very forces he swore to destroy. “The abyss also gazes into you” and all that slop. Boring. If the side characters weren’t as insipid or the lore so minimal and dry, maybe I wouldn’t have switched to auto-pilot after just a couple hours. But alas, narrative was never a priority for ARPGs.
Zagoravia doesn’t shine with enticing ambiance. Despite the good variety of environs to visit, from desolate streets to forgotten dwellings and catacombs, none of them feels anything but already seen at any point. Even if coherent and cohesive, the worldbuilding ultimately feels stale. One generic dark fantasy location to the next, without much to note, environmental storytelling only hinted at in the best of cases.
Exploration & Secrets
The cursed city is divided into many districts, one more infested than the previous. You’ll cross them on foot, sparse checkpoints preventing excess backtracking by advancing your respawn position should you perish. As you roam, you’ll come across gates, acting as transitions between levels and doubling as map markers, enabling fast travel from your base at Castle Zagore. There’s no proper open world: even if some areas span far and wide, each is a self-contained stage with its own challenges and fixed enemy spawns.
There’s no absence of side areas and secrets in each location, many of which are hidden behind destructible objects, illusory walls, or platforming sections that use wall-jumping so that Victor can reach greater heights. Some just have chests with random loot, others even secret bosses and more than a few Easter eggs. It’s worthwhile to seek these out, at least until late game, at which point normal enemies will drop items just as good, or possibly better, than most chests you could find, making it redundant.
Character Progression & Challenges
Unlike most Diablo-like ARPGs, Victor Vran doesn’t have skill trees or attributes. When you level up, you may get new items or other rewards instead. That’s because the entirety of its skill system relies on weapons and gear, rather than class-specific abilities. For instance, a spellcaster Tome will have three skills, the same for all of them no matter the rarity, exceptions are made for Legendary ones, which may have specific modifiers, but could also completely suck.
It works the same way for each weapon, a feature often paired with unique passives that encourage using that specific weapon in a certain way, like Lighting Guns bouncing their beam between enemies with the Electrified status. You may swap weapons at any time. The same goes for armor sets and consumables, which all have different properties, armor ratings and passive bonuses, and usually, different ways to gain Overdrive, the game’s Mana. This system removes the need to stick to a fixed build and allows completely reworking your gameplay in a few moves: just swap everything and try something new if you get tired of playing the same stuff. On the other hand, it doesn’t allow the build depth and finesse other “classic” ARPGs may have.
The challenges are both the best and most depressing system of this game. On one side, they’ll grant you major XP and loot for completing them, especially early on, but on the other, some of them are tremendous hurdles that will sap your will to continue. Especially when a challenge asks you to not use Potions, Spells and Consumables to kill X enemies without taking damage, and stuff along those lines. All for what? A common chest. Good thing they’re optional; if you’re an achievement hunter though, I’m sorry for your soul.
Combat System & Bosses
Your demon-slaughtering will play out much like any other top-down ARPG around. You’ll be able to swap between two weapons to combine their skills, use consumable potions and other utilities, like AoE bombs, and cast up to two Demon Power spells, which use Overdrive, gained from slaying enemies or in other specific ways depending on the Armor Set you’re using. You can also jump, dodge and parkour around—a necessity, given the amount of projectiles, rushing enemies and hostile AoE in the average fight. At times, it almost feels like a bullet-hell.
Enemies power up more than you do, to obscene points: by the level cap of 50, on Hard, prepare to get one-shot at a moment’s notice by almost anything, nevermind if you want to be a tank, that’s not going to happen. Bosses, the proper ones, giant health bars and all, have multi-phase designs and are adequately challenging, although the real deal is with the secret ones found in special levels or obscure side areas. Combat is engaging, fun, and well-paced all around. The weight between hits and flying ragdolls emphasize the violence of each hit and explosion.

Its more than a normal Game of this kind. Its the little things that make it worth playing. The atmosphere, accesability of getting skills for weapons and other features.
You can really feel that it was made with great enthusiasm.

This game had the potential to be so much more than it already is and to be regarded as one of the staples of the ARPG genre!
Believe it or not, the cause for this is not the atmosphere, which is immaculate and somber akin to the gloominess of Autumn and the accompanying weird kind of coziness that comes with it.
It is also not the art nor asset/enemy variety, which, even though they represent a singular theme (doom and gloom), are so well done and varied enough to keep you from ever getting bored of the setting.
The game even has a serviceable story and surprisingly very good voice acting (the main character has the same voice as Geralt of Rivia) as well as a memorable OST.
The combat system is most definitely not the tarnishing factor here, since it is absolutely stellar!
Almost all weapons are very well done, simple in their uses and not too hard to master along with the ability to mix and match two of them at the same time.
The animations and sound effects are crisp, cool and fast.
All this, together with the abilities to jump, wall-jump and dodge, make a really enjoyable combating experience throughout the game.
On top of all of this you have your classic RPG equipment with different sorts of affixes, "Destiny Cards" (which are a fine creative spin on what essentially are pick-and-choose passives), "Demon Powers" (spells) and Talismans (powerful short boons or skills/attacks upon charging them up fully) which offer solid build variety and you are sure to be able to tailor equipment to your own playstyle and find very interesting synergies.
It should be noted however that upgrading certain pieces of equipment, such as Destiny Cards and Demon Powers, is EXTREMELY cumbersome and should have been automated since it requires a lot of Inventory navigation and management and the Inventory in this game is not very good.
Speaking of equipment, by the time your are done with the game, even if you optimized for loot drops, you will only uncover about half of the Legendary Weapons. This is a major disservice to the enjoyment in this game since the Legendary Weapons in this game are all unique, with unique effects and animations and you may not even get a Legendary variant of your main weapon.
Even though I listed some of the negatives just now, the main reason this game is a 7/10 and not higher is strictly due to the numbers !
Even on Normal Mode, the enemies simply have WAY TOO MUCH BLOATED ARMOR AND HEALTH stats.
We are talking about extremely optimized builds, with critical hit chance, damage and armor penetration still barely even making a dent in the lowest mobs on higher levels.
Since this game also scales all areas with your current level, this completely KILLS any sense of progression or power fantasy, simple as that.
I recommend you get this game on a good sale and to play together with a friend if able!
It was still a nice experience to get to journey through Zagoravia.

I don't play arpgs often (hard to find ones without constant respawns and level-scaling) but this was mostly fun. some of the challenges and boss fights are frustrating, as expected, plus having to restart the whole map to try a challenge again is idiotic, but they're optional and I could finish the game, surprising myself in the process, so it's definitely doable.
what I really liked was the card-based build system, making respeccing as easy as replacing one card with another, so I could try different weapon types and tactics without committing to something forever. other games have respec fountains here and there, or want you to farm a billion coins or whatever, not here.
and while respawning enemies and level-scaling aren't only major annoyances but actual dealbreakers for me, here they happen in a more subtle way. cleared a level of spiders? next time there will be fire spiders or something. also, as I play everything only once and don't care about grinding or farming rare items and whatnot, I didn't have to revisit places often (or at all, it's been a while).
based on the description, I passed on the randomly generated nonsense of the fractured worlds dlc, but the motorhead one is a great addition even if you don't like the band, I don't either. guitars as weapons (they can drop outside the dlc too if it's active), lemmy (rip), new music, etc. could've used more songs though, they get really repetitive really fast.

It's very meh. Best part is Geralt's VA, everything else is pretty generic, combat is simplistic and it doesn't have any impact, feels like hitting air. Took me 6 hours to rush through story. Not a bad game to say, but i expected more.

Gameplay is simply amazing. I had a really good time.

Destructable enviromentals, smooth as butter gameplay.
Works well with KB&Mouse or Controller.
Voiced by the voice actor who plays Geralt in "The Witcher" game series.
A ton of content and replayability.
Difficulty starts to really ramp up around level 14 or so.