Developer: NeoCore Games
Publisher: NeoCore Games
Platform: Windows, OS X
Tested on: Windows
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut – Review
After being delayed several times over the last few weeks, the action role-playing game The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut has finally arrived on Steam. The masterpiece is the definite collection of the three stand-alone Van Helsing games, combined in one continuous story, offering six playable classes and a complete new endgame mode.
Story
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut takes us back to the very beginning of the first trilogy working its way up to the third iteration of the Van Helsing franchise. The great Van Helsing has defeated the Immortal Kings and you’ll be traveling through Borgovia, the land of monsters, magic and weird science, as Van Helsing’s son whom is accompanied with his valuable follower, the ghastly Lady Katarina.
As the Final Cut is a revamped version of all three games in one continuous storyline, you’ll first start off with the mad scientist who is trying to gain control by bringing his violent machines to life. Once he has been dealt with, you’ll come face-to-face with General Harker who’s been planning to wipe Borgovia off the map once and for all. Naturally you’ll want to stop him and in trying to do so, you’ll gain a new ally named Prisoner Seven – a test subject of the mad scientist. Prisoner Seven is a strange entity and you’ll be confused for who this ally is truly fighting for from the very beginning and rightfully so. With General Harker out of the way, Prisoner Seven has escaped to the otherworld. In the meantime the city is being threatened by The Cult of Seven. After some digging, you’ll come across evidence that The Cult of Seven is linked to Prisoner Seven, which is completely unsurprisingly given the names. Once you’ve completely dealt with the Cult, you can chase after Prisoner Seven and deal with him once and for all.
Graphics
Although the general concept of the Victorian era-like setting is still the same gothic-noir universe we know from before, the visuals have been drastically improved in the fourth and final iteration of the Van Helsing franchise. The combination of fantasy, gothic-noir with a slight pinch of steampunk is still a gorgeous scenery to look at. The fact that the game continues to look far more realistic than its counterparts Diablo III and Torchlight II only increases the amazement of action RPG fans.
The user interface hasn’t been tinkered with as far as I can tell and it looks like it has been a direct copy paste from the third game with a wee-bit of fine-tuning when it comes down to the steampunk colorization and details.
Sound
Ever since the first iteration, the overall sound design has been incredible and it continues to live up to its reputation. The ambiance music is beautifully composed and truly complemented the atmosphere as it should while the teasing banter between Van Helsing and Katarina has been voiced exquisitely. Obviously the sound effects of abilities are just as great as they were before so one could argue that the sound design in the game is the utmost finest feature of the entire game.
Gameplay
The fourth iteration of the Van Helsing game does not play different from the previous ones. You move across the map with the mouse, using left and right click for your most used attacks and create a combo which can be easily called by pressing the spacebar.
Final Cut offers the same six playable classes previously introduced in the third game namely the Protector (melee tank), the Bounty Hunter (ranged DPS in the likes of a Demon Hunter), the Elementalist (spellcaster in the likes of a Shaman), the Umbralist (somewhat rogue-like), the Phlogistoneer (an engineer in a machine suit) and the Constructor (an engineer-like contraptionist with a devoted love for summoning mechanical creatures). Each of these classes have class-specific gear, resources and abilities.
Your character will level up by killing monsters and completing quests, which then enables you to spend skill points and character points. The latter points can increase any of three stats. For the Bounty Hunter, the stats are Enhanced Vitality, Advanced Gunnery and Spiritual Awareness. Of course your loyal companion Lady Katarina will gain levels as well, gaining points which you can distribute accordingly in her very own skill and character tree. Notable is that Final Cut offers a new complex skill tree, also with three tiers and a power-up system for any of your abilities.
Crafting-wise, the system has remained largely the same. You can boost items with enchanting while you can enhance items by adding magic Essence to gear via the Alchemist. The latter one can be seen as a form of gemming, albeit the system is slightly different. Lastly, you can forge items at the blacksmith.
The game offers a plethora of game modes to venture in. First off is the single and multiplayer modes, the latter one has several modes supporting four to eight players. The connection is not always the greatest in these multiplayer modes and I found out firsthand that the monsters in co-op modes do not scale with the amount of players – making the game insanely easy. Additionally, you cannot teleport to towns alone as your group members will be forced to join you if you truly need to sell. That is if they don’t vote “no”.
The level cap has been raised to 100 which also offers a complete new endgame content in the form of glory levels – the equivalent of Diablo III’s paragon levels – which are also account-shared. Combined with the adventure mode, which is an excellent game mode that provides plenty of adventures to complete, the endgame content is nearly endless. The adventure mode can be compared to the adventure mode in Diablo III although the mode in Final Cut is superior to that of Diablo III by featuring plenty of real challenges where death means utter failure. Missions can range from surviving the map as a chicken to surviving an arena to escorting allies. On top of that, this mode has its own currency, daily and weekly quests.
Aside from all of these modes, the campaign mode offers nine tower defense mini-games which can be skipped. The mini-games are a perfect example of how Deathtrap plays, which is NeoCores very own tower defense game inspired by the Van Helsing franchise. And because there is way too much to say about the Final Cut of the Van Helsing games, I will only add that the fame or reputation system is still imbedded.
Conclusion
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut is the definite edition of the Van Helsing games, bundling the three stand-alone games in one large game in an improved version. The visuals have stayed the same, meaning most of the gameplay mechanics have also been recycled but this is not a bad thing as the previous titles were already excellent RPG’s – except for the third iteration. And although the storyline has remained the same on a large scale, several quests have been removed or altered in a positive way. If you have the trilogy, you’ll receive Final Cut for free so there’s no reason for you not to play it except for the fact that you cannot import previous characters. If you haven’t yet played the Van Helsing series, you most definitely need to get the Final Cut as it is one heck of a game.
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut - Review,
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[…] namely The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut – which we’ve reviewed here – NeoCore Games announced that the first title in the adventure RPG trilogy is now available […]