With so many moving pieces, I’m impressed that everything evens out so well. I prefer the sweeping strokes of the broadsword, but I can’t say that it actually kills stuff better than the rapier or scythe. Motörhead Through The AgesĪmazingly, all of the skills and spells and boosts and weapons are all nicely balanced. Combining powers with a friend in co-op, wading into a seething pile of nasties and making the whole dungeon go sizzle, is undeniably fun. Between weapon skills, throwable grenades, Demon powers, and Destiny cards, there are a lot of tools to fling at the army of the undead. Destiny cards modify character stats like increasing ranged damage, increasing health, or making enemies explode on a critical hit. Victor’s basic skills can be tweaked and augmented by a selection of two Demon powers-powerful spells with effects that summon meteors, unleash explosive shockwaves, or draw down a roving pillar of fire. Spending more time than this pondering the specifics seems like a waste of time.
There’s a city full of baddies, and it’s Victor’s job as a capital-H Hunter to clear it out. It’s not complex, it’s just that there’s no reward for following along, and I didn’t care.
I’m not sure it really matters, but the story lost me early on.
Oh, did I say haunted? It might be cursed. There are a lot of weapons, and between rapiers, broadswords, shotguns, mortars, and lightning guns, there’s a lot of skills with which to work through the neighborhoods of Victor Vran’s huge haunted city. Since there’s no way to level up as a hammer-wielder, Victor Vran’s progression is in finding a better hammer. Scythes, on the other hand, reduce mobility while attacking but get more powerful the more they’re used. Hammers are slow and powerful with some huge area-of-effect moves. There are no character points or skill trees associated with Victor because each weapon is a self-contained class of skills and strategies. The main character, Victor, can equip any weapon and use its two special attacks at any time. Like in Bastion, Victor Vran is an ARPG with all the classes ripped out. Played with friends in co-op multiplayer, it’s a damn fine time. To be clear, Victor Vran is not as great as any of those games, but it’s not bad, either. Victor Vran’s combat requires more involvement than click-click-clicking through Torchlight, and its sense of whimsy separates it from the (sometimes) self-serious Diablo. But I think it’s more accurate to imagine it as Bastion strutting around in a campy Van Helsing cosplay. It is like those games in some ways: there are levels to grind through and loot to find and weapon skills to chain together. Like any ARPG, Victor Vran keeps getting compared to Diablo and Torchlight.