That in itself gives the game a distinctly different feel, though in D3 the levels were just these huge containers for the hordes of monsters that you hack your way through, and exploring them as actual pieces of geometry didn’t really throw up anything interesting. Hentzau: Yes, all the levels are static with no random attributes. Kenti: To some extent that is because of part-procedural level generation – there is none of that here. It had plentiful easter eggs as well as some secret levels and bosses that you have to grind through several playthroughs’ worth of content to unlock, but the way its levels were generated ruled out the conscious placement of the nice bonus loot chests you’ll find scattered throughout the world of Victor Vran. Hentzau: Diablo 3 didn’t really have secrets. Remarkably this didn’t feel out of place, and the hunt for secrets enhanced it, much like it did Guild Wars 2 for example. It also propels you into jumping puzzles, hiding chests of loot away behind a few leaps, or, borrowed straight out of Prince of Persia, jumping between two close walls to ascend even higher. Kenti: The jumping, for example, is not just an alternative dodge (which is present), but can be used to navigate the map and its various height variations. Victor Vran looks a lot like a cut-price Diablo, and even steals many of the best ideas from Diablo (the way elite monsters are generated along with some of their special attacks are outright copied, for example) but it has more than enough ideas of its own that it successfully carves out its own little niche in the genre. It’s not the biggest variation to the formula presented in the game, but it did immediately make it feel fresh and set me in the mood to believe that Haemimont actually had some new ideas. Perhaps the most important skill that sets him apart from other Vampire Hunters, Demon Hunters and miscellaneous adventurers is the ability to jump. ![]() Kenti: Victor can do quite a lot of things. Hentzau: I started pretty much every session by singing “Victor Vran, Victor Vran, does whatever a Victor can…” under my breath. ![]() Even if the intended humour falls flat on its face. The silliness of its name matches well with the general lighthearted approach the whole thing takes. I am not sure if it means it is good or bad, but I think we’ve said Victor Vran an awful lot. Kenti: Sometimes I feel you can tell something about the calibre of the game by how much fun you can have endlessly repeating its name to each other. Making an ARPG in the Diablo mold is quite a departure from their usual strategy-management fare, and Victor Vran has a decidedly budget look to it to boot (very much like the Van Helsing series, to the point where I initially thought it was the same developer) so I wasn’t exactly expecting great things from it, but it did have one very attractive feature: while it might have had a budget look, it also had a budget price tag that was reduced even further after I bought a two-pack and threw the second copy at long-time partner-in-mayhem Innokenti. ![]() Victor Vran is a brand-new action RPG from developers Haemimont Games, previously known for taking on the Tropico series after PopTop imploded over a decade ago. We return to a (hopefully) more regular posting schedule with Victor Vran. First two weekends of August got taken out by Space School, as always.
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