I have a mixed feeling about this game. On the outside, It's good game with great polish but when you spent long enough playing, some flaws will disturb your enjoyment.
First, i like the gothic, victorian-era eastern-european theme this game is set. A fresh theme for ARPG. Another thing i liked about this game is the fact that you'll play with a sidekick, Lady Katarina. A beautiful ghost with gritty humors. This make Van Helsing stands apart from other hack-and-slash / diablo-clones, where you fight enemies alone. She's not only helping you beating monsters but also often makes conversation with you throughout the quests, so it makes the game more lively than just a hacking and slashing enemies. I really enjoyed the interactions between Van Helsing and Katarina, and sometimes I get a little chuckle from them. The story is well structured and has interesting plot, albeit quite simple.
The good: It has nice looking graphics, great atmosphere and architecture designs, solid RPG elements, decent combats, many QoL features to assist you while in game, likeable characters, interesting story and dialogue choices, funny humor (rarely seen in this genre) and also surprisingly well voice acting.
The bad: The most annoying flaw is enemy placements. It's really, really awful. Because this game's combat success is heavily affected by character positioning and mastering map's spaces, getting cornered by enemies with no gap to escape is fatal. There will be situations where you enters a map for the first time and you will be suddenly greeted by numerous horde of enemies that will kill you instantly, so you have to restart, try to kill at least one enemy, dies again and repeat. This plus the facts that some enemies are bullet sponges will frustrate your playing. Not to mention some respawn point are located far away from the said map's entrance. The game also lacking enemy variations, you will fight the same enemies many times. Despite having interesting skill/spell system, they are limited to 2 shortcut at a time, so it kinda sucks if I want to use many of them, because I have to choose which two I'd like to bind to the shortcut slots each time. Also i feel that the equipment sold in shops are useless, and you'll get much better ones from enemies or a quest anyway, so no point having shops other than to sell loots and buy potions.
First, i like the gothic, victorian-era eastern-european theme this game is set. A fresh theme for ARPG. Another thing i liked about this game is the fact that you'll play with a sidekick, Lady Katarina. A beautiful ghost with gritty humors. This make Van Helsing stands apart from other hack-and-slash / diablo-clones, where you fight enemies alone. She's not only helping you beating monsters but also often makes conversation with you throughout the quests, so it makes the game more lively than just a hacking and slashing enemies. I really enjoyed the interactions between Van Helsing and Katarina, and sometimes I get a little chuckle from them. The story is well structured and has interesting plot, albeit quite simple.
The good: It has nice looking graphics, great atmosphere and architecture designs, solid RPG elements, decent combats, many QoL features to assist you while in game, likeable characters, interesting story and dialogue choices, funny humor (rarely seen in this genre) and also surprisingly well voice acting.
The bad: The most annoying flaw is enemy placements. It's really, really awful. Because this game's combat success is heavily affected by character positioning and mastering map's spaces, getting cornered by enemies with no gap to escape is fatal. There will be situations where you enters a map for the first time and you will be suddenly greeted by numerous horde of enemies that will kill you instantly, so you have to restart, try to kill at least one enemy, dies again and repeat. This plus the facts that some enemies are bullet sponges will frustrate your playing. Not to mention some respawn point are located far away from the said map's entrance. The game also lacking enemy variations, you will fight the same enemies many times. Despite having interesting skill/spell system, they are limited to 2 shortcut at a time, so it kinda sucks if I want to use many of them, because I have to choose which two I'd like to bind to the shortcut slots each time. Also i feel that the equipment sold in shops are useless, and you'll get much better ones from enemies or a quest anyway, so no point having shops other than to sell loots and buy potions.