Victor Vran Review



Victor Vran is an isometric RPG, where the player assumes control over a character named, yes, you guessed it, Victor Vran. Victor sets out on a journey through the city of Zagoravia to find his friend, Adrian who has gone missing. Zagoravia, ruled by Queen Katrina is plagued by a demon infestation that has all but killed many remaining survivors that are not sheltered in Castle Zagore, the cities safe zone.

The game was released on Steam's early access program earlier in the year (February 19th 2015) and exited the early access program on July 24th 2015.  The game was developed by Haemimont Games and published by EuroVideo Medien. What have Haemimont Games have done in my opinion is, brought us the best isometric RPG since Diablo 3. Now you may be shaking your head at me, and thinking I am talking out my rear end, but I am about to tell you why I have enjoyed it so much.

What really drew me into Victor Vran was the dark, oppressive environment that seems to all but consume you. As you trudge further and further through the city you realise how dark and dangerous this place can really be and why almost everyone except Queen Katrina has given up hope. The combat system is basic, but it works. There is no fancy combination of buttons you need to hit, in fact the hardest decision you have to make is when the right time is to use your special abilities to have the maximum possible impact, and like Diablo you have a cool down timer on these abilities. Only downfall to these abilities is that they are set in stone depending on what weapon you are using. For example, a hammer weapon has a damaging ground smash that devastates and hurts everything within the smash radius while stealing health off the enemies to replenish the players health. While a Scythe weapon has a whirlwind attack that grants you additional armour to protect yourself while dealing damaging and precise blows to your enemy. However you cannot stand there and go toe to toe with most enemies, you must time your attacks well and roll out of the way to avoid damage as their is no dedicated block button.

The inventory system is easy to manage and you can quickly choose between tabs to locate those items you desperately want to use. Weapons are definitely not in short supply as the game provides many different variants of the same weapon you may have picked up earlier. These variants also impact on the weapons name, so expect to find a weapon that best suits your needs for current situation.



The levelling system is also quite different from that of normal RPG's. For example you would usually choose a particular skill to level up (endurance, strength, dexterity etc) but in Victor Vran you get what is called Destiny cards. These cards are equipped to your character and grant extra bonuses such as more health, a percentage of greater damage or critical hit chance. However you can only have a certain amount of Destiny cards equipped at any one time. Destiny cards also have a value rating for example, one card might only be worth 1 point while another one may be worth 3 or 4. You only have a certain amount of Destiny card points you can not exceed this limit. For example if you have a Destiny card point cap of 4 you cannot have a Destiny cards that total more than 4. With this is mind you must choose those that are going to benefit your play style the most. It is a different concept to get used to but once you have play around with it, it all seems to make sense and add to the overall greatness of the game.




Now while the story isn't the strongest of narratives the voice over of the one we only know as 'The Voice' adds a nice sense of humour that is relatively cheesy but still manages to bring a grin to my face and even a chuckle every now and then. The narration of the story reminds me very much of Bastion, which I played when it hit PS4 and thoroughly enjoyed, although not quite as much as our good man Red who managed to platinum it! As an added extra to the story line, each new area provides a new set of challenges which, when completed award the player with goodies such as extra XP, gold or sometimes even rare items or destiny cards. This is a great added extra and I found myself replaying levels just to complete the challenges! In addition to this, Haemimont Games have added what they call 'hexes'. Hexes act like the torment modes on Diablo 3 greatly increasing the games difficulty. The more hexes you have active the harder the game will be. But it's not just hard, it rewards you with greater items and better loot drop from enemies then if you were to have no hexes active.


The only qualm I could have with this game is that while fighting some undead enemies you need to kill them with an overkill hit or they may respawn which can be quite annoying although they are not that tough to defeat sometimes sheer weight of numbers can get on top of you. This, along with no ability to sprint can make long journeys backwards treacherous and long that seems to take forever and a day to get somewhere.





In conclusion Victor Vran is a game that lends a lot off Diablo but it is this that makes the game so entertaining and pleasing to play. Everything runs smoothly, has full gamepad support for those hard core console fans who never thought he would see himself with a PC capable of running AAA titles at a decent spec (I.E. myself) and is just down right a fun and enjoyable game. Victor Vran is available on the Steam Store for the excellent price of $19.99USD but if you have that spare $25.00AUD to throw around, then Victor Vran is definitely a good way to spend it.

For all those reasons above I have scored Victor Vran a solid 9/10 which for $25 you will not find much better value.

Thank you for taking the time to read my review of Victor Vran. For all things gaming don't forget to check out our Facebook page, head across to our YouTube or checkout the weekly podcast with our hosts LewkOne, Red and Thorncliff.

Zachary Weeks (Weeksy) 
To Top