We checked out Victor Vran, an Action RPG available for Early Access on Steam.

Victor Vran is an Action RPG available for Early Access on Steam. Being an Action RPG, it is comparable to games like Diablo 3, and while there are a lot of similarities between Victor Vran and Diablo 3, there are also some unique features that make Victor Vran stand out.

Probably the first thing that players will discover when starting Victor Vran is that there are no classes. Starting the game puts you straight into the game, controlling its namesake Victor. Instead of selecting a class to choose your available skills, Victor Vran tackles character customization by the gear that you currently have equipped.

In the game there are three set skills for each weapon type. In other words, the sword has three skills and the hammer has three different skills. The three weapon skills are tied by default to the Left Mouse Button (LMB), Q and E. The LMB attack is the main attack with no cooldown for all of the weapons while Q and E are more powerful skills with cooldowns.

While having three unchangeable skills tied to a weapon type might seem few and lacking customization, the synergy that exists because of these set skills makes the weapons really interesting. The sword, for example, is all about quick area control and critical hits.

The sword’s LMB does a basic attack that can cleave other nearby targets, but every third attack will apply Vulnerability to any target’s hit. Vulnerability in Victor Vran makes the next attack on the target have a 100% chance to be a critical hit. The sword’s Q attack is a heavy damage dealing attack with a good length cooldown, but that cooldown is eliminated if it critically hits. So using the LMB attack three times to apply Vulnerability to ensure a critical hit on the Q attack is a very powerful rotation. The synergy doesn’t stop there. The E skill is a single target stun, but will also stun all nearby enemies if used on an enemy suffering from Vulnerability.

There are five weapon types currently available in the game—Sword, Rapier, Hammer, Shotgun and Lightning Gun—with the Lightning Gun being added in the most recent content update. At the beginning of the game you can only equip one of these weapons at a time, but during the leveling process will gain the ability to equip two and swap between them at will.

In addition to weapons, players can customize their character by equipping different potions, outfits, Destiny cards (passive abilities and bonuses) and Demon powers (active abilities and bonuses). Each of these offer a variety of choices as players buy them from merchants at the game’s hub or as they drop from enemies. All of these, with the exception of outfits, gain additional equip slots as you level up your character.

Currently the max level for characters is level 15, but this will increase to 20 by the time the game launches later this year. While this may seem low, the developers have plans for the max level content that will keep players playing even after reaching the level cap.

Victor Vran currently only consists of an adventure style game mode, as the story is being held until one of the final content patches for the game. This adventure style gameplay has players going out and completing bonus objectives tied to each map that give various rewards including experience and gold. Objectives range from killing a certain number of enemies without taking damage, using potions or with specific weapon types to finding secret chests hidden in a level.

The developers are shooting for a summer release for the full Victor Vran game. The latest update to the game was patch 1.01, which came about two weeks after the 1.00 version of the game was released. Given the quick turnaround for a patch that reportedly doubled the content in the game, the summer release seems very plausible.

In our opinion, the only miss with Victor Vran is the camera. Other ARPG’s have a fixed camera, but Victor Vran changes that with the ability to rotate the camera. While you have the ability to rotate the camera, it is still stuck in the typical isometric top-down view used in ARPGs. As such, the ability to rotate the camera feels less like a benefit as it calls out the fact that the camera is stuck with the default angle. In fact, many times the ability to rotate the camera was forgettable, as this default angle is so typically used as a static camera in many other games.

While the summer planned full release is still a good time away and Victor Vran is missing key elements such as end-game content, multiplayer and the game’s story, just the ability to run around fighting enemies with the game’s interesting weapon and skill setup is really fun even without mentioning the ability to jump and parkour up and over walls and ledges. If you are a fan of ARPG’s, then Victor Vran is a game worth checking out, especially with those missing elements only a few patches away.

Matt Adams aka the Mattsta

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