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Victor Vran: Overkill Edition comes from Haemimont Games, who are quite a varied developer. They’ve previously created the excellent Tropico series into which I have poured countless hours, plus titles like Omerta, which is a decent gangster strategy game and The First Templar, a third-person medieval action game to name a few.
Victor Vran launched on PC back in July 2015 to positive reviews. It has now been released on the current-gen consoles with two bits of new DLC incorporated, both of which have also been made available for the PC version.
This game firmly sits in the Action Role Playing Game category (ARPG from now on!). That statemant alone tells you it is similar to Diablo, Torchlight, Van Helsing, Titan Quest and many more games of varying quality. To be fair, Victor Vran has more in common with Diablo III, Van Helsing and the more recent Vikings: Wolves of Midgard with the visuals and the way the game actually plays.
The story goes that the Queen of Zagoravia, when younger, made a pact with a demon to save the town. Now, of course, the demon wants to collect and the town is being attacked by all types of monstrosities as the Queen won’t give herself up. You, as Victor, just happen to turn up looking for a friend and comrade demon slayer who had headed to this town. After finding said friend, you find out what’s going on from the Queen and decide to stay and help out with the demon issue.
Loot is always at the forefront of your mind with ARPGs and Victor Vran is no different. Enemies drop new items which can be sold or equipped, if they’re better than what you already have. You can put a weapon in each hand allowing you to change your play style on the fly. Weapons in this game set the skills as the different types all have their own type of attacks. Scythes tend to have a longer reach and arcing attacks – one of which is a spinning hurricane; Rapiers stab and slash really fast with a little less damage; Hammers are slower to attack but do more damage and there are numerous spell tomes which fire magical projectiles and do area-of-effect attacks, plus there are numerous projectile weapons like handguns.
Having a primary as a melee weapon, with a ranged/magic weapon as secondary, has worked well for me. There are also demonic powers you can unleash once the relevant bar is filled by chaining attacks. Examples of these are a huge magical boomerang which does plenty damage out over as well as coming back. This can be used to your advantage if you move,as the boomerang comes back to you. There’s also a fire storm, shields, teleporting and a fair few others. You can also find more potent demonic powers as you slay the monsters.
Looking in your inventory, there are also cards which give you bonuses. You start off by equipping only one, but after a few hours extra slots, unlock with your levelling and you can put more in and swap lower level cards out. Armour upgrades come with levelling. Monsters – when slain – won’t drop new pieces. Once you reach a certain level, you can then pick a new set out of three available. These can have better defence, higher attack and so on so you can choose a set that suits the way you play.
Retro at heart and lover of all things ’80s, especially the computers, the music and the awesome movies and TV shows! Crazy huge retro gaming collection spanning the ’80s and ’90s with hundreds of tapes, discs and carts for various machines on top of a 600+ strong Steam library that is ever-growing. No I am not a serial hoarder, just a dedicated retro gamer!