The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II Review

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing 2 is the second game in the series developed by NeocoreGames and is an Action RPG. This game features adventures through a detailed storyline filled with loads of monsters, magic and steampunk gadgets and tech. Throughout the story players will be accompanied by a ghost known as Lady Katarina, the constant bantering between the two characters throughout has a very enjoyable comedic value to the storyline. Although the storyline is very easy to follow it is worth paying attention to.

The art style that is used for the game is also very beautiful, encapsulating the era of the game very well, however I feel more time could have gone into the character models but this is just my personal preference and I understand there isn’t a huge development team behind the game.

Upon starting the game players can create a ‘normal’ character which begins at level 1, or to create a ‘veteran’ character where the game starts from level 30, players are also able to import their characters from the first episode of Van Helsing. This game has five difficulty ratings to choose from when creating a character Casual, Normal, Hard, Heroic, and Fearless. As this was one of my first times really delving into this genre of game I decided to use the Casual difficulty, however this still provided a huge challenge for myself when trying to progress through the story mode. Often, I would find myself being overwhelmed with a huge number of enemies and be instantly killed repeatedly, I wasn’t sure if this was at my own fault or if the game is simply unfair. I found myself having to slowly edge through every mission and individually pick of an enemy one at a time, and upon failing to do this I would find myself in a vicious circle of respawning, pump out damage, and dying repetitively to the point where I found it unenjoyable.

This game however does provide players with a huge variety of skills that can be levelled and customised to personal preference and playstyles. There are four different tabs with various skills, tricks and auras that can be levelled up. Players are also able to decide which perks their characters have which also influence the playstyle of the character. Players are also able to add ability points to four different abilities effecting the overall stats of your character, these are Body (HP, Melee Damage, and Defence), Dexterity (Range Damage and Dodge), Willpower (Mana Points and Spellpower), and finally Luck (Chance of finding Gold, Magic Items and of Dodging and Critical Hit %). Throughout the game players are also able to level up and level her abilities depending on how you would want her to play throughout the game. You can give her commands and set her combat style that she should follow, in my experience I found her best used to stay back and range enemies that were weak to pick them off so I wouldn’t have to focus on them.

There are many different gameplay mechanics that can be found in the game such as sending generals and your army on timed missions to gather extra experience, loot, and money, these should be tended to throughout the game to help give an added boost. You are also able to train up your very own chimera which will go on hunts to gather loot and can also be summoned during missions to help take some of the damage away from yourself and to help put out more damage also.

This game is currently retailing on the PlayStation Store for £11.99, I would say this is a fair price for what is on offer to play. I would however only recommend this game for people who play these genres of games regularly and have a large understanding of mechanics in these types of games. If the easiest game difficulty allowed myself the chance to fully play through the game I would recommend this to all players, however this isn’t the case.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Sony Playstation 4 code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.