Codefendant’s English van
A good hack & slash game should have a replay value. The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut, after combining three parts of the game into one, has it. The main campaign is finally long enough to be truly enjoyable. You can choose six different classes and each of them has a complex skill tree so you can specialize in various battle techniques. For a modest price you can reset skill points within the game so you may experiment which build suits you best. You can also choose how to develop your companion - Lady Katarina. She has less complex skill tree but you can adjust her behavior so that gives you a lot of possibilities as well.
Fighting and looting system is solid. Nothing special but just good enough. Sometimes fighting can be a bit messy, especially if your enemies come from below as it’s hard to see them from a distance. Story and quests are also rather typical for the genre with tons of popular culture references. There are, however, a lot of side activities that keep things fresh: you can tinker with your items, enhance them, craft new artifacts etc., in some parts of the game you can position your troops to aid you, send your generals on difficult missions (choose wisely who is the most capable man for the task) or even send your pet chimera on a hunt. On top of that there are daily challenges and special missions that you can perform outside the campaign so there are a lot of things to do.
The game doesn’t contain anything revolutionary but all these little things I mentioned earlier combined with solid mechanics give you a very enjoyable game without too frustrating moments. One thing is excellent: SECRETS! There are tons of them everywhere. Sometimes it’s just a special item that you can find in obscure area, sometimes you have to solve a simple puzzle but there are very complex secrets that take a few acts to solve. I love them with my whole heart and if you like secrets as well read the title of my review again. It’s an anagram :)
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