The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II Reviews
With sequels it is always hard to see if they can up the ante, And here we have a very mediocre approach.
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II arrives on Xbox One and brings the franchise's trademark humor and steampunk setting to consoles, along with a few new features.
Van Helsing II is more of the same, both good and bad. I really enjoyed the core game play, loot gathering, and environments in the game. I did not appreciate that most of the technical issues of the first title on consoles also came with it.
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II continues the humorous dialogue (be prepared for many pop culture references) between Van Helsing and Lady Katarina, who still follows him around. Not much has changed in how the game is played, but I still find the skill trees and crafting mechanics too convoluted and in need of simplification.
It's not quite up there with the best in the business, but NeocoreGames should be happy with the steps they are taking to get there, and I have trust that Van Helsing III will be even better. Fans of the genre should fully enjoy what is on offer here, and newcomers who are looking for a few days of cooperative fun – problems with pacing and small glitches aside – should gather some friends and sit back and enjoy a few evenings of Victorian dungeon crawling – it's finger clicking good.
Van Helsing II isn't a huge improvement over its predecessor, but it's certainly starting to show increasing signs of becoming an excellent RPG. Unfortunately, the game is still hindered by some combat issues and a bland story, but the basics are there, we just have to hope the Neocore continue to improve on their IP.
Plenty of enjoyment is to be found for old and new players alike, although there’s perhaps not as much new as some may expect, and there’s still little to keep players’ attention after the story campaign is done.
NeoCore's aRPG The Amazing Adventures of Van Helsing II has finally arrived on the PS4 and it's an enjoyable adventure but lacks polish and becomes a tad repetitive
Van Helsing 2 is a near-complete title that NeoCore are clearly racing to finish in time for release day. It'll end up a better game than the first, but will almost certainly retain some deadline-crunch bugs until a couple of patches are out of the way.
While there's enough content to keep players satisfied, the indistinguishability residing within it's control scheme and gameplay mechanics, make the experience feel all too similar to other games within the same genre.
All in, Van Helsing II will likely please its core audience as much as its predecessor. There are oodles of branching power trees and character classes to customise and the ties with the first game will make purchasing this a no-brainer for those already accustomed to Neocore's wares.
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II improves over the original in some ways, but fails in many others. There are a number of great quality of life improvements here and two new classes are very welcome. Unfortunately, the meat of the game is the combat, and it's just not very interesting. It becomes a chore to trudge through enemies and there's not even the pull of an intriguing or interesting story to keep you motivated.
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II builds upon the original foundation, but it is still an average Action-RPG that features the usual genre tropes. Unfortunately, there is very little to set it apart from its predecessor, let alone the rest of the ARPG crowd.
Next to score: All in all, I left this game feeling perplexed.