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Victor Vran

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I thought this forum was accessible only for 1 y.o. accounts

We moved the post here so lurkers wouldn't grab the keys.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Moved back to GRPG in case the devs want to communicate with us some more
 

Drowed

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2011
Messages
1,676
Location
Core City
Oh. I'm late to the party. The game looks kinda good, tho. Any codexer who picked a key could post something about it? What do you guys think?
 

Ninjerk

Arcane
Joined
Jul 10, 2013
Messages
14,323
Disorganized description of my first brief play session in the spoiler.

When the game begins there's a series of paintings of some town where bad things happened with a big "Placeholder" text over the top.

Movement is pretty crisp using WASD. There's a free-floating cursor and you can hold the right mouse button to rotate the camera.

You start the game with a basic attack, a knockback special (cooldown limited), and a stun special (also cooldown limited). The cooldowns are relatively short (5 and 8, respectively), and apparently the knockback instantly refreshes on a critical hit. The attacks apparently are directed in the direction the camera is pointing, and not the character.

Your character, Victor Vran, narrates what he thinks is going on.

Pressing the spacebar causes Victor to jump about one and half times his height, and pressing it a second time near a wall will cause him to kick off the wall and up a bit higher. I've seen one video where Victor jumps off several walls to get to a chest high in a ruined building. He jumps quite far out from the wall.

The environment is fully 3D, and any objects obscuring the camera as you rotate become transparent by way of a nice little "disintegration" effect.

There's a minimap in the upper right corner that displays enemy positions within its range.

The first enemies are some small spiders that die in an attack or two. Some objects are destructable, and others drop gold (21 gold for the first one I broke).

Aiming with the camera takes a little getting used to.

Got a sword from a chest I had to jump up on a ledge to get. Apparently some unknown voice directed Victor Vran to reach it.

Changes in the graphics settings seem to happen pretty quickly.

Chests can be clicked on to interact or you can use a pre-defined hotkey (default "F"). The second chest I've found you could pretty much see there was a pathway on the minimap and a small enemy "lures" you in that direction anyway. It's possible that the secrets in this game could be quite cleverly hidden.

There's apparently a checkpoint save system (in this case, a large blue "snowflake" at a chokepoint). The first checkpoint is on a bridge that gives a nice view of more town below it. It's a nice little visual.

(I forgot, there is a double-tap function of the movement keys that will cause Victor to roll.)

The game gives you a hint about how to dodge when you fight your first big spider.

There's an extremely rudimentary "codex" accessed by pressing the "J" key (it's a bestiary).

The next level is accessed through a sewer grate, as the gates to the castle are closed.

That's all for now.
 

Ninjerk

Arcane
Joined
Jul 10, 2013
Messages
14,323
Befouled Tomb/further maps and miscellaneous thoughts in the spoiler. First Boss fight at the end.
Arrow to the knee joke. I got a costume choice sometime before this, and it, down to the razor rim on the hat the pose, are a direct rip offinfluence from a Mortal Kombat character from, what, 10 years ago? Who is it, Liu Kang? (Revisiting this idea later, there's also an apparent Clint Eastwood influence with the brown, poorly stitched serapa)

Most maps have a number of challenges ranging from killing a certain number of specific monster types to killing everything without using healing potions.

There's an objective tracker of sorts underneath the minimap that primarily tells you which dungeon to go to that will advance the story. After reaching the Befouled Tomb and running through it without killing anything of consequence, the objective tracker indicated that I needed to reach a different dungeon. Upon reaching it, I find that it's locked and the disembodied voice that has been making bad jokes to this point indicated that I would need to talk to the Queen. He made a shitlord misogynist comment about the Queen "being good at letting things in where they don't belong." Totally triggered :salute:

The Royal Crypt is what I needed permission to enter. Provided I report back to her, I have her permission to enter. Okay.

I've just noticed on this worldmap (which reminds me of Ghouls 'n' Ghosts/Goblins for some reason) that there's a "Den of the Broodmother" dungeon that I need to be level 10 to enter. They've allowed me to bypass combat to advance the story thus far; I'm really not certain why arbitray level caps are needed at this point to access more trivial content.

The first objective in the Royal Crypt is to find the entrance to the lower levels (the Weeping Halls or somesuch). As I skipped hundreds of enemies by running past them, jokevoice commented that I was lost (true) and running through intersections without regard to where I was going (also true). Upon accidentally finding the objective I was looking for (I was staring at the minimap), the joke voice commented upon my miraculous luck at discovering the entrance.

Running through this level, Victor comments upon what must be the 20th hunter corpse he's seen in the city. My new objective is to "Find Adrian" who at some point begins telling me that he's been luring me here for a reason and he'll tell me about it if I'll just jump off this ledge to talk to him.

Oh, Adrian is Victor's friend apparently. Up to this point, all information about what my character is doing, saying, or thinking is delivered via text at the top of the screen. Either voiceover is forthcoming (other things such as "hard" difficulty are unavailable at the moment), or I'm expected to adjust the camera to aim my attacks as well as read what's happening in the story (who cares).

Something I forgot to mention: starting at level 2 you get "Destiny Cards" which are flat or percentage upgrades to things like crit chance, armor, health, crit damage, etc. I found an upgraded version of one of the card choices I was given upon reaching level 3 (first card activated at level 2), but I can't equip it until I have another Destiny Point.

So the first real boss monster has a really slow fixed attack timer with a really weak attack. Every now and again (not sure if health triggered or timer triggered, I think timer), he summons totems that do a stream of not insignificant damage to Victor while apparently leeching some of it back to the boss. The totems go down in a few blasts with the shotgun at level 3. This part is really, really boring. After chipping away at his health for some time, he summons monsters and starts calling down some kind of artillery shit that is broadcasted before it hits. I avoided most of it without trying. The damage on the artillery is pretty high. When the boss gets to low health, he summons multiple vampiric totems (3 I think), and I just do not have the damage to kill them quickly enough to survive (they don't seem to have a range limitation).

I'm going to respawn at the Hub and likely try to get back to him as quickly as possible after purchasing a few things to try to get myself enough damage or other advantages to beat him. If I need to level up to beat him, I will probably shelve this game indefinitely as the trash combat and character building is in no way satisfying enough to incentivize playing the game further. Perhaps when they implement Hard difficulty it will be.

Stay tuned for another update.
 

Ninjerk

Arcane
Joined
Jul 10, 2013
Messages
14,323
Nevermind, switched to sword almost killed him, but a visual bug resulted in my being unable to see my health bar. The game screen is surrounded by red fog and an "injured graphic" when health is getting low so I used those cues for when to use a health potion and one of the two full-heal altars placed in the arena space.
 

Ninjerk

Arcane
Joined
Jul 10, 2013
Messages
14,323
Game sounds entertaining. What's your opinion about the game so far Ninjerk?
I think I started thinking about wanting a WASD camera-locked ARPG a couple years ago, so I'm already on board with the general control scheme. I like the platforming elements introduced by the regular- and wall-jumping mechanics, but if there's only two or so secrets per level reached by using them, then they're dropping the ball. The jury is out on the combat, generally speaking--while I did skip most of the available combat, Hard difficulty is not available yet. The character development options are functional, if nothing else.

At the moment, I would advise ARPG fans to stick with their Souls-likes and Path of the Exile until I get a better grasp on where the game is going (in terms of how the gameplay develops as I progress through the game as well as how the developers add content). IOW, it's not time to write the game off yet.
 

Ninjerk

Arcane
Joined
Jul 10, 2013
Messages
14,323
Reached Level 4 without difficulty before trying boss again and managed to get him to where I couldn't see any red in his hp bar. I don't know if something else happens when he has that little hp (the pace is a little too frantic for me to have noticed), but it seemed like I should have killed him. Alas, I didn't. Might try again later, but the difference between that attempt and another appears to be either a level or a lucky crit--neither of which I care to really grind out. For ARPG junkies, the game could be fun, but I wouldn't spend 20 dollars on it yet (I think it's EA anyways).
 

4249

I stalk the night
Patron
Joined
Nov 19, 2014
Messages
1,216
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Divinity: Original Sin 2
Has anyone been able to give this a proper go now that it's released? Looks like it could be some fun, but I've heard that it's very short and somewhat repetitive. Seems they're still intending to release some free content for it though:

Development will not end with the release. We will continue to improve and update Victor Vran with free features and content. Here is what you can expect in the near future:

  • The free Tome of Souls DLC will introduce a brand new weapon type that unlocks new active abilities and a spellcaster playstyle. Of course, there will be legendary tomes of forbidden words and endless power, such as The Nekonomicon and Fifty Shades of Slay.
  • The free Highlander Outfit DLC will open even more character build options and an exciting new look for the title character.
  • The free Cauldron of Chaos DLC will add a huge new map which will offer a randomized layout, encounters and daily challenges.
  • A Local Coop multiplayer mode will allow two players to play together on the same system.
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
19,886
I tried the pirated version, played for few hours but the game froze twice so I quit (I guess this is justice since I didn't pay for it or it is a blessing since I didn't pay for it :D). Except for the freezing the game is best casual aRPG I played (better then D3 or Van Helsing games and even better than TL2). I still would not recommend it over Grim Dawn, Path of Exile or older aRPGs.
 

Renevent

Cipher
Joined
Feb 22, 2013
Messages
925
Sounds like a shitty pirate version...the real game runs very smooth and there's very few complaints on performance.
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
19,886
I don't think it is, I read some other people had the same problem.
As for the gameplay I really liked how each map has challenges to do and how you can choose to increase difficulty yourself for greater rewards with those flags. I also enjoyed the jumping, dodging and finding secrets.
Dodging is not irritating to me when the game is played in isometric perspective, but I cannot stand Dark Soul or TW2 because of dodging.
In Victor Vran it feels like you have more control over what is happening.
 

Villagkouras

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2014
Messages
1,022
Location
Greece
Very nice surprise this game. It kicks Diablo 3 and Torchlight 2 ass.

I like mechanics like dodging and jumping. Fighting is very smooth and fun. It's meant to be played with a controller, I don't think I could manage it with keyboard & mouse.

Very well presented. Story of course is non existent, but there are a few nice touches as the other narrator (The Voice) comments on your actions, even if change your mind and do another thing than pushing forward.

But the game has a major flaw: It's too easy. I played for about 3 hours and killed the first major boss without dying even once. If you want to die a bit, don't select the 1st option when starting and go with the difficult setting.

Maybe it's the best game Douge Cockle has voiced. :troll:
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
19,886
I am playing it with K&M, it has full support for it and dodging works fine with it and so do all the skills
 

Inspectah

Savant
Joined
Jun 29, 2015
Messages
468
It kicks Diablo 3 and Torchlight 2 ass
Not that hard to kick Diablo 3's ass.
This game really was a pleasant surprise, got it expecting shit but I am actually enjoying the pace of the game
 

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