The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing Previews
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Van Helsing is accompanied in his familiar ARPG questing, slaying, and looting by Lady Katarina. A unique story companion, Katarina is a female spectre who can help you in combat, store loot, and sell things in town while you continue to mow through the legions of darkness. She has her own equipment slots, attributes, and skill trees as well. You can build her to be a sturdy melee combatant if you're more of a (hang back and pick things off with my crossbow) sort of player, or invest in more support-driven abilities if you'd rather remain in the thick of things.
Most of the characters I ran into were fully voice-acted, and done rather well. Van Helsing and Katarina, in particular, have an enjoyable back-and-forth with high quality voice over. I didn't play long enough to get much of a sense of the overarching story, other than it feels very mystery-laden, steampunkish, and avoids trope overdose in the early stages.
That being said, it's a bit hard at at first to not feel restricted in terms of build diversity. In most ARPGs, we're used to having our pick of several, distinct classes with wildly-varying playstlyes. In the Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing, you're. well, always Van Helsing. There are only two major trees: a melee focused one and a ranged/magic-focused one. Granted, you will find a lot of diversity in each, and they're complimented by a tertiary screen for your unlockable Tricks and Auras. The latter are gained through story and quests, but level up just like any other skill once unlocked. You can have two passive Auras and two active Tricks equipped at a given time.
As well as Polygon:
In Van Helsing, players will have access to two separate skill trees: the melee skill tree and the ranged skill tree. According to Toth, both skill trees can be combined, and players can strategically choose paths so that their skills from both trees complement each other.
"So say you're building a melee character, you can use the spells of the ranged skill tree with a melee weapon," she said. "So there are many different ways you can advance your character."
Toth told Polygon that players will not be able to unlock every skill in a single playthrough, so they will be forced to choose a path. Their choices will then be reflected in their character. The game doesn't have character classes, but the skill trees allow players to customize Van Helsing and his companion, Lady Katarina, in such a way that one player may have a ranged character while another has a melee character and another has a magic-focused character.
