It's hard to look at Victor Vran, a monster hunter in pseudo-Elizabethan gear with a wide-brimmed hat, and not think he looks at least a little reminiscent of Solomon Kane.
Victor Vran's mission in his game, designed by Haemimont Games of Bulgaria, is to cleanse the Eastern European-ish city of Zagoravia from an infestation of demons that have completely upended the place. The only survivors left are the city's beautiful young queen, her guards, and some advisors. Many other demon hunters attempted this before Victor, but he's the last one (besides a young woman who also appears shortly into the game). The good news is that Victor has special abilities that he gained from making a deal with the devil in the past (so he's maybe more akin to the movie version of Solomon Kane...).
Victor must use melee weapons, ranged weapons, bombs, and demon powers to exterminate the hellish vermin from Zagoravia. There are undead skeletons (our old friends), giant spiders, vampires, zombies, ghostly apparitions, living gargoyles, and elementals, among many others. The gameplay is inspired by "action RPGs" like Diablo, but with a more direct, action-oriented approach compared to Diablo's furious mouse-clicking gameplay. Victor Vran plays better with a gamepad as Victor doesn't just run and attack but can dodge-roll and even execute wall-jumps to access areas at higher elevations. There are also no classes for players to choose - Victor always begins the game the same for all players but can be slightly customized as he levels up and players decide what style of Victor they prefer. Fundamentally, it's still rather similar to Diablo, though, in the sense that the game is viewed from a distance above the action and Victor must annihilate literal hordes of nasties and then pick up money and weapons they leave behind before progressing. Many of these weapons have only minor distinctions in terms of damage output and specialized effects and are best sold for extra money back at the queen's castle.
Despite the flexibility offered through Victor's abilities, the game isn't very much about elegance in its combat. Overcoming the game's challenges often comes down to simply hammering at everything in front of you and making sure your lifebar doesn't erode faster than theirs, but if it does you can just hit a button for the health potion and renew yourself, and health refills aren't rare. One of the game's attempts to offset this matter of attrition is through challenges for each area, such as requiring that you rush and defeat a certain number of monsters within a restrictive time limit or equipping things that will deliberately handicap you. It's not a very difficult game otherwise, and it's relatively short, which is probably for the best considering its repetitive nature.
The graphics are quite nice. The regions you explore are full of gloomy detail and the environment tends to get smashed up as you battle through without ever losing an important sense of clarity for the player. It's easy to get caught up in just running around the game's crypts, smashing up the sarcophagi, hoping money or health potions will fall out like you're in a world of piñatas. This does tend to happen in a lot of RPGs, where players are trained to rummage through boxes and barrels for special items.
Conceptually, the monster hunter gimmick might remind some of the Witcher, especially in modern times, and the game very much plays into that by casting Geralt of Rivia himself, Doug Cockle, to play Victor. Cockle doesn't do much to differentiate the heroes from each other and if you were only listening to the game you might easily confuse it for another Witcher installment. The game's voice acting is fine, but the story itself is uninspired and generic and feels bolted on top of the game instead of woven into it, which seems to have been the case as the game spent a while in Steam Early Access and the story was apparently one of the final elements added before its official release.
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