The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing III

Van Helsing III is a good game with solid action-RPG experience for every fan of the genre with solid gameplay, but it lacks the features needed to become a worthy culmination of a trilogy.

With many old features removed and some new caps introduced, The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing III feels like a shadow of its former self. That said, it is still worth the journey into the original atmosphere, the excellent script and the challenging gameplay of the trilogy, just one last time.

The grand finale turned out to be not that grand. In fact, it’s the weakest game of the whole trilogy and definitely not a worthy sequel to the great second episode. [09/2015, p.52]

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing III can't redefine the old concept. It lacks new features but can be considered a fun new story in the successful trilogy.

Van Helsing takes a bunch of ideas and mechanics from different games and tries to amalgamate them. It doesn’t attempt to do anything original or push the boundaries of RPGs. If this were the 90′s, I might be impressed. Nothing sets this game apart; it strives to be a solid game, nothing more. Unfortunately, ‘solid’ is just too flimsy to warrant a second playthrough.

All in all, Van Helsing III isn’t a bad game exactly, but it’s not a great game either and in some ways, it’s a disappointing end to what has otherwise been a good series in the ARPG genre. For my money, the series reached its zenith at the second and should have closed the door then.

At times it can be fun, but it's still incomplete and flawed. Coop mode could make it shine, but the netcode isn't even nearly stable enough to offer a good time. For the third chapter of the saga, we would've expected a bit more effort.

Van Helsing isn't a bad game at all, but it lacks the features needed to become a worthy culmination of a saga that, with the first two chapters, had shown a catchier gameplay.

It is obvious that over the development of Van Helsing III Neocore shifted its attention to another project and that had a terrible impact on the overall quality of the final chapter of this beloved trilogy.

Riddled with problems but charming in its obvious enthusiasm. [July 2015, p.63]

Neocore should have billed this one as an expansion, as it looks very short and weak compared to the two previous offerings. It seems as if the developers were in a hurry to wrap things up.

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing 3 is a good-looking game but the lack of features from the previous entries are a sore point

Like visiting your hometown after years of absence. Everything's the same, yet off somehow. As you visit all the same places and exchange words with old friends, you're faced with an uncomfortable duality. On one hand, you get the closure of knowing how it all turned out, but on the other, you wonder what could have been, making you simultaneously satisfied and unsettled by the reality that this is the end.

It's difficult to recommend this particular title to newcomers in the series — they would be best served jumping in with an earlier entry — but easy to recommend the series as a whole.

Van Helsing III feels much more like an expansion of the second iteration than a game all on its own. It's nice to have a solid end to the story, but it's baffling that so many features were removed from the previous games for this finale.

Anyone who follows this series will still be entertained with The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing III, but they'll ultimately be disappointed by the overly steamlined nature of this installment.

The final chapter in Van Helsing trilogy offers very little in terms of interesting innovations. Gameplay can be fun at times, but second game had more content.

The final part of the trilogy should be called a DLC at best, and a rather short one at that. [Sept 2015, p.82]

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing III is not the conclusion that the saga deserved; it is too simplified in some of its aspects, it is short, it is impossible to import your previous character, and it has technical issues. The gameplay is still valid and entertaining, but lies under this huge list of problems.

Once fresh diablo-like game has consumed all its powers and the finish line see it barely limping. Hopefully the last adventure of Van Helsing is so-so mediocre and does not offer anything new, we didn’t see before. Moreover, it is considerably more linear. To put it simply, the third episode ran out of steam, it lacks drive and it's just an ordinary hack’n’slash game.

There’s enough here for folks who have come this far to finish the journey, but it’s certainly no place to start, and a sad note to end on.

A real missed opportunity, it should be done better and has been before.