Victor Vran is a more casual ARPG, where upgrade your character with equipment, activable skills and cards, instead of upgrading in a skill tree. Weapons have their own 2 different skills which you can use, and also you can have activable skills which you can fill up with rage in different ways. Surprisingly this formula is quite fun and understandable for me at least, because the weapon stats are also clearly described. Also, the player's movement is fast, as you can dodge and jump aswell. With jumping you can also wall jump to reach places which has no other route to, however this mechanics is not that well used, except for the secrets.
And yes, the levels have some secrets which can give additional equipment and gold. Also, each level has set of challanges for additional reward, even if you beat the story you get additional challanges to complete. Playthrough the story itself, you don't need to do any challanges, or even beat every level in the game, only just what is necessary to do. However, if you feel overwhelmed, there is a casual mode for the story only, whch makes the game more simple.
The game has a great atmosphere, where you mainly explore a city and it's outskirts. You can see many cementaries, crypts, mines, city districts, old houses and so on. The enemies are also fits for these areas, as you will fight skeletons, vampires, essence of magic and other elements and many more.
The story is fine, it's a good motivation to explore the game and the voice acting is surprisingly good.
Finally, the game can be enjoyed in coop and pvp, too.
However, my main complaint for the game is you don't feel that powerful even if you level up as much as you can. This might not sounds a bad of thing, but I think if you level up and get better equipment, there should be a clear indication that you are indeed strong and can take on the enemies without much issue, but in this game it feels that the enemies overscale you, and you will need to resort to tactically dodge and take out your enemies, instead of using raw power. Again, this might not sounds bad for some people, but it just seems to me that the amount of experience I gain and whatever equipment I get serves me no purpose, as I won't be that strong at all.
Also, some of the enemies and their attack seems to be close to impossible to dodge, and you will resort to use some cheap tactics.
And some of the weapons won't hit the enemies when I attack right next to them, like for example the rapier. I have to move away in order to start hitting the enemy again, which makes no sense to me.
Overall Victor Vran is a really fun ARPG for those who are interested in the genre. It takes a more casual, but action oriented approach which has it's pros, but also has some cons. If you are interested, give it a try, you won't be disappointed.
Also, as far as I know the Motorhead DLC is peak, although I haven't played it myself.
