If you own the first two, and simply want to purchase the third at a discount so you'll get the final cut free on release, then go ahead and buy this installment. Otherwise, stay away. Van Helsing 3 is an incredible disappointment. Characters can't carry over from the first two games. The new classes are just the old ones with their talent trees cut in half and over-simplified. The level cap is 30. Most classes have one or two decent skills which just get spammed over and over. I cannot comment on the story, because I couldn't bring myself to play very far into it. Such a shame. This series has good game play and a wonderful aesthetic to it, but this installment just falls flat in every conceivable way. As a fan, I can only hope that the final cut turns the half finished ideas in this game into the fully-realized, awesome changes across the trilogy. I can't imagine why anybody at Neocore thought it was a good idea to release VHIII in this state. I honestly felt like I'd just seen somebody kick a puppy as I was playing it.
This game... is not an Ultima game. It was rushed right out the door by EA and needed at least a year more in development. I remember eagerly saving my hard earned cash for this game back when it was released. After all, I'd played Ultima 7 1 & 2, and those were fantastic, so this one would be as well right? I learned the meaning of the phrase 'crushing disappointment', that day. Anyway, let's get to the nitty gritty. Graphics: Pretty in some places, but overall very repetitive. Environments and enemies all draw from the same color palette of stone gray or crap brown, same as most modern FPS games in fact. Very uninspired and lazy, and they have a peculiar droning effect after a while as everything just sort of blends together. Sure you have the occasional splotch of orange or blue for magma/water, but it's just not enough to break up the monotony of the game's look as a whole. I will give an honorable mention to some of the Avatar's animations, they look alright when not in combat. Spell effects are recycled from previous games, which is disappointing. Sound: Not too horrible, but the music is mostly recycled from previous games, as are the sound effects. The voice acting for the speech pack is absolutely horrid though, as it's VERY obvious the VA's were just interns reading from a script to make a few extra bucks. It would have been nice to at least get some original music. Gameplay: Jumping. That's all I need to say. What on earth & heaven combined ever possessed them to add platform jumping sections to the Ultima series of RPGs, I'll never know. They don't belong here, period. Even with the patch that 'fixes' jumping, you need to save between almost every jump, even for stationary platforms. In the original release, they even had MOVING PLATFORMS which require absurdly precise timing, and even then you had a 50/50 chance of not making the jump due to horrid controls. Combat and magic is just... uninspired. It's as if Diablo 2 threw up all over a Sierra adventure game, just click repeatedly until your enemy dies. Even Diablo had strategy, this has NONE. ZERO. Magic fares a bit better, but is hampered by the unintuitive inventory system carried over from the previous two games, and often takes so long to cast that it's pointless. The spells are also fairly lackluster, with most bordering on useless anyway. It's much easier & more effective to draw your weapon and start clicking. Did I mention the horrible controls? Not just when jumping either. Movement is sluggish and unresponsive, and there's a definite input lag which makes the game very difficult to play. Story: Where to begin... it's AWFUL. Completely and utterly awful. Right from the get-go you are forced to participate in things which the avatar WOULD NEVER DO. The entire Ultima series is based upon the premise that the ends NEVER justifies the means. EVER. Yet within the first hour of gameplay, you're forced to do something which is disgusting, vile, and completely against EVERYTHING the Avatar stands for. As things progress, you are required to do things equally as horrible time and time again. This isn't like previous Ultimas either, where such actions were completely optional. In this game, you pretty much need to wantonly murder people and commit other horrible crimes in order to progress the story. It's a complete and utter betrayal of the series up to this point, and despite the horrid gameplay is my number one problem with the game. Other than the aforementioned, the story is very boring and cliched. Hero from another world, defeat evil, get back home, blah blah blah. Nothing new, no memorable plot twists or characters. There is nothing here worth becoming emotionally invested in. Overall, I'd recommend that people stay far, far away from this game. It's not worth the time, the money, or the loss of HDD space. I don't see how anyone with the slightest bit of taste or intelligence could give this game anything above a 3. Personally, I think a 2 is being VERY generous.
