Death, where is thy sting? In Victor Vran’s new hardcore mode.

One of my complaints about Victor Vran, the really good action RPG in which each weapon is like a separate character class, was that the stakes were so low. Without any meaningful death penalty and without a hardcore mode, you could just plow through the game until you hit the inevitable end (i.e. next level of challenge stars). From my review:

There is no penalty for dying. No experience point setback, no financial ding, no repair costs, no respawned monsters. The worst that happens is that you might have to run back a few screen lengths to where you died. Its an odd oversight that sometimes makes the whole enterprise feel pointless. But when you play in hardcore mode with permadeath, suddenly the game becomes– Oh, wait, there is no hardcore mode or permadeath.

But in the ongoing tradition of patches marginalizing reviews, Victor Vran gets a patch today that adds hardcore characters! From the notes:

Veteran hunters are challenged to create a Hardcore character and play the game without dying. Hardcore characters can only use equipment found by themselves or other Hardcore characters. If your Hero dies, he isn’t lost completely; he loses his Hardcore status and can still be played.