The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing

Make sure to set game up on Casual Hardcore difficulty for an easier playthrough.

If playing single player and you know you are about to die simply hit start which pauses the game and exit the game.

If you still die hit your HOME button and START - MANAGE GAME - and delete your SAVE DATA FROM CONSOLE ONLY! Do not dashboard and quit your game. Deleting your save will dashboard your game. Stay on this screen and make sure your save is fully deleted. For some reason I would have to hit delete save from console twice for it to register properly.

Make sure your save is deleted fully from console. Then boot the game back up and your game should sync to your cloud save backup. At most you should only lose 20 minutes of progress.

Another option is to progress to a certain point in the game you feel comfortable with. Once you get worried you might die go into network settings and hit go offline. While offline your save will never sync to the cloud. If you die simply delete your save from console and go back to settings and hit go online. You will be back to when you first hit go offline.

While the other guides here and on other sites are pretty good, I could never understand why a Ranged build was taken. Sure, its safer to hang back, but with so many moments in this game where you're mobbed by small enemies, or ripped into them by some of the larger enemies, not to mention the final boss fight.. a Ranged build is just far too squishy for my liking, leaving too much to chance and rely on the "delete save" trick mentioned a number of times already. I personally have had no issues, never even dropped below 50% health - and even then, I was being silly and seeing how many I could take on before needing to heal. The build I used is all about survival in the face of danger, not trying to avoid the inevitable.

Difficulty
For the purpose of gaining the achievement, I'm assuming you're all on Casual Hardcore. No sense making it more challenging than you need to.
Secondly, play SOLO. While the game is much more fun with a friend, playing solo the enemies have substantially less health. My rough calculation was around one third of that when playing multiplayer with just a single buddy.
Disable enemy respawns. You'll level up plenty fine if you just play the story and grab any side missions, they're not hard. There is one exception to this late game, will get to that later.

Stats
Body. Put everything into Body. The ingame description should be enough to convince you, but if not.. the Body stat increases your defense and life pool. Health regeneration and potions are based on a percentage of this, so more life means more recovery too. The other thing Body does is it increases your Melee damage. For this reason, we're going a Melee class. One stat gives your damage a boost as well as survival. Every time you level up, spend everything in Body.

Skills - Mystic Warrior
To start with, spend a couple of points in Bash. If you pick up the secret weapon Excalibur in Croakwood (coin in the well), that further improves Bash. Before you make your way into the mines, respec at the Gypsy and put those points into Flowing Combo.
Flowing Combo (with Extending Combo) makes multiple strikes with each attack. If there are multiple enemies around, it'll hit them all. If there is only one target, then all strikes go to them. Better overall damage than Bash and works with groups as well, where Bash is largely single-target damage. This is the only offensive skill you need.
Parry is fantastic, with both upgrades. Max this out.
Bodybuilding is a great boost to your Health pool too. Late game, 10% health is over 150 points, more than you can get in a single piece of armour.

Skills - Occult Hunter
Don't ignore this tree, you want to max Full Resistance. Forget the upgrade nodes, this is a nice flat boost to your elemental and poison resistance. Very helpful late game.

Skills - Auras
Rampage (with Furious Rampage) is a great damage boost. While the upgrade node is only 1% extra critical chance, every bit helps. With this you'll be seeing damage in excess of 1000 towards the end, enough to kill most enemies in one hit. For this reason, there is no reason to take any of the powerup nodes on Flowing Combo. Keep Rage at maximum for this boost to Critical.
Aura of Defiance is your second aura. At max level you have a flat 10% damage reduction. Very handy.

Skills - Tricks
Arcane Healing - just one level here, I rarely needed to use it.. but when I did, it was good to have in addition to Health potions.
Last Stand - I took this one to level 3. Bonus damage and critical chance for 40 seconds was more than enough for any encounter.
Ethereal Embodyment gives you 3 seconds of invincibility. Its your "get out of trouble" card. If you're surrounded and life is disappearing before your eyes, hit this emergency button and you'll disappear and can walk through enemies to get a better position. I never needed to use it, but felt better that I had it there. Only one point though, higher levels do not increase the invincibility time.

Katarina
First and foremost, set her in Ghost mode. You don't want her going offensive and pulling a group of enemies to you that you're not ready for. In Ghost mode she gives you further damage reduction too.
Prioritise maxxing Spirit Guardian, even more damage reduction for you.
Gift of Resistance is good too, further boosting your elemental and poison resistances, those things can be a killer late game.
Any spare points you have could easily go in Spectral Boon (Attack Speed), Empowering Presence (Damage) or Otherworldly Senses (Magic Find).
Pour every ability point she gets into Body, for the same reason as you. The more life she has, the more damage she can take away from you with Spirit Guardian.

Perks
Berserker - 10% damage boost at max rage. You're already at max rage for the Rampage aura, you want this.
Precise - 5% Critical Chance on your first attack on an enemy. Which really means 5% extra chance they die on that first hit.
Iron Man [Req. Berserker + Lev10] - As your health drops, your resistances increase.
From here, save up your perks until you have 4 of them available to spend. By this time you should have more than enough points in Body and enough Gold to respec, so go talk to Gustav (probably at the Secret Lair by now)
Take 100 points off Body, put them all on Luck (costs around 50,000 gold). This gives you 110 base Luck and enables the following perks:
Destructive - 50% Critical Damage
Perfect Aim - 5% Critical Chance
Take those 100 points off Luck (costs around 50,000 gold), put 40 points on Dex, 15 points on Will and the rest back on Body. This enables the following perks:
Artful Dodger - 10% Dodge and 5% Attack Speed
Slayer - 10% Damage
After that, remove those points from Dex and Will (costs around 25,000 gold) and put them all back on Body.
These are handy to get all in one hit. Later on, if you have money to burn, you can respec again to give 110 Dex and get:
Gunslinger - 7% Attack Speed (applies to Melee despite the name).
Other Perks worthy of note:
Survivor [Req. 110 Body] - 5% Health, 20% better Health Regen
Drinker [Req. Drink Potions] - 20% Potion Efficiency and +50 Poison Resist

Items - Katarina
Covering Katarina first. As she's taking damage for you, give her items with Body. Forget dodge or resistances or anything as she's taking flat damage away from you in Ghost Mode.
The only exception to this is Magic Find. Any % she has in MF applies to you. Seen as she'll automatically heal, survival isn't an issue. Put what Magic Find you can on her instead of you.

Items - Helsing
Melee Weapon - mostly look for the better DPS. Even slower two-handed weapons are great with Flowing Combo attacking multiple times.
Ranged Weapon - as you're not using it, look for something that boosts Body.
Armour - Points in Body are good as that boosts damage and health, but don't neglect Resistance. Early on you want Poison resistance, late game you want Elemental as well.
Anything that boosts your Critical Chance is good too, have that Rampage Aura kick in more often.
Items that give Health-on-hit work much better with Flowing Combo and fast attacking dual wielded weapons, but even then, the health you get back is so minimal next to your 1000-2000 health pool. Prioritise other stats first.

Thinks to look out for
Croakwood - Make sure you do the side mission for the Gypsy to allow respec. Make sure you find the Ancient Coin, put it in the Well and use the Oil to get the sword from the stone (West of the well), this gets you a very good early two-handed sword "Excalibur".
Gallowsbog - Save one quest item "bone relic" or something to give to the Frog statue to the East, it gives 2 ability points. There are other statues like this later in the game in the Ink Realms.
Gallowsbog - Also while here activate the 8 Rune Stones around the place (they appear on the map) to activate a Forest Guardian fight to the West. Killing it gives 2 Ability Points and 1 Skill Point.
Mines - Change from Bash to Flowing Combo before you go in here. Bash against the hundreds of baby spiders here is not ideal, Flowing Combo makes short work of them. While you're doing the respec, don't forget to unlearn the powerups on Strike and Shoot, also the Ghostly Mirage as you're not using Katarina for that. Those points are better spent elsewhere.
Rookery - After the Dark Alchemist side mission is a Puddle of Goo. Use it and pick the first option "Its all the rage in Borgova" gaining +50 Poison Resistance permanently (second option is -25!)
Special Note: Courtesy of MrInfliction:
Quick note for the Puddle of Goo in the Rookery: On my playthrough, if I took the first option, it gave me a permanent -20 poison resistance. Even after trying deleting my local save and choosing to drink the Puddle of Goo 3 times in a row, it still gave me the negative stats. According to a guide found on Gamebanshee (http://www.gamebanshee.com/vanhelsing/walkthrough/theda....php), the outcome of drinking the Goo is random.
I believe that this occurence happens once every save file, so be ready to delete your local save and reload in case you get unlucky like I did ;).

Gables/Rooftop Mayhem - When you reach the final area of the game, you should be pretty close to Level 30. What you want to do, from Rooftop Mayhem, enable "Enemy Respawn". Now, when you quit the game (just back to the main menu), enemies will appear in the areas again. From the starting point on the Rooftop, head south and enter the Gables. When you arrive, you'll be surrounded by a bunch of rather weak non-elemental enemies that are easy to dispatch, along with one easy boss - The Marquis of Soot. He would quite regularly drop good Level 30 Rare, Epic and Set items. So... run from Rooftops to Gables, kill Marquis of Soot, return to Rooftops and quit the game. When you return you'll be at Rooftops, nice and close to rinse/repeat. Restarting in Gables sends you to the other end of the map.
The set I looked out for was the Gorgoniad Set:
Chest Armour - 4% Critical Chance, 15 Body, Damage Reduced by 10%, +100% Defense (Set: 2), 4% Attack Speed (Set: 3)
Cloak - 4% Critical Chance, 3% Attack Speed, ~75 Health, +100% Defense (Set: 2), Heals you by 20% of damage per hit (Set: 3)
Hat - 3% Critical Chance, 3% Attack Speed, 10 Health per Hit, ~9 to all Attributes (Set: 2), ~25% Critical Damage (Set: 3)
If you can get all 3 pieces, you will be practically invincible. Even two pieces will give you a substantial advantage for the boss. Not that you'll need it.

I just finished this on my first try. I got a lot of useful info from the other solutions, but there are a few things that I didn't see mentioned that I think could be of help.

First, there is a level cap at 30 for Van Helsing and 25 for Katarina. This means that you can grind a little extra for higher levels, more points, etc. But it is finite so you must plan your point usage for skills and tricks wisely. You are also limited to level 10 on the perk tree. You get a perk roughly every 2 levels.

Second, the most useful power-up as a hunter is the scatter shot. But the icicle shot can be very helpful for large enemies because there is a chance to freeze them for a few seconds. Which is just enough time to disrupt their attacks and finish them off.

Third, you should focus hard on getting items or upgrading items to restore HP and Mana for each hit. This will keep you alive and able to continue using upgraded attacks when you have a swarm of enemies around you.

Fourth, in the later levels I turned Katarina to Ghost mode because on any other setting she kept finding large swarms of ornithopters and bringing them back to me and nearly causing me to die. You don't get her attack ability in Ghost mode, but you still get all of her buffs.

Fifth, speaking of buffs, she has two buffs that increase your attack speed and damage, work on upgrading those first. Also, if you find yourself surrounded by enemies and about to die, you can use Ghastly Shape to quickly rush out of the middle of the enemies and you will cause damage to anyone you pass through. This is a quick and easy way to avoid death.

Sixth, if you choose to grind to level up, spend as much time grinding on the most recent place you have visited. The item drops seem to be tied to the level you were at when you first went there. The rooftop mayhem level has a boss called the Marquis of Soot that seems to respawn if you have enemy respawns turned on and it usually drops something good. I haven't seen named bosses respawn on any other levels.

Finally, if you have enough gold you can have the Romany woman enchant and disenchant your items until you find something that you like. Some of the enchantments are very powerful some are weak. It is just luck of the draw.

I hope this is helpful. Please let me know if you have questions or disagree before down-voting please. I am working my way through all of the Van Helsing games right now so I will stay engaged with this solution if you have questions.

Hey everyone, got a video up for some of my tips for completing this with a hardcore character. Was able to do it twice, but had failed 5 times before:( Hope the video helps