Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars

Simpler Total War Warhammer like game, with turn based combat. Campaign missions are more like a puzzle, but sandbox is quite fun. Overall fun game for quicker gaming session.

Great game!!! Must have for all strategy and vampire lovers.

Basically, it's Total Warhammer 1, but you never leave Sylvania.

Fun little pass time. Nice artwork. I don't like the card aspect much, but its not to annoying. I wish the game would fill my wide screen.

Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars is an ambitious hybrid strategy title that blends grand-scale empire management with turn-based tactical battles and card-driven abilities, all wrapped in a dark gothic fantasy setting. Developed by Palindrome Interactive and published by Kalypso Media, the game sets out to carve a unique niche by combining familiar strategy frameworks with vampire mythology, emphasizing faction identity and thematic flavor as much as mechanical depth. The result is a game that often feels bold in concept, occasionally uneven in execution, but consistently distinctive in tone.
The world of Nemire serves as the stage for three playable vampire clans, each anchoring its own campaign and philosophy. The Dracul embody aristocratic conquerors who favor discipline and military dominance, the Nosfernus represent grotesque undead hordes thriving on attrition and terror, and the Moroia lean into arcane power and manipulation. These campaigns are structured in a largely linear fashion, unfolding as a series of narrative-driven missions rather than a fully open-ended sandbox. While this approach allows for focused storytelling and curated challenges, it can also feel restrictive to players accustomed to freer grand-strategy progression.
On the strategic map, gameplay revolves around territorial expansion, army movement, and resource control. Blood acts as the central currency, governing unit recruitment, card usage, and special abilities, which ties thematic flavor directly into mechanical decision-making. Capturing settlements increases your blood income and expands your strategic options, but the management layer is relatively streamlined. Once territory is secured, upkeep is minimal, and long-term economic planning takes a back seat to preparing for the next conflict. This makes the campaign layer accessible but also limits its depth, as there are few meaningful choices beyond expansion and positioning.
Combat is where the game places much of its emphasis. Battles transition to turn-based encounters on grid-based maps, where unit placement, facing, and terrain can influence outcomes. Each faction’s identity is reinforced through a unique deck of cards that enables spells, buffs, debuffs, and special actions during combat. This card system introduces an element of unpredictability and tactical timing, rewarding players who understand how to synergize unit abilities with card effects. When it works well, combat feels engaging and strategic, though some battles can feel constrained by map size or repetitive once optimal strategies emerge.
Visually and thematically, Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars excels in atmosphere. The art direction leans heavily into gothic imagery, with crumbling castles, blood-soaked battlefields, and stylized character designs that clearly differentiate each clan. The soundtrack and ambient audio reinforce the dark fantasy mood, helping Nemire feel oppressive and ancient. Narrative delivery, however, is more subdued. Story beats are conveyed through brief cutscenes and dialogue, which establish context but rarely delve deeply into character development or dramatic arcs, leaving much of the lore to be inferred rather than explored.
The game’s learning curve can be steep, particularly for players unfamiliar with hybrid strategy systems. Tutorials explain the basics, but the interaction between the campaign map, tactical combat, and card mechanics takes time to fully grasp. Early missions can feel overwhelming due to the number of systems introduced in quick succession. Once these systems click, however, the gameplay loop becomes more coherent, and decisions feel more purposeful as victories on the battlefield directly reinforce strategic momentum.
Replayability is supported through additional modes such as skirmish and sandbox play, allowing players to experiment with different factions and scenarios outside the main campaigns. These modes offer more freedom than the narrative-driven structure, but they still inherit some of the same limitations, such as limited map variety and predictable AI behavior over extended sessions. As a result, long-term replay value depends largely on how much the player enjoys experimenting with faction mechanics and combat card combinations.
Ultimately, Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars is a game defined by its ambition and identity. It does not fully commit to being a deep grand-strategy title, nor does it streamline itself into a purely tactical experience. Instead, it exists between genres, offering a layered but sometimes uneven blend of systems. For players drawn to turn-based strategy, vampire lore, and hybrid mechanics that reward experimentation, it can be a rewarding and atmospheric experience. For those seeking a more polished or deeply focused strategy game, its structural compromises and pacing issues may temper enthusiasm. Even so, it stands as a distinctive entry in the strategy genre, one that dares to merge darkness, tactics, and thematic flair into a single, blood-soaked campaign.
Rating: 6/10

that's a great game!
firstly, it's NOT some rogue like desk builder which are plaguing today's games landscape like a dirt.
it's solid linear epic story which i absolutely love.
story/cut scenes amount is just right. it's enough to keep me engaged with characters, but not too much to overburden with irrelevant content.
story shows 3 vampires relationship in very cool intervined way each time told from point of view of different character.

but main point is definitely tactical combat. and it's very good. game let's you manually fight with correct tactics and defeat STRONGER armies without losses while if played auto it's total defeat. that's very satisfying.
there is also strategic layer, manage resources (blood), get artifacts to strenghten heroes, play global cards with different effects, build buildings and recruit units.
raise exp levels of heroes and units and unlock skill tree.

spoiler, last campaign, moroia, with ranged/magical units has most satisfying combat, despite a bit trickier resources management.

i would recommend it even at full retail price without discount, which i don't do frequently.

one of the most intriguing game
kind of its own genre
very immersive
feels like a mix of HoMaM, Spellforce, LotR BfME
RTS part plays perfect
easy to adapt gameplay
love it