Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars

Review by Gaming Masterpieces - The greatest games of all time on Steam.
Is this game a masterpiece? No, it is a streamlined 4x strategy game with an underdeveloped enemy AI, which hurts in a single player game. Expand your kingdom conquering neigbouring provinces. Defeat your enemies in turn-based battles. Use cards for special effects. Not too complicated, but all the core aspects are working fine, the lore is fantastic and the visuals are gorgeous.
In the lands of Nemire, Vampires rule the land. They are the protectors of their lands, keep the humans safe... as long as they pay their blood tax. Fitting for a vampire game, there is no gold, but blood as the main ressource used for buying everything. On the main map you manage your provines - move your armies, claim cities to gain a constant supply of blood, recruit new army units or generals, heal your armies, develop your provinces by constructing buildings and a few more things. Additionally you can interact with the game using action cards, which you will receive every four turns (or on special occasions). There is also a large upgrade tree for your clan which can be developed spending Legacy Points. When two rival armies meet in a province, combat occurs. You can either auto-resolve it or play it in turn-based combat. Your armies are lead by Vampire Lords. Turn suitable humans into Vampire Lords if you need more generals. Armies without leaders fight much worse. Lords can equip items to improve their stats or learn new spells with enough experience. The turn-based combat works fine. Nothing complicated, move your armies, attack, flank, cast spells, occupy shrines to gain their benefits. Maybe a bit too simple for die-hard strategy buffs.
The game is single-player only, and it's core feature is the campaign. Three clans fight for supremacy (the brutal sewer sulking Moroia are my favorite), and there are four missions for each of the clans. The narrative is really cool, told during the missions and in cinematic sequences. Other game modes are the sandbox (long game that allows you to select your clan, land and win condition) and skirmish (just a battle where you select the participating units) modes. I am highly impressed by the aesthetics. The beautiful map of the dark fantasy lands scrolls softly, there is a zoom option to take a closer look, and a turn option to see the map from all sides. Very polished. It is also clear that a lot of work went not only in the artwork but also into the lore and story of the game. The soundtrack is high quality as well.
Conclusion:
Gorgeous single-player 4x strategy game in a Vampire realm.

This review is based on 130 hours in Beta and a couple in the "finished" game.
I'd give it a strong "neutral" rating, but there is no such. Initially, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the game has lots of potential and is a good start. I see it as a nice combination between Warlords II Deluxe and the Heroes of Might and Magic series games. It is substantially different from both, however, so it feels new and I like it.
- It is not fatal to lose heroes, which adds a welcome additional layer of strategy
- armies and capped in size, like in Warlords II, making it impossible to make indefeatable deathballs.
- the card system is neat and adds a special flavor
- once you figure out how things work and that losing and recapturing castles is not a big deal, the challenge becomes similar to that of chopping wood and trying to avoid a splinter
Currently there are 12 missions and 4 Sandbox maps. This feels too little for a full game. Provided that the units and assets are already designed, it will take little investment to make a few dozen terrains for Sandbox, some more open, other more closed and sheltered, some with more AI players, others with less.
Larger number of maps to choose from is more important that larger number of playable races.
A usable map editor is strongly recommended. Players will donate thousands and thousands of hours for free to make the game richer by designing and uploading maps. A map folder, recognizable by the game, that contains custom maps should be considered.

Great game, brings back memories of Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and Fallen Enchantress.

You need to understand why I recommend this game.
It is because it is enjoyable to play. It is because it has great ambience and good graphical design. It has a decent enough story, as such things go; it is not great, but I found it engaging. It is noticeable that the developers were quite enthusiastic about the game, and that helps make it a nice game to play.
It is not because it is a great game. It has flaws in AI, in faction balance, in interface, but it is stable and reasonably bug-free.
It is, quite simply, a nice and enjoyable game. And, as a bonus it supports ultrawide. But it's not so great that I will recommend it to everyone. If you like the style of game, and the subject matter, and doesn't demand absolute perfection, then this is a game you will get many hours and even days of enjoyment out of - I did. But it's not for everyone.
(I also played the beta, which I count in those days.).

After playing for >100 hours, completing the campaign, and finishing +16 sandbox with all factions, i can say that this game is, for the better parts :
- Stable/Playable (I encountered no game crash, nor errors, with the "worst" bug being solved by simply surrendering the fighting in which i was stuck.) (Played on an Acer Nitro N50-600, I5-8400 CPU 2.8GHz, NVIDIA GTX 1060 6GB, 8G RAM)
- Enjoyable (Some part of the campaign may be more difficult than others but taken on the right angle, they become easier.)
- I liked the display of creativity and the choices in the graphic design of the game. To be able to create something "new" from an over used thematic such as the Vampire thematic is something to be recognized. Be it the design of the units, the artworks of the cards, or the "cheap" but effective cinematics, all are proof of the creativity put into the development of the game.
- On the same tone, like the graphic design, the campaign story / world building, while weak on some aspects also show some creative strokes which would have transform the campaign into something better on many aspects if correctly used/refined. The ideas are present for a good scenario, but unfortunately, they were not used to their full potential. (Nota Bene : I speak of the underlying scenario, not the dialogues between the characters, which are sometimes...good....or can be very cartoony if not very bad on other times...sometimes it is 8/10, other times it is 2/10.^^)
- The OSTs are great and the sound design fit the thematic. But on the other hand, some units sounds are not that great sometimes, i think that it could be improved for some units. Overall, it is good.
- The three main Vampires factions are all playable and are complete. (There is a fourth faction, human faction, with models, cards, nearly everything to make it playable, even specific lords, but isn't playable...certainly because they did not had the time to finish it for the release date unfortunately.)
Now regarding the bad parts of the game :
- Repetitive actions. FORTUNATLY, you will not experience it that much during the campaign, but if you play three or more sandbox map, you will feel it and it even get worse depending of the difficulty.
- Lords are too powerful. While usefull and thematic for the campaign, they easily becomes a one man army, which tend to degrade the strategic aspect of the game, most notably when you play a sandbox map.
- The recurrent cards and the repetitive operations to trow them out of your card hand. Most notably while playing a sandbox as Dracul, if you max the card rewards, you will end up after each victory to choose two cards out of three, and to make it worse, the cards are for an unknown and certainly buggy reason, the same for every victory, they are not even random.
- Some cards are not very usefull if not useless, with the Sabotage and Clairvoyance being the top ones.
- The Ruling choices are a good idea, but the Ruling cards should come with perhaps special objectives and should be linked to a specific quest, linking the Ruling and the Quest choices, making it simplier.
To end my review of the game i can say that i like the game, and that i do not regret my investisment, even if it isn't totally finished (with notably the human faction missing from the factions available) and the game can still be improved on many aspects.
Palindrome Interactive managed to create an honorable first title, as well as creating an original IP (Immortal Realms : Vampire Wars) full of potential for the company future.
I recommend playing it if you like the Vampire thematic and strategy games. And while it is a good game, in its current state it is not at its full potential, and thus fail to achieve greatness.

Currently I have played through the Dracul Campaign Act I & Act II and have spent some hours on Act III.
So far I am very pleased.
I love vampire universes and Diablo style graphics, which I think this game has a hint of, so the visuals are right up my alley.
Also, even on ultra settings, the game is 100% fluent, which I suspect is in part due to a lower polycount on models than you may see in other games, but for this game and the experience I have with it, it is the right choice.
I have not played turn based strategy before or games with cards, and did not fully grasp the concept when I first started the campaing, so I failed Act I fairly fast, but from then on it has been a very pleasent journey through Act I and Act II, and I really got the feeling I was this unbeatable Vampire Lord that just owned through those two acts and loved it.
Starting Act III, I was in a laid back (I am an unbeatable Lord) moode, but that quickly turned out to be quite wrong, and I got punished for spending too much time on taking over land and little on armying up the first 5 - 7 turns. Finally got myself pinned in such a way that there was no way out from a major beating, as army after army entered my lands wanting to fight me, so I lost Act III when my unprepared army got wiped out for the 3rd time and the humas took over my keep.
Started Act III again, now with no (I am an unbeatable Lorde) moode, and things are going quite differently.
Really enjoy this game!
I have noticed a single bug so far, and it seems that once in a while, when you return to the map, after completing a battle, you will be able to move the camera around the map, but cant click anything or use esc to get to the menu.
Only way out (that I know of at this point) is to press alt+f4 to end the game or alt+tab to steam and press stop on the game.
No big deal though, as autosave will have your back, and once you load the latest autosave, you will be back to where you were when stopping the game, but now everything works.
For me, this game is just what I wanted from such a game, and I am really looking forward to starting the Nosfernus campaign, when I finish with the Dracul.

Played the beta a lot, so never mind my current playtime.
Really enjoy this game.
Nice lore, nice setting.
The card mechanic and strategic layer merge well imo, it's interesting and conquering the lands, building your provinces up, expanding your bloodline powers and raising armies works great.
Tactical combats are fun. Diverse units, diverse powers and spells.
Campaign, sandboxes and skirmishes to play. You can spend a lot of time here.
It's a solid game, I love it.
If you're on the fence due to the 'mixed' rating, but you tend to enjoy these types of games, check out gameplay but imo go for it! For some reason watching this game getting played seems less fun than playing it. It's rather unique in that regard, for me. Usually it's a nice indication, but here, for some reason, I feel seeing it falls short.
Do be aware that if you want a very elaborate strategical layer you may want to pass. Because it doesn't really have that.
Have fun!