Review Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars - Vampire Wars

Publisher: KalypsoMediaGroup

Developer: Palindrome

Release date: 11/10/2019

Platform:
PS4, PC, Xbox One, Switch

Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars has an undeniably compelling setting, as vampires are always an intriguing subject and the idea of ​​stalking the haunted countryside to suck the blood of townspeople to use as money bad for the undead is an interesting thing in the game. Unfortunately, however, the game is a bit disappointing with its lack of real depth along with some confusing AI, clumsy UI, bugs and stutters, and not nearly enough content for the price point. high end demand.

In Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars, you'll become one of three vampire clans - Dracul, Nosfernus, or Moroia - and try to win territories on one of four appropriate atmospheric maps. Each of the three clans has different skills, abilities, and units available to them. 

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Though they all fall into the same basic categories - ranged, warrior, tank, and assassin - they are all led by a powerful Vampire Lord leading them into battle using a set of magical cards. to deal damage and attack the opponent. This card element of the game is the unique selling point here, and it adds an interesting amount of variety - not only in the heat of turn-based combat, but as you roam the map. world, take over settlements and strengthen your position on this land.

When starting a new campaign and choosing a sect, you will be dealt predefined clan cards to start your deck. You'll then choose three more cards from a set of five and put them on the map to start draining blood and slaying undead enemies. The cards here can do just about anything by simply selecting a card at any time and hovering over the target. 

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You can ambush nearby enemy forces, deal 30% damage to their health bars before the battle begins, grant more AP to your forces, summon zombies and gargoyles, get discounts for new troops, increasing the population of cities and towns - thereby giving you more health to suck and get bonuses. There's an impressive amount of cards with lots of interesting powers here, and they're also designed with graphics that are pretty pleasing and enjoyable to launch.

When switching to proper combat, swooping down on the Total War-esque battlefield, each Vampire Lord will have his own set of war cards that can curse enemy units, poison areas of the map, restore revive allies. These cards are upgraded each time you win a battle or gain enough XP to level up, and by the time your Lord levels up you'll have a deck of cards capable of dealing serious damage and turning the tide of a close fight. The cards really add a lot of spice to the combat; and together with the streamlined nature of the various elements of the game has given the player a surprising sense of freedom and flexibility not found in games related to this genre.

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In addition to the various benefits and traits bestowed by your ever-evolving deck, you'll also receive inheritance points every time you claim an area of ​​the map that you'll use to unlock. inheritance tree traits - things like more elite troops, a stronger lord, more health from villagers and better defenses for weak units like archers. 

You won't have too much trouble with military maintenance costs, debt, citizen happiness or boring diplomacy here. Vampires are simply not that complicated and they just want to keep things simple and that's probably how they live so long. 

The only thing you really need to consider is your health. The health you suck from villagers becomes BP currency which you will use to recruit more units, upgrade buildings (in a very limited way), use libraries, blacksmiths. ., which all really serve to give you more cards. It's super simple stuff, and we love the idea of ​​lurking around the maps to get what we need from innocent victims, turning the lords of flamboyant Gothic manors into ghosts. immortal vampires and fight armies of arch-enemies.

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But as mentioned above, the game has a lot of problems that need to be improved. The user interface is very complex; you need to click on individual units to display the information - there's no handy pop-up infobox as you scroll through units or regions here. And this tutorial is terrible at explaining how the gameplay mechanics work, so you could end up spending hours scratching your head about exactly how you have to turn the sole inhabitant of a colony. the nearby countryside became the Lord of Chaos of Nosfernus.

Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars is an interesting turn-based strategy game with a great setting and some unique ideas of its own. The streamlined nature of its gameplay makes it quite pleasant for first-time strategy gamers. It is a bit regretful that some parts of the game are still not optimized, but these are the points that do not affect the overall experience too much and hope that Palindrome will fix it as soon as possible in the future.

Isabella Humphrey

Update 05 January 2022