Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars

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Paradroid
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Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars

Post by Paradroid »

Steam page - releases 28 August

Anyone got their eye on this? Turn-based strategy with a vampire theme from a small indie team signed to Kalypso. It looks like it could be promising, although I haven't done a great deal of research yet. It incorporates card game elements apparently. I dunno, I like the look of it because I'm particularly drawn to strategy with strong themes, which this certainly has if nothing else. The complaints I've seen mainly centre around a lack of content and - bizarrely - no sandbox mode, at least not yet. Nothing necessarily game-breaking but we shall see.

There is a pre-order DLC bonus :roll: Hopefully that was Kalypso's decision rather than the devs'.
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tgb
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Re: Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars

Post by tgb »

I have it wishlisted but am waiting for impressions of 1.0 before I pull the trigger.
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Re: Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars

Post by gbasden »

That definitely looks interesting. I'll keep my eye on it!
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Re: Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars

Post by Paradroid »

tgb wrote: Wed Aug 05, 2020 1:05 pm I have it wishlisted but am waiting for impressions of 1.0 before I pull the trigger.
I have a confession to make. Several nights ago I drank...an unspecified number of shots of Scotch. When I awoke I discovered that I had pre-ordered this game. It's pretty weird, even for being drunk, because I never pre-order games. But such is life. I decided not to cancel, so I'll be able to play on the day of release. Thus, impressions shall be forthcoming!
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Re: Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars

Post by Smoove_B »

All can be forgiven...depending on the Scotch. :D

Looking forward to hearing about it, regardless.
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Re: Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars

Post by Paradroid »

Oh I'm not especially particular as long as it isn't Islay...

I've watched a couple of dev livestreams and to be honest it doesn't look particularly special, but you never know until you try innit.
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Re: Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars

Post by Smoove_B »

Paradroid wrote: Fri Aug 07, 2020 7:18 pm Oh I'm not especially particular as long as it isn't Islay...
Fight to the death it is then. :D
I've watched a couple of dev livestreams and to be honest it doesn't look particularly special, but you never know until you try innit.
I've learned over the years sometimes when you have zero expectations and don't know much about a game, you can really end up enjoying the hell out of it. Maybe this will be similar.
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Re: Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars

Post by Paradroid »

Maybe. I was one of the handful of people who enjoyed the very first iteration of Elemental: War of Magic, after all! :D
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Re: Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars

Post by Paradroid »

So, today is release day (about 4.75 hours from this post by my reckoning). There has been disappointingly scant communication from the devs and aside from a couple of Twitch streams seemingly no effort to market the game at all.

Oh well. I've already paid for it so I will definitely try it. I'm going away for the long weekend so don't expect impressions immediately, but I'll post them when I'm able.
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Re: Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars

Post by Paradroid »

I'm still installing but I'm watching the launch stream and they've just highlighted that there is, in fact, a sandbox mode!
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Re: Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars

Post by Reemul »

I am very interested in this
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Re: Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars

Post by Skinypupy »

I was pretty interested in this, but the limited Steam feedback is meh, as is the single review I can find (5/10).

Will be interested to hear Paradroid's feedback, and appreciate him taking the bullet for the team. :)
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Re: Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars

Post by Paradroid »

I've played as much as I can before going away for the weekend - basically I've done the tutorial, which is a mini campaign mission which takes 30-45 minutes to complete. It does its best to introduce every element of the game, although clearly there's some good stuff waiting toward the end of the various upgrade trees the game has.

In campaign mode the game feels like Disciples, not least because of the dark atmosphere. You recruit lords at certain locations, recruit units for their armies, march around claiming territories and upgrading them. Many territories contain special buildings which confer certain bonuses to your armies.

The main (pretty much only) resource is blood, of course. It's used for everything - playing cards (casting spells), recruitment, upgrading buildings and so on. It can be won in battle or generated by certain actions like feeding on a village, but the main income comes passively from the villages you conquer. The populations steadily grow and give you more blood as time goes on. During the tutorial I never lacked for it, but I can see how it could become an issue if your strategy is weak. I guess it's to curb the constant playing of cards, some of which can be pretty powerful.

Combat feels more reminiscent of something like Fallen Enchantress. Units are moved on a square-tiled battlefield in order of initiative, so enemy units' turns are mixed with your own. Units are grouped into types, and then tiers within those types. All the usual archetypes are represented: infantry, archers, leader units and so on. If you claim certain territories on the strategic map you'll get access to more specialised units like bats, feral wolves etc. There's quite an impressive list of unit inherent abilities - some can attack without retaliation, some can life steal, and so on. The unit attributes didn't have a tooltip so I'm not sure what they are yet but they're probably just the standard attack, defense, initiative and so on. Leaders can cast spells instead of attacking, and some of them are quite good although from what I've seen so far they tend to be more support than attack - but I'm sure there's a much wider variety than what the tutorial showed me.

In fact the more I think about the combat the more I think it's extremely similar to Fallen Enchantress, so that should give you an idea what to expect.

Anyway I'll post better impressions when I've played the proper game. Aside from the triple campaign which must be played entirely in order, there's the aforementioned sandbox mode and a skirmish mode! I don't know how they differ from each other, but it's nice to have the choice, especially since for a long time it was believed the game would be campaign only.

One other thing I liked was that between the different unit types (especially depending on what lands you claim), clan legacy (empire bonus tree), leader attributes, cards you pick and so on, it seems like there's plenty of scope for different strategies. I'm betting one person's winning strategy on a map can be pretty different from another's, which is really good.

On the whole, from what I've seen so far it's a not particularly special but certainly above average new strategy game. At the current asking price which is toward the higher end I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to all, but if you really like this kind of game or you just have to have another strategy game in your collection I'd say it's a solid buy. It's inoffensive, under the radar, and doesn't notably stand out but it's absolutely solid, has a great vampire-themed atmosphere and doesn't really do anything badly at all.

If I had to score it out of 10 (and please bear in mind I've only done the tutorial) right now I'd give it about a 7 - but that's an actual 7, not an IGN one. :D I think the score will improve when I've tried the campaign and skirmish modes too. It's a surprisingly difficult game to rate because it does absolutely nothing special, but it also does absolutely nothing wrong and will definitely appeal to anyone who likes the genre. I definitely don't regret buying it.
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Paradroid
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Re: Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars

Post by Paradroid »

I'm making very slow progress with this because MSFS is consuming all of my time, but I have completed the first campaign mission at least. I was annoyed with a side quest that asked me to clear out a monster lair whose occupants were clearly far too powerful for me to take one, but when I finished the main quest I was surprised to find that I remained on the map with exactly the same army. So I guess at some point I'll be able to go kick some arse.

I will have to do more of the campaign before rendering judgement, but so far it's pretty standard. There are some unique rules in force; for example I can't use recruitment buildings at will (which is normally an option) - instead I can only recruit if I have an appropriate card. Similarly, in the "normal" mode (so skirmish or sandbox, I guess) you can claim any territory you occupy, but again, in the campaign I cannot do that. Instead you claim groups of territories by claiming key territories. And so on.

I never play campaigns in games like these, so I'm only doing this for the sake of impressions. I probably won't do much more. I've also heard that a couple of them are bastard hard, heh.

One thing I did notice was that auto resolve is - as standard for these games - likely to get you killed. The final battle of the first mission had the predicted outcome of "likely defeat" but in the end I only lost one unit, with most others having less than 50% health remaining. I wouldn't use it unless it said "certain victory".

Anyway, that's all I can really add for now I'm afraid. I won't bother too much more with the campaign, but when I've seen what sandbox and skirmish have to offer I will report back.
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