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.
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.