News Tip - Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars (HoMM like game)

[Blake]

What's the current procedure for submitting news tips for CH staff to post on front page? I nearly posted this in the news forum but noticed all it's threads were only created by the news bot and admins so thought best not to haha.

I just saw this new dark Transylvanian vampire HoMM like game called Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars for PC, PS4, Xbox, & Switch in one of my recent PC Gamer mags. In their preview they talked about it's closeness in gameplay to Heroes of Might & Magic and gothic art style to Disciples. I also notice it has a Eador & AoW-Planetfall like territory/province system, a research system (called legacy), and it looks like most of the game's mechanics (empire, heroes, spells etc) revolve around an interesting card deck system and all the cards have these cool animations. Looks like there's no gorgeous HoMM style city screen where you build buildings but in the main map view you can develop provinces with some interesting building upgrades.

I just checked and the game got released a couple of weeks ago on Steam & GoG. Metacritic score looks pretty good at 71%, steam score is not as good although most of the negative reviews point to bugs and AI issues that will hopefully be sorted in patches (Kalypso shouldn't pull the plug on them as there's console releases coming so they'll wanna iron out all the bugs). No multiplayer which doesn't bother me but I know it might bother others so thought I'd mention it.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1024 ... pire_Wars/
https://www.gog.com/game/immortal_realms_vampire_wars

Here's an old preview video of it.. I love that foggy night map shown around the 2min mark. I remember preview videos of HoMM5 had undead foggy dark night time maps that excited me but the final game just had the usual not so foggy day time or dusk undead maps. I can also see myself spending ages just gawking at all the card animations instead of playing the game haha.
https://youtu.be/qf1ylXIzK4k?t=12

A much more recent video where a guy plays the first campaign mission for half an hour.
https://youtu.be/wTnXKOE4Aes

Another new video where a guy plays a skirmish game against what appears to be a lot of AI factions which is cool.
https://youtu.be/omUsxlKDQ-Y

[Panda Tar]

Well, it does look intriguing.

[Blake]

Well, it does look intriguing.

Saw you saying at HeroesCom that you didn't realise it was released already, sorry I should have made that clearer haha.

Looks like their first patch is here which will hopefully addresses some of those complaints I've seen about bugs and UI.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/102448 ... 2215948660

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[Panda Tar]

Nothing to worry about, Blake. I read up above "preview", that's why I figured it would be something still in the works, early access or something. Right now, my mood is more inclined to play RPGs or platform games. I have some strategy games which I didn't linger too long because they ... lacked something.

But it's a good thing they are updating and addressing known stuff, specially those the community was complaining about. It shows that they are aware of their public's demands.

[Quantomas]

Blake, thanks for posting this here.

In principle the game has a ton going for it, for me the most important thing is that it aims to be a grand strategy game like the best of HoMM.

But implementation-wise, I just don't believe anymore that you can build a great grand strategy game without an AI that is (a) challenging and (b) doesn't break the 3rd wall with cheats. I don't know how many devs we are still getting to see who think they can get away with excuses. But in the state Vampire Wars is right now, you have to remain skeptical.

I know you can always try a game and see how long it holds the spell for you, but inevitably the shortcomings will show through. In this age of endless backlogs, I usually wait.

[Blake]

No worries mate. I'm always on the hunt for 'HoMM like' games to play and tribute on my HoMM site so figured I'd share with the communities whenever I find something cool.

Yeah hopefully more patches will improve things with AI and if all else fails, hopefully the game is moddable so the fans can do their bloody jobs for them like with ubi HoMMs and plenty of other games (eg anything Bethesda puts out lol).