It’s no secret that I’m a sucker for most 4X turn-based strategy games. When I had a cursory look at the Steam Store page for Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars, I thought it might be kind of like a more advanced Sid Meier’s Civilization-like game with the additions of tactical battles and warring factions of vampires. That idea was enough to convince me to request a review copy of Immortal Realms when it first released in 2020. Now that I’ve taken the time to really “sink my teeth” into Vampire Wars, however, I haven’t exactly been enthralled by its hypnotic charms.

I discovered a particularly obnoxious fault of Vampire Wars as soon as I started playing. I went into the options menu before doing anything else, as I do with every game upon its first launch. Vampire Wars’ screen resolution was automatically set to a reasonable 1920×1080. I changed it to my ultrawide monitor’s resolution of 2560×1080, and it seemed that Vampire Wars supported that uncommon resolution well enough. Appearances can be deceiving, however: When I started the tutorial, Vampire Wars wouldn’t let me move my mouse cursor outside of the boundaries of a 1920×1080 display.

None of the other relevant configurations in the options menu fixed this. That’s a huge problem because almost all of Vampire Wars’ crucially important user interface elements — up to and including the “end turn” button — were placed in areas of the screen where Immortal Realms wouldn’t let me bring my mouse cursor. I ended up having to change the game’s resolution back to 1920×1080 in order to actually play. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem running games at 1920×1080. I understand that ultrawide monitors aren’t exactly popular enough to be present in every gaming setup worldwide.

The resulting black bars on the leftmost and rightmost portions of my screen don’t bother me or affect gameplay in the vast majority of games I’ve played on my ultrawide monitor. I take issue with this because Vampire Wars’ options menu provided no indication that anything like the problem I experienced might occur. I had no reason to think twice about setting an ultrawide screen resolution before I found out the hard way that doing so made Vampire Wars unplayable. Immortal Realms shouldn’t have provided the option to set an ultrawide resolution at all since it doesn’t properly support ultrawide monitors.

Once I dealt with that, I could finally start playing Immortal Realms. In Vampire Wars, you play as your choice of faction among several clans of vampires that are all at war with each other, hence the title. Vampire Wars offers a mission-based story mode, sandbox mode, and skirmish mode. In the story mode, you start out playing as the most prominent of the vampire clans, the Dracul. You’re expected to fulfill various objectives to complete story missions. You’ll eventually unlock the story campaigns of additional vampire clans, like the Nosfernus and Moroia. Each clan has its own unique strengths, weaknesses, and unit types.

The core gameplay loop of Vampire Wars is almost identical no matter which gameplay mode you’re playing. Each map has features like forests, villages, cities, manors, and keeps. You start with one keep controlled by your faction and one so-called Vampire Lord at your disposal. Vampire Lords are basically clan rulers who issue orders and excel at leading your armies in battle. You’ll also have a selection of cards in your starting hand. If your Vampire Lord isn’t already present on the map, you summon them by dragging their card onto your faction’s keep. You can then start expanding your faction’s territory.

You can claim additional territory for your faction by moving your units onto it and using the “Claim” action. All your units have a limited number of action points they can spend each turn. Almost every action you can take costs action points, including moving around the map and claiming new territory. As you might expect, you’ll have to end your turn once all your units are out of available action points. When your Vampire Lord is at a keep controlled by your faction, you can spend Blood points to summon additional military units. Armies are created by grouping units together with Vampire Lords.

You can gain additional Vampire Lords by moving one of your existing Vampire Lords to a manor, where they can turn one of the suitable humans at the manor into a vampire. You’ll usually want to control as many villages and cities as possible and make sure their populations are high. Doing this will increase how much Blood you generate each turn. Blood is the primary resource you spend to use cards from your hand, recruit new units, and do basically everything else outside of combat. In story mode and sandbox mode, combat begins when units from two opposing factions enter the same territory.

Before entering what I call “tactical combat mode,” Vampire Wars will present you with an overview of what you’re up against and how likely you are to win the battle. I’m glad this mechanic is present, but I’m also frustrated by the fact that Vampire Wars seems to be really picky and inconsistent about when it will let you auto-resolve battles rather than making you play them out manually. In my experience, whether the “auto-resolve” button will be functional or grayed out might as well be a matter entirely left up to the whims of fate. This inconsistency particularly annoys me.

After exiting Vampire Wars’ story mode because I wasn’t impressed by it, I decided to try out the sandbox and skirmish modes. These are somewhat more enjoyable than the story mode, depending on what you’re in the mood for, but they’re also not amazing in their own right. Sandbox mode lets you pick your faction, preferred map, preferred win condition, and tweak certain gameplay aspects to your desired level of engagement. You then go through Vampire Wars’ core gameplay loop until you either achieve your chosen win condition or fail somewhere along the way. I’m glad this mode and its customizations are present.

However, sandbox mode is unlikely to keep you engaged for hours on end. The same can also be said about Skirmish Mode. As the name suggests, Skirmish Mode is all about combat. You pick your faction, your faction’s level of advancement (from 1 to 10), your faction leader’s equipment, and your desired type and quantity of faction-specific units. Then you make the same choices for your enemy and enter “tactical combat mode.” Skirmish Mode could help you blow off some steam by making yourself massively powerful and fighting an unusually weak enemy, or challenge yourself by reversing those roles.

Even if you’re an absolute fanatic when it comes to 4X games with similar tactical combat, though, Vampire Wars is rather limited in how much enjoyment it can offer you. The fact that I prefer the sandbox and skirmish modes over the story mode is disconcerting because that means all three of those modes couldn’t keep me engaged for more than an hour or so at most. I’m also disheartened because Vampire Wars contains frequent spelling and grammatical errors in its text. I know I sound like a broken record, but I feel obligated to point out these oversights.

Overall, I’m quite disappointed in Immortal Realms. It’s another game that had a ton of potential, but ultimately falls victim to one too many pitfalls. I can forgive things like spelling and grammar mistakes (even though I’ll definitely point them out). However, the combination of technical issues, a lackluster story mode, and additional game modes that get old quickly means I can’t recommend Vampire Wars unless it’s deeply discounted. To “drive the final stake into Vampire Wars’ heart,” so to speak, I’ve condemned Immortal Realms to collect “realms’” worth of virtual dust in the forgotten bowels of my Steam library.

A PC review copy for Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars was provided by Kalypso Media for this review.

Phenixx Gaming is everywhere you are. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Also, if you’d like to join the Phenixx Gaming team, check out our recruitment article for details on working with us.

Phenixx Gaming is proud to be a Humble Partner! Purchases made through our affiliate links support our writers and charity!

Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars

$29.99

5.5

Score

5.5/10

Pros

• Interesting lore.
• Skirmish mode can be enjoyably cathartic.

Cons

• Bad implementation of ultrawide monitor resolutions.
• Ambiance and sound effects can be unpleasant.
• Frequent spelling and grammar mistakes.
• All game modes become boring quickly.