Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars
If I were to describe this game in one sentence it would be as follows: A game with strong foundation, but a lot of underutilized or wasted potential. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves and look at its strengths and weaknesses.
STRENGHTS:
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ART. Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars features very high quality art that is best represented on Cards. I can’t praise art of this game enough. Everything is very detailed, atmospheric, diverse and just a pleasure to look at.
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ATMOSPHERE. This one is a bit subtle but at its core this game makes you feel like a vampire ruler who is playing a deadly game of influence and warfare. The fact that game represents quite a few things with cards certainly adds to this feeling.
– Real player with 149.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Vampire Turn-Based Strategy Games.
After playing for 100 hours, completing the campaign, and finishing +16 sandbox with all factions, i can say that this game is, for the better parts :
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Stable/Playable (I encountered no game crash, nor errors, with the “worst” bug being solved by simply surrendering the fighting in which i was stuck.) (Played on an Acer Nitro N50-600, I5-8400 CPU 2.8GHz, NVIDIA GTX 1060 6GB, 8G RAM)
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Enjoyable (Some part of the campaign may be more difficult than others but taken on the right angle, they become easier.)
– Real player with 137.6 hrs in game
Dracula: A Gothic RPG
Dracula is back in this dark but cute RPG.
Collect souls for more powers, learn alchemy, and cast your dark magic in battle.
Black cats, werewolves, zombies; he’s buddies with all types of Halloween friendlies – and he’s going to go questing with them!
Story:
After thousands of years, Dracula has been summoned for a grand purpose by ghosts and dark magicians. They require his resurrection to fulfill the prophecy.
After he has awakened, he meets a quirky cast of characters that will get him in a lot of trouble and comical shenanigans.
Features:
👻 Party members include ghosts, zombies, and many types of Halloween friendlies.
🦠 Collect Souls to increase your power, or talk to the dead to learn their skills.
🎁 Collect items to decorate Dracula’s Mansion.
⚔️ Explore and adventure the world with some … rather unusual quests… as a dark hero.
📺 Classic role-playing style
Explore areas in classic JRPG style
~Victorian Forest~
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Future Updates:
⚗️ Craft items in the Underground Alchemy Lab.
📜 Randomized side-quests
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🍪 Come to the dark side. We have cookies.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1563670
Read More: Best Vampire Gothic Games.
Dracula
Discover the origins of Dracula in this classics-inspired JRPG.
Everyone is happy and there’s never any trouble in this peaceful little village of Westminster. Everyone loves you and its a golden-era.
Alex was just an average boy until that one fateful night, then his whole life changed forever.
15 years ago a mysterious old man left a strange amulet to protect against great evil, but once Alex finds the amulet he becomes something everyone feared, something that everyone hated, and it wasn’t his fault…
Alex has been transformed into a Vampire by The Dark Gods. They want Alex to fulfill the prophecy and become The Chosen One…
…To become Dracula, the Eater of Souls.
Features
📺 Classic Role-Playing Style
🧱 2.5D graphics
📖 Rich Storyline
🎆 Unique magic, skills, and items only found in the Dracula series
👻 Surprises and treasure hidden in every corner
**inspired by Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, and Breath of Fire.
Dracula is made for the true fans of classic RPGs! Rediscover all the nostalgic charm today’s RPGs are missing.**
+Linear Storyline
+Explore towns freely to unlock new side quests
+Dialogue can’t be skipped, you can’t read behind signs, and all the typical cliché 90s RPG mechanics
+In classic RPG tradition, the last boss will surprise you, and has multiple forms
*The sequel to this game is Dracula all grown up:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1563670
Read More: Best Vampire 2.5D Games.
Cute Bite
Cute Bite is a fun raising sim where you take control of a butler (whose name you can decide, but her default is Saule) who is in charge of training the daughter of her former vampire master. The “Little Mistress” (also nameable; default is Buttercup), as Saule calls her, is far older than Saule herself, but after being confined to a coffin for centuries, she has lost many of her skills and reverted to the form of a child. It’s the player’s job to make Buttercup powerful enough within a year to complete the blood ritual which allows Saule to live.
– Real player with 25.2 hrs in game
A vampire has been locked away so long that her body has reverted to the size she was when she first became a creature of the night – when she was child. After being freed, she must build up her various skills to restore her adult form. Her faithful butler is more than happy to assist, but is she hiding something?
Information
• All romances take place after she regains her adult form. This game does not involve or promote pedophilia.
• Gameplay involves stat raising (which determines endings), and a hunting mini-game (to replenish energy via biting people for blood), along with other fun mechanics.
– Real player with 21.0 hrs in game
Rogue Lords
I really enjoyed Rogue Lords, and I decided to write this review as I have a slightly different take from the others I read.
It took me ~40 hours to finish all chapters, and I always played with the same team (the starters: Dracula “the Support”, the Headless Horseman “the Tank”, Bloody Mary “the DPS”). I think I had a total of two game overs, one at the second or third chapter, and one at the second-to-last (but see below).
I read several reviews mentioning that the game is hard and RNG can hit hard. I think they are not wrong, but I did not find it THAT hard: I think it’s more a matter of COMPLEXITY. Damage already starts in the double digits, and it is not unusual towards the end of the game to hit for 30-50 (multiple times). With 3 characters on your side and 1-3 characters on the other side, you can also have several status effects in play at the same time (probably the maximum I’ve seen is ~20). You accumulate this with relic effects and maybe even battle effects, and suddenly it becomes really easy to make a fatal mistake. I remember in one boss battle I accidentally made the Headless Horseman use an attack that steals HP and SP, while he was under the effect of a Zombie debuff (healing received becomes damage), so instead of healing him I made him Vulnerable with 0 HP and 0 SP. Fun times.
– Real player with 132.9 hrs in game
Note that while I am giving this a thumbs up, there are definite issues that sour the experience (that I will go into more detail over below). Honestly, this rating should be 3/5, 6/10, or a neutral but we don’t have those options.
Long story short:
Rogue Lords is a fun roguelike very much like Slay the Spire, but not being a rip off in the slightest. It has a unique cheating mechanic and is pretty difficult while also having balance issues and run destroying bug. The concept is unique, fresh, and fun, but the gameplay could use some retuning and class balancing.
– Real player with 116.7 hrs in game
Vampire’s Fall: Origins
The Good
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Lots of character combination and class types – the caster, rogue, or hearty tank.
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Excellent art work and atmosphere – although I like to think of VFO as ‘discounted dark fantasy’ it still has some nice moments.
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Can confirm from trailer there definitely feels like there’s 100+ hours of gameplay, or at least two characters to test different combinations.
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Random encounters means you could end up fighting a rat or some creature living under a tree that eats rats and who might one shot you if you’re not careful.
– Real player with 40.8 hrs in game
Overview
Vampire’s Fall: Origins (VFO) is an Indie turn-based isometric RPG set in a medieval fantasy world, populated with sparse human settlements and covered in large part by wilderness. Players will impersonate an inhabitant of a small village, and start their career as members of the city guard. Soon, events take a dark turn and the main character is transformed into a vampire against its own will, afterwards sets on a quest to exact revenge against those responsible.
🔵 Pros
– Real player with 29.1 hrs in game
Golden Krone Hotel
Latest (Experimental) Update Review
The updates for this game have elevated this game to the status of roguelike gem in my eyes. Before, I would have recommended this to anyone who is interested in roguelikes. Now, I would say it is an absolute must-play for any roguelike fan as well as point to it as THE quintessential introductory roguelike. I would say it is certainly better than the standard introductory roguelike recommendations (Brogue and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup) because of its streamlined controls, well-implemented mouse control (you can do everything there is to do in the game with a mouse), well-designed menus (best menus in any roguelike I can think of), high customizability (can play with 4 directional or 8 directional movement, with mouse+keyboard or controller, with tiles or ASCII), rebindable controls (surprisingly not common in roguelikes), gameplay that isn’t dependant on spoilers (lots of roguelikes require spoilers to progress), difficulty settings (so a new player can actually see the end of the game and learn of mechanics that would otherwise kill them), great visuals (Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup has static and admittedly subpar tiles while Brogue has ASCII that Golden Krone Hotel simply beats with animated 8-bit tiles), music and sound (once again, not common in other roguelikes), and just the fact that it presents interesting mechanics and gameplay to players much sooner than any other roguelike typically does (a common complaint with Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is that the game isn’t interesting until you reach Lair).
– Real player with 85.8 hrs in game
Disclaimer: This review is for version 1.8 of the game which is the only one that I played. My understanding is that the game has improved significantly since its release and some of the features that I talk about here have been added after the original release (for example controller support).
Pros:
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The music is great and fits well with the vampire theme of the game.
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I love the controller support. This is very uncommon for rogue-like games and allowed me to play the game exclusively on my tv.
– Real player with 63.9 hrs in game
Heroes of Yore
Looking for a casual way to prove dominance amongst fabled legends? I was. Ever want to make a team of mythical villains destroy the prudish icons of old? I did. Have you ever wanted Paul Bunyan to feed Grendel flapjacks?… well, me either on this one, but it is as awesome as it sounds. This game was just what I wanted! It is a casual, easy to learn, but challenging to master. I have not fully beat this game yet, but am working on it! I will slay them all!
Since this is Early Access, I am really excited to see what (or who) else the developers come up with!
– Real player with 15.7 hrs in game
Heroes of Yore is a turn-based strategy/RPG in which you put together a squad of public domain characters and fight to win in single or multiplayer mode.
The basics are straightforward, and it’s evident that the game aims to be user-friendly. You simply select four heroes from an ever-growing pool and engage in combat. On the left, your party, and on the right, the opponent. The battles are turn-based, which means that each side performs actions for all four heroes. Attacking is simple, just select the attack and choose a target. Because each hero only gets to perform one action, the order doesn’t matter. So far, everything appears to be easy.
– Real player with 3.7 hrs in game
Midnight’s Curse
This wasn’t a bad game, but it wasn’t necessarily good one either. This looks like a high school project that could’ve gone through a bit more polishing before attempting to sell it. Here’s some good and some bad points that I’ve experienced while playing:
Pros:
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Art is pleasant on the eyes
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Gameplay is simple and easy to understand
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Overall balance is spot on
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Story is unique and intriguing
Cons:
- Not enough character interactions! I’d like to see more between this odd party of people. Perhaps make inns/rest points have little cut scenes periodically when resting at one.
– Real player with 3.7 hrs in game
Very lazy & poor effort at an RPG Maker game and it makes me angry that lazy developers such as this one give the engine and the genre a bad rep. Unbelievable that publisher Aldorlea Games are selling this, did they even play the game before deciding to sell it?
A good RPG Maker Game starts with a compelling story, interesting characters and sharp dialogues. An interesting plot makes you want to continue playing. This game has none of that: bland characters, very little dialogue and endless grinding. On top of that grinding there hardly is enemy variation, leveling up takes ages abd characters have hardly any abilities. Just everything about this game is bad. A very lazy effort that is just a shameless attempt at grabbing some money.
– Real player with 2.0 hrs in game