Songs of Conquest

As an old player of Heroes of Might and Magic 3 (HOMM3), I was really excited about this game, but after playing part of the first campaign, I have to set it aside until it's out of early access to see if has matured enough to capture the magic. The innovation that you only start getting mana at the start of a battle (combined with the limits on the number of units in stacks) makes the battles more interesting. The fact that there are no longer spells on the strategic map also helps. Now your position on the map and the defensibility of your cities actually matters. But that leads to the bad stuff: The towns don't have a unified screen for buildings and upgrades, and not one for troops either, unless you have a visiting hero. The build sites are interesting in principle, but I can't even see what I've already built when considering what to build, and I can't see which small buildings are prerequisites for larger buildings until I want to build the larger building, in a separate menu for a medium or large building site. The game really needs a unified town menu with clearly marked upgrade paths. I still have no idea how to build walls around my town. The pixelated art is fun enough, but it's so heavily pixelated that I have trouble telling units apart, especially base units and their upgrades. On the strategy map, the goodies are hard to tell apart, and it's not clear which ones you've already visited. If the graphics resolution were doubled, that should take care of the problem, but for now I need to spend an unnecessary amount of time squinting at units. In general, the UI just needs a lot more work. In battle, you get a list of the statuses affecting a unit when you click on it, but you can't get the details of what that effect does anywhere that I can find. In summary, I'm putting the game away for now and hoping that it will in time become as good as it could be.

A new Heroes of Might and Magic inspired(?) Turn Based Strategy. The game overall is very solid, with campaigns with ramping difficulty/technology/amount of armies to control etc. Multiplayer, which I did not yet test. Skirmish maps, custom campaigns and a map editor to enjoy a variety of modes. The gameplay is fun, with map control being key. I have not played enough to speak balance, but armies are limited by stack sizes, so tier 1 and 2 units are not entirely useless, due to high stack sizes for them. Likewise, you can't poll too massive of an army on your one super overpowered hero, encouraging you to use multiple. You can't initiate with insane spells, for the most part, you need units taking actions to get coloured mana for different spells. Moving past melee units in combat gets you hit, it is possible to get multiple retaliations, or multiple attacks. Ranged units can get extended range, and have a sweet spot range for extra damage, there is high ground, destroyable barricades and all other sorts of nice tactical elements. The building of settlements is a bit of a let down, with large buildings taking multiple turns to build, and very few building slots available, while still having prerequisites for high tier buildings and upgrades. On the flip side, for an interesting innovation, you can upgrade multiple buildings per turn, high end buildings come with expensive but useful researches, and unlike HoMM3, towns really need resources from outlying buildings and mines, no more turtling on 1 capitol! Also, with 1 small, expensive building you can recruit from all of your kingdom in a single settlement. Artstyle and soundscape is very well made, if the musicis a bit too low intensity at times for my taste. Well worth the asking price for anyone who enjoys strategy, turn-based or otherwise, RPGs or just a beautiful experience. I hope to see the devs add even more, but what is here is already well worth it! ~~8.5-9/10 in the numerical scale, in my opinion.

For short moments the game feels like an worthy successor of the HoMM series, but then you are back in reality and there is really much to do. Overall the game has good quality in graphics, sound, map, heroes (wielders), battles all together in fine turn-based gameplay. So far sounds good, but then it begins to feel uncomfortable and immature. They have tried to force doing things other then HoMM, but that not always works so good. The magic does not feel so significant, which in my opinion is also due to the fact that most spells always last only 1 round and now seldom do have strong or lasting effects. Sure from time to time they are useful to be able to attack faster or to lever out an enemy distance unit, but that feels all in all not yet fully developed. Also, in the more advanced game, the battles basically always come down to using your strong rifle units as wisely and safely as possible, flanked by 1 or 2 melee squads, which is usually the guarantee for getting out of the battles with as few losses as possible. Also the hero leveling is kind of uninspiring because honestly, the first 7 level ups you only increase your commander level so you can field 9 troops. Sure, theoretically you don't have to, but practically it's probably the best to do. So the real level fun starts at level 8, it seems. Then this whole thing with the artifacts and stats, that strangely doesn't feel as weighty as in Heroes either. Whether I have 30 defense or 60 you can hardly feel it in SoC. In Heroes, a difference of 10 points was a world away, and you could feel it clearly. Even if the maps are quite nice, there is a lot to discover and collect, but many artifacts are more or less just lying around, you could also include side quests or plot, otherwise it all seems too terse. All in all, of course, it's still fun and especially the castle expansion and rebuilding has its appeal in a way...and yes more marketplaces means better course. Let's hope the dev. will do all to success.

I am very pleasantly surprised by the storytelling, the general experience, and the simple mechanics of the game. It is probably that fact, that it is not overly complicated, that made me dive in and recollect the countless evenings with HOMM 3. The game goes beyond though. The interesting game mechanics of different troops and map heights, make the battles not so much repetitive. I am very fond of it, as a very infrequent gamer. * it works for me on my M1 mac, in contrast to the other review.