Songs of Conquest

I own SoC on Steam (sorry GoG). SoC is a beautiful game. Music & sound is good, but can be more on the foreground in combat, and I don't mind if end mission cut scenes are 10x longer. Graphics are well done. I really like the style. I did turn of finisher close ups. Loading times seems a bit too long, and I cannot blame this to smart AI. The game plays much like HoMM2, not 3 imho. SoC innovates with spells based on essence points, limited troops size and grow per day. Bandit camps provide an interesting combat setup. Yet, SoC misses depth, balance and content. The world map contains many (beautiful) sites, but contain gold, a few stats or resources. No sites for sacrifices or upgrading units. The codex does not contain an entry for sites, why? Same simplicity holds for hero gear. There is no troop moral or luck. Balance is a real problem. Small troop size, and attack favoured over defence, means a unit is cripple by one or two attacks. Without a dispel spell or magic immunity, some spells destroy the balance in combat. One removes all movement, effectively eliminating a serious melee treat. Another low-cost spell kills 1 or 2 units from any troop. Very painful on Hellroars and Elder Dragons. I tried a skirmish map with only tier 1 troops. It was a cakewalk. You have troops early, can replenish quickly, easy to overflow troop limits, the AI performs poorly to 1-unit troop tactics, troops are more resilient to some spells, and a full tier 1 troop often outperforms high tier troops. Wielder skills also need some rebalancing. First turn skills are very strong. Did I mention range troops are too strong? The 1-skill counter is Eager. Basically, all your units go first and can close the gap to the enemy forces on the first turn (also the reason why many struggle with defeating Doctor Marjatta in the campaign). Overall SoC nails the artistic content. I hope they balance and extend the content and new mechanics during early access. Yet, this may take a few years.

I really want to love this game. The art style, the unique approach to combat, the varied and fairly interesting campaigns. This game will remind you of playing Heroes of Might and Magic with the just one more turn mentality and thrill of building up your base. It is also absurd, absolutely absurd in how the AI can abuse the combat system. A battle labeled 'simple' on the map becomes a magic nuke-fest with enemy Wielders deleting your entire army BEFORE YOU CAN EVEN HAVE A TURN. Want to know the most terrifying enemy in the game? Rats. Yes, rats hit like a truck (making dragons a joke in the offense department) they can cross nearly the entire map in one move, are not nearly as easy to kill with ranged units as you might think and the AI likes to stack about 500 per battle. The only way to win the harder campaign battles or against harder AI is to cheese the hell out of the maps and try and trick the AI. You know, just like you had to do on the poorer HOMM 2 and 3 missions? If you get this game keep in mind you can never build up your base and think strategically. You must rush and attack at all times. If you cannot ambush the AI and delete them by about turn 15 you might as well restart the mission. And if the AI is playing Loth just count on them having about 89 defense to your 10, making their units (including the rats) functionally immortal as they also have the initiative that lets them move first every round and spell nuke you into oblivion.

So the Basics is good it adds good features like high advantage in fights nothing innovative but solid. The Balancing is off, some units just can walk over the map in one turn and oneshot everything others are useless , the difficulty in the campaign missions also, one is like a walking in the park and the next you get outnumberd 10:1 and it looks just impossible. The Caster Heros are also completly overpowerd the fighters are useless, it dosent matter to give my units +30% deffence as a fighter they still get oneshootet. so needs still polishing.

I am a really big fan of HOMM3 and I still play it to this day. I bought SoC in anticipation of getting a HOMM3-Clone. Don't make the same mistake as I did. This game is a spiritual successor of HOMM3 no doubt but it has a spirit of its own. After playing it for a while I learned to enjoy this new approach and I am happy with that. We don't need another HOMM3 clone because we still can play HOMM3 if we want to. Just be open minded for some differences (e. g. such as limited stack sizes, another magic system, towns with limited building slots but that occupy more space on the adventure map and different battlemap tactics). The graphics is really neat in my opinion and I like the modern look and feel. Reminds me on the "playfulness" of HOMM2 (but I am sure I am tricked by my mind on this ^^). Unfortunately there are some things I am missing too (e. g. underground levels and seafaring). Some might miss some more factions too (I don't at the moment). But lets not forget this is still early access. I am sure there is much more to come after the 1.0 release (which is aimed at for Q1-2024 at the moment I am writing this). If you like tbs-games, give it a shot. It definitely deserves your love.

tl;dr? This isn't just another KB/HoMM3 clone and it's not capitalizing on the overused, retro pixel art fad. It's tactically solid, with interesting characters and lore, and an immersive soundtrack. Unless you absolutely hate TBS games, give Songs of Conquest a fair chance. it's aggravating trying to cite pros & cons in so few characters, so I'm just gonna name pros. Honestly, I feel obligated to pen a coherent review (at 3AM, pre-v1.0 launch,) because it’s the first game I've ever bought in early access, and that's largely due to the devs. Lavapotion actually kept GOG 100% updated alongside Steam plus, those poor bastards had to curate gamer's wild-ass wishlists on Discord, *and suffer TBS fan's fanaticla love for HoMM on *every platform. XD A few highlights I can pull off the top of my head: • The synergy of the Essence (magic) is deeper than Heroes was, with interesting tactics coming into play from the different types of magic and battlefield strategy, as well as from the troops you choose for your army, since different troops provide you with different type(s) and amounts of Essence, so you can tailor it to your play style. • Different troops have different stack caps—I LOVE this—this means no one can cheese Death Stacks, which was a *glaring loophole in Heroes since, once one player stacked high enough, the challenge was utterly gone, with the stacked army steamrolling around the map. • Melodically, the main theme is similar to Iron Maiden's "Blood Brothers," which makes it ultra-epic. • Building decisions are required. Add a Farms for more gold per round, or a Lumbermill so you can upgrade your Barracks? Or, add a Marketplace? These aren't uncommon choices in similar games but, among other decisions, having to decide if/when to raze what buildings (you have limited build sites of various sizes around settlements; the number depends on the settlement tier,) challenges you to plan farther ahead than you otherwise might in a simpler TBS. And, I'm out of spa