Songs of Conquest

HOMM has been gone for too long; as a fan of HOMM1-3, this was in theory a welcome return to a formula that had been gone for too long. Unfortunately it's not there yet. Kicking towns up a notch to have upgrades affect the strategic map isn't a bad thing, but messing with the UI design to the point where recruitment is a matter of faffing around between buildings is not a positive step. The graphics are... ok, but not great. The HOMM series were better at pixel art because they had no choice, but in Songs of Conquest the art steps fractionally too far away from the cartoon style, leaving the impression of high resolution 2d or perhaps 3d graphics that have had resolution dropped - it's nice but just not quite clear enough. Combat is good, but doesn't shine.It feels slightly too fussy somehow. That said, a lot of these niggles can be cleared up before release and I hope to find myself editing this review for the better.

Surprisingly polished game for an indie title. UI looks sharp, colorful and attractive. The art style is very nice, assuming you can appreciate pixel art. Balancing needs some tweaks, but overall everything functions well. They keep a lid on army size and composition, avoiding annoying doomstacks that was a staple of HoMM games (I like this, actually, some may not). Some extra tactical options during battle, such as Defend, would be nice. But, the game needs more content. More maps, more campaigns, more factions, a random map generator (which is coming). Speaking of factions, two of them are human. Boring. Many other creative options could have been chosen for a fantasy title, and extra factions are low on the roadmap priorities at the moment. Pretty solid game for an early access title, but still needs a bit more time in the oven. If you're hungry for another game of this type, it's a solid recommend. Otherwise, you might want to wait.

It looked really good, and actually started out kinda fun. It pretty quickly gets repetitive. I didn't find a lot of variety in strategy between the different races, there are a number of control annoyances (right click is used for most things, but occasionally what you want is left click and right click performs a different action, blowing your turn). The game doesn't really tolerate casual or exploratory gameplay: you need to set your strategy and be consistent with it or you quickly become overpowered - that's fine and some people are looking for it, just be aware. It kept me entertained for maybe 20-25 hours of actual, focused gameplay... and worked pretty well as something to do passively in the gaps while waiting for other things on my computer. I'm not planning to return it, but having played it, I probably wouldn't buy it if given the choice again.

Especially the Songs for each mission a pretty neat. Not the best music you've ever heard but decent. And very fitting to the setting. The campaings however are cripplingly short. What is there is good but the story feels at best started. This whole game seems like a 1st act to something.

Slightly bellow expectations, but nothing fatal that cannot be fixed, hopefully it will. Goods: * very cool art, both visual and audio * good strategy, motivates to think and plan, not just to hoard troops and brute-force you victory * nice rework of classical game mechanics with a few cool additions * long awaited modernized and improved version of HOMM 2/3, what else do you need? :) Bads: * embarrassingly slow. I get it that optimization is not the main goal for the early release, but guys, this is just awful! I have nice PC with SDD / 16 BG RAM / GTX 2070 / Core I7 and this one plays as if I'm back in high school trying to run Heroes 4 on Celeron 300 with 32 mb of RAM. Unacceptable. * not quite sure if any of the special abilities of the troops actually matter, so far they don't seem to affect anything that much, mb need more time to get it right * somewhat flicky and random magic casting system, not sure if I like it * lack of interactivity on the map, tons of nice animated objects for no reason, cannot interact with them and they just add to the visual noise, unlike in HOMM series, where each object meant something Overall looks like a nice start of a game that could make it. Hopefully more content will be added and issues will be fixed. Best of luck to to the developers, you're on right track!