Songs of Conquest

Tried to love this game, but it is too clunky and unpollished... Will give it a few months, then try again...

I never played the old Heroes of Might and Magic Games a lot, because i had my difficulties with getting into the games. But I had a lot of fun with this one. First of all, i really like the art style and the animations. In particular in the battles. The Campaign is fun to play, but have some diffculty spikes and unpredictalbe nasty encounters. I played on the second difficulty level of three and had to know the strengths, the abilities and the weaknesses of my troops. Unfortunately the missions each of the four campagins are not very varied and the story is forgettable. However the four Factions and their Units are well made and differ from each other. Then there's multiplayer support, hot seat coop, mod support, map and campagin editor , alternative game modes like puzzle levels and so on. All in all it's a very well made game with a lot of potential. I had a lot of fun with it. I hope it will be successful and we get some extensions in the near future.

The game itself is fun. It's my first HoMM like, and I actually enjoy the tactical aspects of it. But I'll be honest - there is an idiotic difficulty jump in each campaign that ruins the end of them. Each and every one. I know I know - git gud. But I beat Loth 1-3 without having to reload a single time. Loth 4 I have tried at least 10 times and I get stomped each time. The balance is all over the place. It really ruins what otherwise is a fun and narrative campaign experience because dental surgery is less frustrating and painful as the 4th campaign missions.

The campaigns seem a little shallow and boring, especially the first one. You get your cringeworthy self-righteous protagonist, who never fails to self-engrandaise and mention multiple times how "strong" she is and so on. Every two steps you take on the map there's a bunch more painful dialogue to get through, she never just shuts up and lets you play the game. The game looks great, plays well so far but the starting units are so incredibly boring. Tutorial even tells you how many units can have abilities and to check them out, but you basically start with two types of basic ranged units and one basic melee unit with zero abilities. After some time you get a fourth, which gives a boring stat buff to friendlies and not much else. It gets better but why does this game even need to have so many boring units in one faction?

Given most reviews are from the very Early Access period; the game now has significantly more content, polish and complex systems. 4 complete campaigns with overhauled maps; challenge maps, a random map generator, a map & campaign editor; improved UI, significantly rebalancing and improved AI. It feels nothing like the game it was 1.5 years ago, it really starts feeling feature complete without 'placeholder content and oozes love for the genre and basically quality ! No asset flips, but deeply atmospheric pixel art, music and storytelling. And significantly improved 'spells', allowing for way more diverse and interesting battles, even from the start (making it way more fun than in earlier builds). If you're a HoMM fan, this is a must play by now (imho) and it's different enough to not feel like a rip-off or clone, but has the same addictive on-more-turn feeling to it.