I can happily report to all of you that having gotten my hands on this.... its amazing.... and you will absolutely fall in love with its charm... saying any more than that... I can't do. But as a fan of many of the games that this clearly drew inspiration from in many areas.... I absolutely love it.

This is a bit weird complaint
Do you know how often games are translated to Norwgian?
i can tell you it happens very rarly
Our markets here in scandinavia are generally small compared to a lot of contrys
5 millions in Norway and only a percenntage of that actaully buy games
only a percentage of that again buy this particcular genre
Sweeden has about 10/11 millon people now?!!! so not so much better.
Maybe if the product was more geared towards younger kids then it woud be translated.
Turn based game, not so much.

Aside from breaching your NDA, can you provide more hyperbolic vagaries without actually providing proof that you own/have actually played this title?

Thanks for ignoring half of what I wrote, specifically "and have a very good idea what they're doing", as if that wasn't the most important part. Good job there, very clever. Where did the developers ever "promise" that? This is what they say on their web site about this subject: "Songs of Conquest is a turn-based strategy game inspired by 90s classics." That's it. Isn't it exhausting being so miserable about everything?

Ubisoft, as far as I remember, started with four, which I don't like much. Five is a big, great and bold game (first polygonal game of the series) but it's less "hand-crafted" and made with a bit less care and balancing than the third (I admit not having played it much. I should) . Plus, it has a very different art style and feeling (distinctively Russian/slavic fantasy art, and distinctively 1C, that is the studio that took over after the original dev team; look at the Fantasy Wars saga and you'll easily recognise that vibe; King's Bounty remake too, at the point that I count HoMM V as a forerunner to the series more than a classic HoMM).
I don't know much about newer entries after V (I haven't heard much about them). My preference is because the third game was a complete, polished and self-contained work from a recognizable and relatively small and focused tean+distributor instead of a franchise of many by a big company that makes many genres dealing with many sub-studios and is more commerce/distribution-driven

It's the "scene" and setup of the ealier games that I miss and/or prefer, relatively artist-friendlier and, most of all, with the author closer to the user. Quite oddly, since these big companies act more like pure distributors even if they have intellectual properties and have a word in the making (they are like modern sindacated media) this closeness and "dialogue" that helps to appreciate and grow fond of the final product can still be obtained by turning directly to the devs (usually not so big, far or branched, and thus not coming as impersonal). I suppose that if I wanted to discuss a mechanic or a turn in the art style or an addition or removal of characters, I could menage to find some guy/girl from 1C or from Wadjet Eye or even Telltale, text to them and maybe crack a joke or two, just like with completely indie/amateur projects that are big on Patreon, imho also for these reasons.. I followed Wesnoth in its earlier days and I remember that feeling just by watching it grow.

I see a lot of complaints, but I will hope for the best. To me it looks like HOMM game play with Fire Emblem and WarCraft style graphics still look promising. I hope they can get a good sound design. Otherwise GOG you give Ubisoft too much credit. Ubisoft just bought the rights from 3DO and New World Computing where the ones who made HOMM series the the cult classic it is.

There are some writings by Tolkien himself showing verisimilitude (better wording, now I realise) VS made-up and fantastic setting is a false alternative. Fantasy is about both dragons,fairies, etc. and immersion. You can decide something is highly symbolic or formulaic or chess-like (even in a novel) or is very believable (for example: give genealogies to your immortal, six-legged kings and queens, write -ahem ahem- entire grammars for languages only spoken and written by noexistent peoples, and give terrain modifiers and encumbrance, and limited inventories to a warparty of green goblins.

I agree however that it's not the classic HoMM model: HoMM is about corny, over-the-top escalation in the later part of a game. It can reach laughable but very satisfying heights. 1000 Gold Dragons shot by two hasted stacks of 500 Titans each before they can get their claws on them, and so on..
Memories.

Really? I grabbed it here dirt cheap and never still had a chance to play it. It has a very classic fantasy old-book style
and I thought it was more like a more modern Age of Wonders I (one of my favorites in the genre)
Thanks for the info. So five was not done by 1C? I could swear it was them.

Ubisoft started with 5, when they bought the rights, and Nival developed it. 1-4 were developed by NWC and published by 3DO (or 1 actually by NWC directly?). Then for 6 and 7 Ubisoft rather passed around the development it seems, and the results show it. Afaik, 1C never was involved with HoMM, they have King's Bounty.

As already said, 5 was made by Nival.

But as for the balancing statement (3 being more balanced than 5), I can't help but laugh, sorry. There are so many brokenly overpowered/underpowered things in Heroes 3, that 5 is the pinnacle of balance compared to it.

Sometimes being miserable about something has been the most fun I've had in years.

Take the Intellivision Amico. Some gasconading poseur who hasn't produced a memorable soundtrack in his life bought the Intellivision name.

And then became the CEO of a new Intellivision company; proceeding to immediately drive it into the ground.

Watching him and his forty odd executives blunder though the whole thing while I've loudly been declaring that it'll never work has been a sharp relief in a calloused industry of believing that every product has a right to exist.

Sometimes ideas are bad, like one time use DVDs.

You're free to not complain about Norwegian translations, because we wouldn't want you to look weird. No-one even asked about Norwegian — apparently not even you! My guess is that you'll not increase your chances of ever seeing it with your vow of silence, but good luck with that strategy nonetheless.

Low Norwegian population doesn't invalidate the points that:

1. this is actually developed in Sweden.

2. Contrary to common belief 10 million people actually have the capacity to do multiple things at once, including translating things. But I guess that if all imported books in Norway are in English your expectations are naturally low. That's fine.

3. Not only kids but also adults use Swedish here (!) I know. Shocking. What you're saying is that "adults should not need translations because they should know English, and because they know it they should prefer to consume content in it, and because of that not even a Swedish developer should bother to translate their own game into their own language". That's the point I'm making: they're lazy, and doubtless using exactly this bad excuse to justify it. That's just what you do when you're lazy; you grasp at any excuse you can find. In this case "adults should know English, so let's just sell it here without expending any effort"

Regarding market size, I suppose it'd be very difficult for me to dig up an imported novel that was translated for this market but that this game will outgross? Something tells me I can, but instead maybe we should argue for why the Polish translation should be dropped since that market is just 4x larger, which isn't that big after all... Yeah, that sounds constructive.

Its weird complaining because your complaint will probably mean nothing other than the self satsfication of complaining
most scandinavians are fine playing it in english in my experience
i havent seen alot of sweedes or norwegians care that much about getting games in this genre translated but maybe your experiences are a lot diffrent
and most people that care about translations woudnt care about this particcular genre that much annyway.
You woud have more luck getting traction with games like Pokemon or Minecraft or simmilar types or games geared towards familys and children that has a large market appeal in scandinavia.

Of course the popularity of turn base games in sweedish may skyrocket suddenly making your effort of complaining not wasted
but i woudnt count on it.

But lets say for the sake of your argument that the game do end up being translated even if only a small portion of the populatiion ends up buying the game.
How much woud this games devs then earn if say only 1000 sweedish guys like yourself end up buying it
after cost of writing, editing etc it in sweedish is substratracted ?

books are a whole diffrent beast than games
but if you ask me if there exist english books/magizines etc in Norway
Yes even in public libarys
and shops like Outland
Dont get me wrong
there exist translated books as well but not all books and magazines ends up being translated
and thats before i mention that such material is pretty much mandetory here if you wish to learn english
it woud be pretty pointless after all to learn english if there didnt exist such material , shocking i know...

Regarding Poland im pretty sure they have simmilar cases if there are boooks, genres, titles that are less popular
ending up not beeing translated just because the market isnt big enough
oh by the way, before i forget
there even exist books and magazines in german and other languages as well
so english isnt the only one where it doesnt end up beeing translated for one reason or another

Like you I also don't think many people are actually speaking up about their preferences when they happen to be not represented. After all, English is ingrained into everyone here when they're children, and people generally don't go around questioning things that they were told when they were 8 years old.

And maybe you're right that complaining will amount to nothing...but how is that a good reason to stay quiet? You're mentioning it yourself: you haven't seen many people complaining about this, yet here I am, and the moment I mention it the first thing you do is to complain right back about how it's weird to mention it. I mean... where should the process start then, in your opinion? With the devs translating the game into their native language? That sounds like a good alternative to me. Or maybe the shift towards actually translating your products into your native language should rely on fan-translations that fans might be locked-out from even creating in the first place? Or with regulations, as with food labeling?

I'm not interested in this game in particular, but the tendency in general. There are some devs/publishers that make an effort, though. Valve does, and it's commendable.

When you mentioned Minecraft (which I don't play) I had to look it up... surely it couldn't be *not* translated into Swedish? After all it's a *reasonably successful* Swedish game. Interestingly enough, not only was it translated into Swedish and 100 other languages, it even had a translation for a very niche language (Älvdalska) spoken by 3000 people in the middle of Sweden. The interesting question is: why? I'm willing to bet that the reason was not because it made financial sense. Even though I'm not one of those 3000 people, thumbs up to Mojang/Microsoft for the gesture.

Anyway, if you want to see something change, mention it. You don't have to know beforehand how it'll actually turn out. If nothing else, you'll at least get the satisfaction of complaining.

I mentioned Minecraft because its is a popular game
Popular games tends to have more chanche to be translated wich was kinda my point
Its the same with movies and maybe to a lesser degree books/magazines

i didnt say financial reasons was the only reason somone woudnt translate something either

And i really doubt its valve thats doing the translating work
unless its for their own games
Its usally external contractors, translating firms , or people employed by the game companys not valve themself in most instances and so on

Btw alot of the Minecraft translations are crowdsourced/fan translation
Meaning its not the company itself that hired anyone to do do it
it was the community itself that translated it
meaning people like me or you
but nice try trying to compare fan tranlations with actual paid jobs, shame it didnt work, huh?

As to your statement about english ingrained into everyone over there when they are young
in to what degree? What kind of measure are you using?
To make an example to better explain where i want to go with this question
there are people here in Norway that claims Ny Norsk is more pure norwegian rather than Bokmål they claim is Danish innfluence
But if we are going to use influence of language as an argument to keep it clean woudnt it then be more correct to say
that Icelandic was the true Norwegian because they icelanders are decandants of the norwegians vikings?

Theres also countless of other loan words in the scandinavian language groups so speaking of them as pure or not influenced by other languages is a bit of a stretch to make, no?

for example Here are example of german/dutch influences
http://germanic-studies.org/Middle-Low-German-loanwords-in-the-Scandinavian-languages.htm

The link includes history context as well

There exist a German version of the same stuff as well in case anyone want to read it in german
http://germanic-studies.org/Mittelniederdeutsche-Lehnwoerter-in-den-skandinavischen-Sprachen.htm