This or Song of Conquest?

[Khanatos]

Just wondering if anyone would recommend this one over Song of Conquest or should I go with SoC?

[wetbandit1986]

Song of conquest sux. All towns are the same, upgrades are same, limited stack for units, boring items. Not a homam like game i can enjoy

[MeGa]

Songs of Conquest is a great game that looks very poor, worse than HoMM3

[Antiga]

SoC isn't a true spiritual successor to the HoMM series, due to too many deviations from the core formula. The pixel graphics are pretty nice, but nothing special. The campaigns don't make a whole lot of sense, with no real beginning or ending to the background story. Never felt a connection to any of the characters, mostly due to how predictable they all are. No depth to them. The 2nd campaign was especially poorly written. Not enough depth to making the different factions stand out. They do, but not like in HoMM.
All that said, it's easily like a 7 or 8/10. So if you're into the gameplay, very much worth playing.

This game I can't comment on too much except that it looks like it will be more of a spiritual successor than SoC is. What I believe they are doing here is recreating HoMM 3 but modernized, in a sci-fi jacket and with a couple of mechanics and etc to make it its own game while still following the formula we all love.

[MagnetoRN]

This game looks amazing, but it unfortunately uses unlimited stacks, which is a terrible and dated choice, as it turns strategy shallow and makes absolutely no sense, killing immersion completely. If your thing is just to make money and buy more units, rinse and repeat, you might enjoy this, but if you want something that requires more thinking about how to spend resources effectively, go for Songs of Conquest. It's a great game!

[Imry von Larisch]

Can't really talk about Silence of the Siren, because it didn't really strike me from first glance even if it's made by peope from my country. Maybe it would if Songs of conquest didn't get me first. Actually I remember discovering Hero's hour and thinking while playing demo like I would really like to play something like Heroes again. Not heroes but something like it. And Songs of conquest striked me at first glance with the stylization and dark fairly tail pixel graphics. That's matter of preference, really, most people look at it like: "ew, pixels, WTF?" and don't give it a chance but for me it's the strong side, I certainly prefer that over this graphic seems to be tailored specifically for phones/flash apps. But maybe if Silence of the Siren came before the Songs of conquest, I would have different opinions today, who knows. But I personally prefer grim and realistic over color playful and fairy.

That say, I can't say a thing about SotS gameplay but SoC gameplay is really strong with "one more turn". I gave it over 200 hours and have 100% achievements now which I had to go out of my way to do it, that's not usual. But I also didn't get it at first, I bought it in EA, played for 20-30 hours and didn't touch it for two years before my friends start talk to me about playing Heroes 3 again and I was like: "hey, come try and hot seat this!"

If you can get over pixel graphics and slow start in first/tutorial campaign wish difficulty curve at the end you are for a ride. Game is so similar to what you know to hop up and play right away yet so different you had to figure out what to do to play efficiently. Not that's a problem at fair difficulty. I made it through all 4 campaign and the last one was where things start to click to feel like now I really know what to do. You have stuff like limited stack sizes + upgrades to make them bigger that makes gameplay better in my opinion or it's at least tailored for the gameplay. Magic system is magic the gathering mana from your units. I recommend Seth review of the game on YouTube.

But speaking of campaign, you can hear lot of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on writing but they get better as story goes and get better with every campaign. And it gets better retrospectively as well, because all 4 campaigns events are happening at the same time and I overall enjoyed them even more on replaying. If that's your things.

SoC is also cheaper right now with first story dlc behind corner and two more factions and campaigns planned for the first half of the next year. It also just got update to allow you to mix factions so if you don't like limitations (which makes game better imo) you can also lift some of them now on skirmish/conquest maps, challenge maps, random generated map or community maps. Speaking of editor, we have several community story campaigns by now.

Overall, do you want to support development of this game or do you want to get much more for your money right now?

[Drages]

Originally posted by MagnetoRN:

This game looks amazing, but it unfortunately uses unlimited stacks, which is a terrible and dated choice, as it turns strategy shallow and makes absolutely no sense, killing immersion completely. If your thing is just to make money and buy more units, rinse and repeat, you might enjoy this, but if you want something that requires more thinking about how to spend resources effectively, go for Songs of Conquest. It's a great game!

You named it one of the best strategy games ever, "terrible and dated," and more. I am talking about HoMM 3. Do not say this to some experienced gamers out there—it would not be wise.

[Lakota]

SotS play style feels much more like HoMM while SoC looks like it. If you like HoMM gameplay then buy this game. Also SotS has town screens and SoC does not. I vote for SotS any day of the week.

[MeGa]

SoC doesnt even have decent unit cards, which is very cheap, and a staple of the genre.

Here I have the typical interesting unit card, with the model / a drawing of it, its stats and skills, and a long lore description for it.

Upgraded units have a whole different unit card / description from basic ones

[MagnetoRN]

Originally posted by Drages:

Originally posted by MagnetoRN:

This game looks amazing, but it unfortunately uses unlimited stacks, which is a terrible and dated choice, as it turns strategy shallow and makes absolutely no sense, killing immersion completely. If your thing is just to make money and buy more units, rinse and repeat, you might enjoy this, but if you want something that requires more thinking about how to spend resources effectively, go for Songs of Conquest. It's a great game!

You named it one of the best strategy games ever, "terrible and dated," and more. I am talking about HoMM 3. Do not say this to some experienced gamers out there—it would not be wise.

The guy asked for opinions, so why would I care about people who love broken games?
There are as many lovers as there are haters for the HOMM franchise. I liked HOMM3 and 5 back in the day, liked King's Bounty and Disciples 1 and 2 more and loved AOW 1 and 2.
I repeat: to me, unlimited stacks is a poor, broken and less immersive choice for any strategy game when compared to armies limited by char/kingdom development.

[DitoLoco]

I couldnt get into SoC because of its magic system, I like this one more so far though yes it follows HoM 3 steps closely.

[Kerrnn]

This is Sci-Fi HoMM (grid based combat, world map with resource nodes, etc), SoC is fantasy, magic, base building is a slot system on the world map as opposed to a side menu. If both were at the same stage of development i'd suggest which flavour of homm-like you prefer. As of now, SoC is obviously far more along dev wise so take that how you will. Im enjoying this a chunk for what thats worth however.

[Salinga]

Only played the demo for 5 hours so far. I have the impression that SotS offers far more interesting strategic possibilities than HoMM 3.

The big question is of course theAI. But of course I can't judge that yet.

[Zorp]

I've supported songs of conquest since before they were on steam. That game, unfortunately FAILED in it's objective and it failed hard.

It's not a real homm genre game, it's just its own thing - and while the result is decent thats definitively not what they sold the fans. It honestly reminds me of one of those mobile game ads where the gameplay is really nothing like advertised

This game, succeeds in its objective and actually iterates on the genre. Guaranteed cult classic if the devs keep at it (and it's already in a good state)

[Poutchouli]

Originally posted by Salinga:

Only played the demo for 5 hours so far. I have the impression that SotS offers far more interesting strategic possibilities than HoMM 3.

The big question is of course theAI. But of course I can't judge that yet.

I've only played one map on medium so far, but I feel the AI is in a fairly good spot. Gotta admit to savescumming a few times. It plays the world map really well, and it keeps the pressure on you. It can handle multiple commanders, corners yours, and doesn't let you feel comfortable being away from your town. Doesn't waste a moment in claiming your structures, a real pest. There were, however, a few resources on the map not far from its town that it never picked up. I also never found it building anything on the map. So no drones, snares, turrets, outposts, or mining probes (sure as ♥♥♥♥ dismantled all of mine though).

AI on the battlefield is what you'd expect. Makes the best decision for that turn, but doesn't make plays that set you up. Units with delayed attacks, like earthshakers, at least know not to just target melee units at their starting position, only to then miss because they moved. They're pretty good at predicting where you might move.

Structure building in towns isn't quite there though. I was really far into a game, getting hammered, and it had two towns. Once I finally broke through and captured them, I found that both towns were missing a couple buildings. *All* structures are required to build the final one for an extra 1k income, so it was missing out on quite of bit of buying power. It had plenty of time and resources to do this. Both were missing the gateway/teleport/tunnel, which means it couldn't teleport between its towns to better defend them. EDIT: Playing a different scenario on hard and the AI did build and use their town portal. So I wonder if that's tied to difficulty, or if they were just being weird about that in the other scenario.

Can it be improved? For sure, but it's still fun and challenging to play.

[Salinga]

@Poutchouli sounds good.