Buy or skip ?

[Captn Tunabeerd]

Hello, I love HOMM 3 and i just discovered this game. After seeing that people in reviews have avarage 10-15 hours only, my question is if there is any content/replaybility ? (i dont say that a people should have thousands of hours fun on this genre but 10 hours is not a lot) Thank you :)

[President Jyrgunkarrd]

Buy.

There is a lot of content, and the developers have made it clear that there is intent to expand with more factions (I believe 4 more are tentatively planned?) after release (presumably that's going to be dependent on sales figures, but the game is fantastic so I don't suspect that'll be a problem).

Even if the game literally flops tomorrow, though, what's here is lots of polished content to sink hours into.

If you enjoy the HoMM 3 strategic map play loop of just adventuring around and finding shiny loot and leveling up until A NEW CHALLENGER APPEARS! and then you go have a big war with another proper kingdom, Songs of Conquest re-creates that experience with aplomb. It feels good in all the ways HoMM 3 felt good, while being much prettier and feeling much more tight & kinetic. It is a very satisfying sandbox to play in.

Tactical battles are just superior to HoMM 3 in every way. All of the familiar elements of play are there, but the UI is much more intuitive and the positioning of unit / timing of committing to attacks is much more cerebral. It's also just plain gorgeous.

Random map generator is still in the works but there is a fully functional map editor and a large library of hand-made maps that are excellent to play on. YMMV, but I'm personally tired of random maps anyway; algorithms can just never quite put together something as beautiful or as smart as a good human map designer. It feels a bit like rediscovering a lost art to play on SoC's maps.

And if you just absolutely need random maps anyway, they're coming and I suspect the generator will be high quality.

Writing in the campaign is shockingly good for a small little adventure that mostly serves as a tutorial, so that's a nice little cherry on top of the sundae.

This game is an absolute gem. It is not only a passionately crafted love letter to HoMM, but a great game in it's own right that surpasses the work that inspired it.

[sandman25dcsss]

Replayability is not an issue because there are already hundreds of user-made maps and unlimited number of random maps.

PS. I have about 80 hours with negative review, eventually I will change my review to positive when AI becomes good enough some day (devs are actively working on it).

[Captn Tunabeerd]

Originally posted by President Jyrgunkarrd:

Buy.

There is a lot of content, and the developers have made it clear that there is intent to expand with more factions (I believe 4 more are tentatively planned?) after release (presumably that's going to be dependent on sales figures, but the game is fantastic so I don't suspect that'll be a problem).

Even if the game literally flops tomorrow, though, what's here is lots of polished content to sink hours into.

If you enjoy the HoMM 3 strategic map play loop of just adventuring around and finding shiny loot and leveling up until A NEW CHALLENGER APPEARS! and then you go have a big war with another proper kingdom, Songs of Conquest re-creates that experience with aplomb. It feels good in all the ways HoMM 3 felt good, while being much prettier and feeling much more tight & kinetic. It is a very satisfying sandbox to play in.

Tactical battles are just superior to HoMM 3 in every way. All of the familiar elements of play are there, but the UI is much more intuitive and the positioning of unit / timing of committing to attacks is much more cerebral. It's also just plain gorgeous.

Random map generator is still in the works but there is a fully functional map editor and a large library of hand-made maps that are excellent to play on. YMMV, but I'm personally tired of random maps anyway; algorithms can just never quite put together something as beautiful or as smart as a good human map designer. It feels a bit like rediscovering a lost art to play on SoC's maps.

And if you just absolutely need random maps anyway, they're coming and I suspect the generator will be high quality.

Writing in the campaign is shockingly good for a small little adventure that mostly serves as a tutorial, so that's a nice little cherry on top of the sundae.

This game is an absolute gem. It is not only a passionately crafted love letter to HoMM, but a great game in it's own right that surpasses the work that inspired it.

Thanks for this huge in depth review ! :)

[Captn Tunabeerd]

Originally posted by sandman25dcsss:

Replayability is not an issue because there are already hundreds of user-made maps and unlimited number of random maps.

PS. I have about 80 hours with negative review, eventually I will change my review to positive when AI becomes good enough some day (devs are actively working on it).

Hmm, is the AI bad ? Since i will propably not playing MP. Thanks

[sandman25dcsss]

Originally posted by Captn Tunabeerd:

Hmm, is the AI bad ? Since i will propably not playing MP. Thanks

I am not interested in campaign so for me AI is not good enough. I played another game just today to see if AI became better (as other players say AI was recently improved), but I didn't see major difference, I still beat a neighbor without any issues because I had much stronger and numerous army (AI hadn't even upgraded all their units despite turn 40)

[cANe]

SKIP SKIP SKIP!

The game is not worth it in it's current state and the road map for 2023 with includes the full release tells a story of a game that will not be able to live up to it's expectations.

[Rianith]

You can't actually mix in any unit to an army, it has to be only that race, no neutrals even.
And since army defines the magic you can use, there is zero replayability as EA stands.

[JD]

Skip for now definitely, because firstly, It's EA and secondly, I bought AoW3 with all DLCs recently, which is a finished and polished game. Also, I don't really like the art.

[Captn Tunabeerd]

Thanks all for response, for now i decide to pass and check again whan its done :)

[Jin-]

I'd say skip for now. It's too bare bones and the AI is weak

[tonechild]

I haven't tried anything but the base campaign, and I found it a real snooze. There's a lot of depth to the game but nothing has enticed me to explore it. The game has a lot of polish, and rationally I think I _should_ be enjoying it. For whatever reason, I just find myself bored when playing, it is a real snooze for me. I really enjoyed the HoMM series and love in-depth mechanics in most games. For this game though, it just feels pointless, I can steamroll the enemy without really needing to use most of the mechanics so it just doesn't give me much incentive. Maybe I'll try playing it again later. I'm not refunding the game just yet. Perhaps I'm just not in the mood, idk.

[Allwynd]

I like the music, the factions, the story (what little story there is), but as having HOMM3 as one of my most favorite games of all time that I still play to this day, I could not adjust to the changes that SoC presents.

I was not able to adjust to how towns work and how you don't have a town screen with a predefined buildings for each faction like HoMM3, but instead you have a few building spots and you have to choose which buildings you want to build and miss out on others. What I found really a kick in the nuts was that when an enemy takes over your town, it gets demolished so you have to start rebuilding it once you take it back, which is a huge setback.

Another difference is that you can get the same artifact multiple times and there are different qualities like in MMORPGs - white items, green items, blue items, etc. You may end up with the same thing over and over, which really diminishes the importance of artifacts and makes them feel like junk you have to carry around with you. In HoMM3 what made artifacts special was that there can only be one of a kind in the game and if you had, for example Shackles of War, you knew that nobody else will have it, unless it's some custom map where the creator put one artifact multiple times. And this change in SoC really adjusts the game dynamic for me.

I was not able to adjust to not being able to create doomstacks (for someone who doesn't know - being able to carry legions of units in your army) because later on in the game having a legion for an army kinda shows that the stakes have changed rather than still carrying the same handful of puny mercenaries with you all the way to the end. What's more is that there are some trivial battles later on and having a massive army lets you take care of guardians with no casualties so you can take whatever treasure they are guarding.

What I also don't understand is if units in an army are limited, then why at least not have them gain XP and level up and become stronger and sometimes evolve, like in:

- Battle for Wesnoth
- Disciples 1 and 2, but mostly 2
- Heroes of Might & Magic III In the Wake of The Gods



I don't really understand why these things are like they are. I can understand the army limit from a competitive perspective if the game is going to have tournaments and everything has to be perfectly balanced, but when you just want to play single player against AI, why should there be such limitations?

Part of what made old games like HoMM3, AoE2, TES3 Morrowind and others so fun and iconic was the fact that not everything was well balanced and there were not as many limitations imposed as they are in games like SoC and this allowed for almost infinite replay value because you can fool around and you have the freedom to play however you want - you can play how the developers intended you to, you can exploit some imbalance or you can choose to intentionally gimp yourself so you have an even harder time.


So if you like HoMM3 you may be interested in SoC, but if you've read what I explained here, you should know that SoC differs quite a lot from HoMM3 and if those things don't sit well with you, you should wait before buying it to see if these get changed or not. Or if you don't mind these changes, go ahead and buy it.


Personally, when I first heard about SoC, I was really excited about this game, but after I played it for 10+ hours and tried to give it every chance possible, I just realized that the game is not for me and doesn't scratch that HoMM3 itch and in the end, I just went back to HoMM3, because I know it does what I want it to do.

I'm not saying SoC is a bad game by any stretch, because it isn't. All I'm saying that as a HoMM3 fan and player who wanted to find something similar to play, sadly SoC just doesn't work for me. At least at this point. I give it the benefit of the doubt that things may improve with time, but we will see.

[Captn Tunabeerd]

Originally posted by Allwynd:

I like the music, the factions, the story (what little story there is), but as having HOMM3 as one of my most favorite games of all time that I still play to this day, I could not adjust to the changes that SoC presents.

I was not able to adjust to how towns work and how you don't have a town screen with a predefined buildings for each faction like HoMM3, but instead you have a few building spots and you have to choose which buildings you want to build and miss out on others. What I found really a kick in the nuts was that when an enemy takes over your town, it gets demolished so you have to start rebuilding it once you take it back, which is a huge setback.

Another difference is that you can get the same artifact multiple times and there are different qualities like in MMORPGs - white items, green items, blue items, etc. You may end up with the same thing over and over, which really diminishes the importance of artifacts and makes them feel like junk you have to carry around with you. In HoMM3 what made artifacts special was that there can only be one of a kind in the game and if you had, for example Shackles of War, you knew that nobody else will have it, unless it's some custom map where the creator put one artifact multiple times. And this change in SoC really adjusts the game dynamic for me.

I was not able to adjust to not being able to create doomstacks (for someone who doesn't know - being able to carry legions of units in your army) because later on in the game having a legion for an army kinda shows that the stakes have changed rather than still carrying the same handful of puny mercenaries with you all the way to the end. What's more is that there are some trivial battles later on and having a massive army lets you take care of guardians with no casualties so you can take whatever treasure they are guarding.

What I also don't understand is if units in an army are limited, then why at least not have them gain XP and level up and become stronger and sometimes evolve, like in:

- Battle for Wesnoth
- Disciples 1 and 2, but mostly 2
- Heroes of Might & Magic III In the Wake of The Gods



I don't really understand why these things are like they are. I can understand the army limit from a competitive perspective if the game is going to have tournaments and everything has to be perfectly balanced, but when you just want to play single player against AI, why should there be such limitations?

Part of what made old games like HoMM3, AoE2, TES3 Morrowind and others so fun and iconic was the fact that not everything was well balanced and there were not as many limitations imposed as they are in games like SoC and this allowed for almost infinite replay value because you can fool around and you have the freedom to play however you want - you can play how the developers intended you to, you can exploit some imbalance or you can choose to intentionally gimp yourself so you have an even harder time.


So if you like HoMM3 you may be interested in SoC, but if you've read what I explained here, you should know that SoC differs quite a lot from HoMM3 and if those things don't sit well with you, you should wait before buying it to see if these get changed or not. Or if you don't mind these changes, go ahead and buy it.


Personally, when I first heard about SoC, I was really excited about this game, but after I played it for 10+ hours and tried to give it every chance possible, I just realized that the game is not for me and doesn't scratch that HoMM3 itch and in the end, I just went back to HoMM3, because I know it does what I want it to do.

I'm not saying SoC is a bad game by any stretch, because it isn't. All I'm saying that as a HoMM3 fan and player who wanted to find something similar to play, sadly SoC just doesn't work for me. At least at this point. I give it the benefit of the doubt that things may improve with time, but we will see.

Exactly, those are reasons why i am passing the game, mainly the town and unit structure. Well maybe the game will suprise us at the end of developement, but for now i am skipping this one.

[Zelmor]

Originally posted by Captn Tunabeerd:

Hello, I love HOMM 3 and i just discovered this game. After seeing that people in reviews have avarage 10-15 hours only, my question is if there is any content/replaybility ? (i dont say that a people should have thousands of hours fun on this genre but 10 hours is not a lot) Thank you :)

You are missing out. I'm 24 hours in, just finished both campaigns. They were nice. There are a lot of skirmish maps, more are coming according to devs, and even more community ones. Multiplayer with friends, yo. Game's real good, and I grew up on HoMM2-3. Start with the frog campaign as the warlord's video suggested, the magic system is really nice, but the human campaign is very limited in what the characters can cast due to narrative reasons (they are not mages). Just roll with the frogs and enjoy the game.

Also not sure about the doom stack comment from the other poster, if you research during the map you can expand the unit limit by quite a lot. 3 is not the max stack size to dragons, people.

[Warrior at the Edge of Time]

Skip. The design is good, but leaves lot to be desired, especially when comparing to empires of HOMM, which still have that wow effect even after many years. The rest of the game is even weaker.