FULL REVIEW: Songs of Conquest

[Two Clicks]

IN A WORD: WORTHWHILE

IN A NUTSHELL:

WHAT TO EXPECT:

HoMM inspired indie game. Fantasy strategy adventure. Turn-based strategy. Turn-based tactical combat. Atmospheric game world. Story rich, old school gameplay. 2D Pixel Graphics. Song-based cutscenes w/ progression. SP campaign mode. SP & MP skirmish mode. Full of features but incomplete content. Unbalanced gameplay. Challenging for new players. Map editor for maps used in Skirmish mode

STATUS:	Released, but in Early Access. The game is playable but does not have all its content. Balancing and tweaks to AI are being actively conducted
BUGS, ISSUES & STABILITY:	2x crashes encountered on mission 4. Also some slow down on larger maps with only 8GB of RAM
SUPPORTS:	Steam Cloud, Level editor
ACHIEVEMENTS:	None
FOR WHOM:	Anyone who is a fan of HoMM, especially if looking for something that is not an exact clone
VALUE FOR MONEY:	Pretty good but its current EA state warrants a small sale. Price rise likely when it comes out of EA

More info below....

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2812096894

CONTENT:

Songs of Conquest (SoC) is a strategy game of adventure, inspired by the 90s classic HoMM. A turn-based game of strategic exploration, kingdom management and tactical combat. It also fuses hero development with lite RPG elements, and resource generation with looting. Two linear single-player campaigns accompany a skirmish mode for both single and multi-player and a level editor for the creation of campaigns and additional maps.

KEY FEATURES

2x complete multi-mission, single-player CAMPAIGNS with a good range of maps, and song-driven cutscenes that drive forward a lore-filled narrative.
VERSUS mode for multi-player.
SKIRMISH MAPS mode for single-player or multi-player with selection of community made maps.
MAP EDITOR and support for COMMUNITY MADE maps, to create campaign adventures and skirmish maps using the tools used by the devs, to script events, control soundtrack and add dialogue.
Comprehensive textual TUTORIALS in an info-screen format.
Fight against or ally with 4x competing unique FACTIONS with interwoven links between each other and the fantasy GAME WORLD.
SETTLEMENT upgrade system centred on the ability to generate unit types, with on-map slots for building placement.
RESOURCE system generated from buildings and randomly located deposits, with a market system to trade more or sell off excess.
Turn-based tactical COMBAT with BATTLE PREVIEW, limited army DEPLOYMENT and AUTO-RESOLVE. Played on hexagonal-tiled MAPS that possess tactical elements.
Hero SKILL system that provide a selection of up to three skills to increase various aspects of a character from unit COMMAND capacity, offence, defence, magic resistance or magic essence generation, with rare power abilities granted every eight levels.
Hero MAGIC system with a considerable amount of spells that used in combat, which relies on the hero and units to generate the ESSENCE (mana) to use them.
The INVENTORY system comprising of items that can be equipped by heroes on seven body locations including; helmets and hats, shields, ranged and melee weapons, body armour, gloves, boots and 3x trinkets.
RESEARCH system that is dependent on the factions employed in a scenario by the player and certain buildings
Text-based RANDOM EVENTS trigger from time to time, awarding the player's troops buffs or de-buffs, or an increase in resources or gold
Between campaign missions, CUTSCENCES of specially written bard song are played to push forward the narrative of the back-story.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2812160512

GAME LOOP

Take turns moving across a map to EXPLORE the land with stacks of armies commanded by a hero.
Use these to clear the way of NEUTRAL FACTIONS that are blocking the route to areas of the map that are unclaimed. LIBERATE settlements, CLAIM resource producing buildings, COLLECT resources and items, RECRUIT allied units, FIGHT turn-based battles, VISIT and revisit sources of power (locations) to gain resources, XP, spell essences, gold and buffs.
UPGRADE settlements to increase the number of buildings they can construct, and upgrade existing buildings to generate more of the resources or units they produce.
Return heroes to settlements periodically
Build at least one marketplace to SELL excess resources or BUY those that are required.
Erect two buildings specialising in their own specific brands of RESEARCH. Spend gold and resources to INVEST in upgrading different aspects of the economy, unit enhancements and stack sizes.
LEVEL UP heroes to increase their skills and special powers.
Complete a series of varying OBJECTIVES from liberating a settlement, keeping heroes alive or killing enemy ones.

COMBAT

Turn-based combat is fought on a HEXAGONAL MAP depending on the location by a maximum of nine army stacks per side, with the defending side fielding additional garrison and ballista units.
BATTLE RATINGS from: very easy to worthy, to suicidal provide a gauge of difficult an encounter will be.
A BATTLE PREVIEW screen allows players to gauge whether to fight an encounter, auto-resolve them and deploy units in predetermined hexes on the map.
Battles taking place in the open and not in defence of a settlement allow for armies to WITHDRAW of the probable result is unfavourable.
Battles can be AUTO-RESOLVEd from the preview screen or while in combat if the player changes their mind. They can also be AUTOMATED to completion if a manual battle was started.
Each unit stack is placed in sequence along a BATTLE ORDER depending on their initiative stat.
Units can move, use SPECIAL ABILITES and move again before conductive offensive actions using ranged or melee combat.
Ranged units have two RANGEs which determine how potent their attacks are.
When in melee units have a ZONE OF CONTROL which grants attacks of opportunity if crossed by enemies.
NEUTRAL army stacks arrayed around the map will flee hopeless fights to save on time, awarding free XP immediately instead.
The battlefield hosts a number tactical features including: destructible OBSTACLES, bottlenecks from IMPASSABLE TERRAIN and differing levels of HIGH-GROUND that increase range and defensive modifiers.
Victory against another hero brings XP to level-up and the SPOILS of WAR in the form of any items held in the defeated hero's inventory.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2812163998

BUILDINGS

SETTLEMENTS have several tiers of size, with each one offering an increase of slots to erect buildings.
BUILDING SLOTS come in three sizes allowing for the construction of a few dozen buildings to generate or trade resources, increase army recruits, increase garrisons and conduct research.
Most buildings can be UPGRADED at least once to increase the output of its produce. Settlements can be upgraded up to five times.
Settlements can draft GARRISONed troops of their own unit stacks, separate to those stacked held by heroes. These defences can be upgraded with GUARD TOWERS built on slots that auto-generate their own defenders including ballistae, to use when the settlement is being attacked.
Heroes and their armies can be positioned to enter and DEFEND settlements if an attack is about to commence.
There are three types of SIEGES available to a conquering hero that enters a settlement and removes any defenders within. These are OCCUPY, RAZE and CONVERT.
OCCUPY is instantaneous and steals a certain amount of resources, generates buffs to unit stats and generates potential recruits at a lesser speed. It also produces lesser essence for heroes to start their battles.
RAZE destroys 2 buildings per ground to gain some loot until the last two and the it becomes owned by the player. This takes the most rounds.
CONVERTing a settlement gives no loot but leaves it intact after some rounds to complete the process.
In SKIRMISH mode, additional heroes can be purchased from settlements for a fee.

UNITS, SPELLS, SKILLS & INVENTORY

4x fully detailed FACTIONS and several types of neutral groups populate the game world.
Take command of HEROES called Wielders with 5x stats, skills and specialisations that can command up to 9x army stacks and cast spells in combat.
SKILLS are earned by heroes are they level up by gaining XP for fighting and winning battles, and visiting locations across the map. Usually a choice from up to 3x. Plus every 8 levels a SPECIAL POWER from a choice of two can also be earned. Together these mould the type of 'class' they will be come over the course of the adventure. Heroes that are taken from a completed mission to the next retain their levels, skills and powers.
There is a large selection of INVENTORY items that can be equipped across seven body locations. These include: shields, weapons or two handed items for both or either hands, armour for the chest and head, plus boots. Three slots are reserved for trinkets. There are four tiers of rarity and power. Each item gives some bonus or penalty to aspects of the character such as view range, offence, defence, etc.
The spell system uses ESSENCE to cast spells during combat, earned every round by the skills and stats of the hero, plus the number and type of units stacks under their control on the battlefield.
Defeated wielders die, but can be REVIVED for gold at a settlement of the player's choice.
Units possess a range of innate ABILITIES that can used on the battlefield which include: melee attacks, ranged attacks, magic attack, slow reloading, zone of control movement, buff defence, defence stance and erect protective measures, etc.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2812161502

TAKEAWAYS:

Key takeaways from my time with the game:

THE GOOD:	+ A good variety of strategically designed mission maps packed with + Revivable heroes with well scaled skill and powerful spell systems. + Combat system with a stronger tactical ethos than HoMM. + Crisp, detailed pixel graphics and wonderful + Good settlement structuring and building dynamic. + Great inventory of items with varied effects for heroes to equip, use and trade. + Rally points allow for immediate recruitment across all settlements of the map at one specific point. + Challenging gameplay with some tough opponents, but unforgiving in nature with the ability to reload at any time.
THE BAD:	- Auto-resolve overly favours player defeat on battle previews with narrow margins. - Some lagging experienced on larger maps with 8GB RAM. - Unused artefacts cannot be sold or dismantled for other use (resources/gold). - Research is not tackled at all at the point in the campaign it should be. (A potential cause of problems in cmpgn 1 miss 4. - Neutral stacks on maps do not have any dynamic spawning or respawning. - A few minor QoL issues with GUI, elements of the map/mini-map and some aspects of gameplay. - AI hero respawn is too quick potentially resulting in the player becoming swamped continuously making for a mid-game that slow down considerably. - Skirmish maps in MP are to easy to defeat, pointing to an AI that needs strengthening.
AND THE REST:	* Content is an almost perfect taster of what the finish product will become, but obviously with suggested features, additional campaigns, QoL and balancing tweaks to come. * Caps on army stack size. Removes doom stacks. Makes combat a more tactical affair even with research increases. * AI has a lot of assistance to make for challenging gameplay. * Heroes retain their level and skills from mission to mission, but there are level caps to stop them becoming over-powerful. * Linear gameplay progression with minor hero, settlement, army and resources reset every new mission. * Over 500x suggestions have been registered on the developers website. 3x of which have been marked considered in a future update.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2812160802

[Two Clicks]

FINDINGS:

Analysis from my time with the game:

MY EXPERIENCE

Overall SoC captures the essence of the original HoMM and the traditional gameplay that was so easily recognisable. With cycles of fighting key battles, taking over settlements, building them up, and collecting the resources needed to research upgrades and replace losses to fight and win the next key engagements. Before switching back priority to recover and prepare for the next significant encounter, ad infinitum.

Content is at a fair level given its Early Access release with only two short campaigns available for single-player. There are at least many maps available to play in skirmish mode against other gamers or the AI. Their quality varies and the AI appear a lot easier to overcome than in the campaign.

Mission design remains a work in progress and currently demonstrate the need for better refinement. Across the campaign missions vary in nature, appearing balanced early on, to becoming difficult in some. A likely result of scripting for the AI, a lack of clearly defined mission objectives (capturing key settlements) and not providing much explanation as to the importance of some features (research). This caused problems for me and other players.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2812202211
Combat is a lot attritional when compared its illustrious predecessor. Individual casualties possess a greater importance with smaller stack sizes, hurting much more than losing a whole stack in HoMM. This delivers a game that requires players to engage in better strategies rather than relying on brute force tactics. Especially now that doom stacks are not possible.

One apparent flaw that came to light regarding objectives where a hero must remain alive, the attritional nature of combat and the way the AI swamps heroes with multiple stacks, much like a human player would do. With equally sized stacks fighting battles against the AI tends to end in pyrrhic victories and thus any follow up battle in the same round will more than likely wipe out the remainder of the army stack and lead to the game ending.

The Spell combat system appears to be one of its more balanced features. It is well-crafted and looks balanced with its approach through cumulative essence (mana) generation. There is already a large selection of spells to choose from, even if some are mundane the more powerful ones will not overwhelm an opponent on their own. So far a lack of healing ensures battles do not over-last their welcome.

Skirmish mode compares more strongly to the original HoMM. With gameplay feeling more open without specific objectives, less challenging due to a less assisted AI and I suspect a lack of 'extra' scripting.

BALANCE & DIFFICULTY

The combination of limited army stacks and level design make for some very balanced battles when considering AI controlled enemy heroes. This also accounts for a complete lack of doom stacks, that remove the gamey element from SoC. Resulting in many a pyhrric battle that puts a more immediate emphasis on rebuilding after a battle.

Difficulty is increased in the way the AI will send multiple army stacks to attack the same target in a round. When this happens to a hero that is critical mission objective they can can get demolished during the first battle and dead meat for the follow up.

Mission design (specifically cmpgn 1 miss 4) can result in a scenario to far for players unfamiliar with HoMM. By not seizing important settlements, embracing research and choosing your battles, the dynamic of the game can appear overly against the player. Considering it is likely that the AI and elements of gameplay have been scripted or hardcoded to generate the challenging - perhaps as a result of being released in EA.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2812202589

REPLAYABILITY & LONGEVITY

Campaign missions tend to play in a rather linear nature given the lack of dynamic elements in design. Players can choose to alter their strategy or craft their heroes, settlements and army stacks in a particular way to play in one style or another. Several are possible though its impossible to know for certain if they are viable in every situation.

The skirmish mode while a potentially limitless vehicle for longevity is lacking in its challenge and until the AI is tweaked will only bring some longevity to those that enjoy winning easily.

The map editor is undoubtedly a great source for community made maps for both SP and MP. Putting aside its current lack of challenging AI, there have already been a few key enhancements suggested to the devs to make this feature even more important. This being able to create actual campaigns.

QUALITY

Some great production values delivers a very picturesque game world that captures the graphics of the first few games in the HoMM series. Despite not being a fan of pixel art I have grown to appreciate the effort that goes into their creation. This one is no different with some very polished visuals.

The soundtrack is very good and the artisanal grade, bard-like songs played in the cutscenes between missions are simply great. Supporting sounds do a perfect job of immersing the play within its gameplay whether it be interacting with the GUI, trapesing around the map or conducting action in the midst of battle.

WHATS MISSING?

With over 500x suggestions already added to the devs website/database its pretty clear there are many directions the game could take and many ways it could be enhanced. With only 3x suggestions so far marked as considered, anyone interested in getting this game should be clear that the EA process has only just begun. One that is sure to as an exciting as it is promising.

The bulk of requests are asking for the following: QoL, more map editor features, additional campaigns, more factions, more spells, more artefacts, stronger difficulty, better balanced and more features to the strategy map and to tactical combat.

In addition to the obvious requests for more content and a better balanced game I would suggest an increase in the tactical aspects of combat. Friendly fire with allies adjacent to target. Partial casualty recovery from troops lost during the battle. More environmental types: trees, mist/weather, trenches, streams, etc. Perhaps even a teleport system for heroes to use. I would also like to be able to dismantle inventory for resources and for items to be stashed at settlements.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2812160042

VERDICT:

SoC delivers a promising derivation on HoMM's familiar gameplay loop. An inviting setting, artisanal detailed graphics and bard-like songs complement combat that plays more tactically than its predecessor. The constrained army stacks and spell system make for more attritional battles that lead to pyrrhic victories.

However current content makes for a good platform for additional campaigns and features, while a fair amount of QoL must be addressed. The biggest issue is that campaign balance needs refining to please both experienced and novice players. Given there are already 500 reported suggestions the devs are sure to be busy.

This evolution of a much loved classic may require a lot of work, but is already WORTHWHILE to play. If it fulfils its undoubted promise it is sure to rank much, much higher.

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