Turn-based strategy games like the legendary Heroes of Might and Magic 3 like to suck us into an addictive spiral. Will we fall off the wagon with Songs of Conquest?
Boybands from the retort, colourful dummies for adults, invasion of AOL CDs: the nineties were a scary era! But for us PC gamers, a lot of good things also happened back then.
The historical highlight is of course the founding of GlobalESportNews, but numerous turn-based strategy series also started in the nineties. Civilization, Battle Isle, Jagged Alliance, Panzer General – and of course Heroes of Might and Magic.
The latter is also fervently revered by the Swedish developer team Lavapotion: their Songs of Conquest is based primarily on good old Heroes 3, which many fans consider the best part of the series. And because we think so too, we threw ourselves into the scenarios of the first two campaigns for the test even before the Early Access launch.
Table of Contents
Avanced recipe for success
If you’ve never played a Heroes before, please take a turn being ashamed of yourself, and we’ll briefly summarise the ingeniously-simple gameplay. Because it’s almost one-to-one for Songs of Conquest: you’re in a fantasy world full of monsters, artefacts, fortified cities, resources lying around, mines, even more monsters – and in between, AI heroes march with their armies.
From the first click, there’s always something to pick up, fight, conquer. We’re happy about every pile of gold (“Cool, recruit new troops! Or would you rather expand the neighbouring city into a metropolis? Or put something aside?”). We chase foreign heroes across the 2.5D world map (more on graphics in a moment). We level up our heroes, equip them with items, recruit troops with (a few) special abilities.
In addition, and this is something that Songs of Conquest has ahead of its role model, we can do research, for example, improve individual troop types several times over – crossbowmen then have a higher range, for example. Or we can push the economic system to collect more resources.
Like its predecessor series, Songs of Conquest never lets us go. Because there is almost always something to do, a strong artefact is waiting two hills away, an enemy army wants to be intercepted, the next level up beckons. Only when the map is almost completely cleared is there occasionally a few rounds of idle time because, for example, we have to pull together several armies to kill the last enemy hero.
Unlike Heroes 3 or Disciples: Liberation, Songs of Conquest does not (yet) have teleport spells or portals. But we can set up a rally point building in a city and recruit troops from allied cities directly there.
From Village to Metropolis
Speaking of cities: They come in several sizes in Song of Conquest, from settlements to metropolises. A great attraction of the game is the clever expansion of these cities, because their maximum size is often predetermined and the building space is limited.
You build directly on the world map: depending on the size of the settlement, there are fixed building plots in small, medium and large. For example, a small plot can accommodate a sawmill, a farmer’s hut for more gold income, or a tavern for troubadours. Medium-sized plots are needed for barracks or a marketplace, for example, and the large ones for the academy or the summoning circle where you recruit the powerful legion melee fighters.
Due to the limitations you have to think carefully about where you put what: In frontline cities, at least one barracks and one assembly point are ideal, maybe towers for more defenders. In the hinterland you can build more resource and research buildings. And did we mention that many buildings can be upgraded? For example, a watchtower with a ballista that can then shoot at attackers.
Crack point battles
When two armies clash, Songs of Conquest switches to a separate hex battlefield in a very genre-classic way. Whereby “classic” is a nice way of putting it, because here at the latest the exaggerated pixel graphics get on your nerves.
This is still quite nice on the world map, because it creates a vertical 3D effect when you zoom in – but you rarely zoom there, and the 3D look only comes into its own with tall objects. In the game and in motion it looks better than on our screenshots, but not as good as in the cleverly edited trailer:
But back to the fights. Here, the respective hero remains nobly in the background and you only intervene with his spells. In addition, the hero’s current stats (such as melee, ranged, defence) influence the troops on the battlefield.
Some of them, in turn, have special characteristics: Crossbow sappers deal a lot of ranged damage, but then have to reload for a round. On the other hand, they can use a skill to drive sharp stakes into the ground – this has often saved us from bitter melee losses.
There are a few battlefield features like terrain elevations or towers, but the battles in the EA version are still mostly repetitive: Army A on the left, Army B on the right, in the middle it’s a slam dunk.
Only in the city attack does it get a bit more varied because of the aforementioned towers. No comparison to the challenging, often asymmetrical battlefields in King’s Bounty 2!
What else is coming in?
The current version comprises two campaigns and twelve maps (solo against the AI or multiplayer for up to six players), which is enough for one or two dozen pleasant evenings. Both campaigns are varied, sometimes you play on a map with several towns that change hands from time to time, sometimes you fight your way through monster-infested forests with a lone hero and are happy about every troop that joins you.
Events and dialogues take place directly on the map, for example when an enemy warrior runs over to you… oh, now we almost gave away that an enemy warrior runs over to you. No, that’s not a spoiler, because the change of sides was so predictable …
The EA version ran stable in the test, only once did the game hang up. The enemy turn times are manageably short, but after a battle it takes a few seconds to evaluate them.
Instead, the developers want to listen to the feedback of the players and implement their wishes. Okay, let’s put our money where our mouth is: We would like to have more Wow! units, because at the moment we miss highlights like the towering Titans or the Black Dragons from Heroes 3.
The four factions also still play quite similarly – the Necromancers in Heroes 3, for example, were a completely different calibre than the Undead from Songs of Conquest thanks to their resurrection abilities. A random map generator would be great too! And can we maybe talk about the pixel graphics again?
Editorial conclusion
Have you ever heard the technical term “Crowbar Pixelart”? No? No wonder, because “crowbar pixelart” is something I just invented. Because I’m just tired of it: There’s apparently a secret law among developers that a game must automatically get pixel art if it’s based on a classic. I really don’t mind pixel graphics, and in turn-based strategy I don’t pay attention to the graphics first anyway. But in Songs of Conquest, the look is just completely overdone. On the world map it’s still okay, but especially on the battlefields, the ugly, fidgety animated pixel thugs almost hurt me physically. I have played Free2Play and tablet titles that look much better! Sure, the Heroes series was never a technical milestone either, but it was much nicer in comparison.
So, that had to come out, enough ranting. Because there is also a lot to praise: Songs of Conquest gets the “Just one more round!” soothing effect right, because on the horizon there is always the next city, a stray artefact, the urgently needed grove for shimmer fabric (one of the five raw materials). The expansion of my cities is also motivating, although pretty city screens are still missing here. Songs of Conquest has definitely laid the foundation for a good turn-based strategy game, now it has to build on it properly until the planned release in the first half of 2023.
