Five reasons why it’s almost as cool as the third "Heroes"
Songs of Conquest from a Swedish studio Lavapotion from the moment of its announcement, it became the spiritual successor of the cult Heroes of Might & Magic, especially its third part, which many fans consider the best in the series, embodying everything that is good and classic about HoM&M. The release of an early version confirmed the validity of these claims – there are several good reasons for this.
Classic gameplay, but with its own ideas
Let’s not beat around the bush and start right away with the main thing. Songs of Conquest built and played like classic "Heroes of Might and Magic" – without any training, the hands and head remember and understand what needs to be done. We move the figures of the main characters (here called masters) across a map dotted with mines, villages and towns, altars and statues that give various bonuses forever or for the next battle, chests, towers that offer views of the surrounding area, equipment guarded by more or less powerful enemies. There is a lot of everything around, including neutral creatures. You can hire someone – or take a piece of gold. Someone, when meeting our army, prefers to run or offers to join. In general, everything is classic.
The main thing is, of course, to rebuild your large and small settlements, erect sawmills, quarries and other sources of resources there, as well as barracks, buildings necessary for certain units or for research. The latter are focused both on the economy and on military affairs – on the opening of new types of troops and so on. All buildings can be improved, like the castle itself – as the city level increases, new places for buildings appear. And, of course, the castle needs to be protected by erecting walls there, deploying not only a garrison in case of special danger, but also one of your masters with his army.
The battles themselves are also classic – we move units across cells on our turn, attack, wait, or use magic available to the master. Before the battle they are allowed to deploy their troops on the ground. You can always let the computer calculate the results, although, as a rule, manually can avoid many of the losses that the AI often makes, even if you are told that the battle will be easy. Naturally, for all successes, as well as for visiting special points on the map, masters gain experience and grow in levels, which allows them to improve one of the parameters/skills of their choice – increase, for example, the damage of all units in melee or the radius of damage in long-range combat, add movement points, and so on.
What about your own ideas?? In fact, not all of them are unique, but if we consider them in the context of “Songs of Conquest as the heir to the classic “Heroes,” then they may seem unexpected. Perhaps the most important thing is, of course, the limit on the number of units that one master can lead. To increase it, you need to pump up the “Leadership” parameter.
There are also restrictions on the capacity of the units themselves – in order to raise this ceiling, it is important to conduct appropriate, and very expensive, research. It is clear why this is being done – so that players do not rely only on the tactics of “rushing” and accumulating a single strong, large army. That is, in a campaign where the AI is not particularly violent, this can still be done, but in multiplayer everything becomes much more interesting and difficult.
In addition, in Songs of Conquest there is no division into weeks, which provide global features that affect everyone – each turn brings a certain amount of resources and new units in settlements. There is also no concept of fighting spirit, and therefore there is no need to worry about how fighters of different factions, once on the same team, treat each other and how their characteristics change – here you simply cannot recruit units of different races into one army.
You also cannot control the castle https://ne-betcasino.co.uk/games/ of another faction – when you capture a city, you either plunder and burn its buildings over several turns, or occupy it, receiving profits and resources every turn, or lure away residents (again, it will take time) so that the settlement becomes “racially correct”. This, of course, is a simplification, but understandable – without critically changing the very mechanics and essence of the gameplay, the authors clear it of what is unnecessary from their point of view of micromanagement.
Unique factions
In general, one of the main advantages Songs of Conquest – these are just well-written factions. There will be four playable ones. The Knights of Arleon only at first glance seem like a classic human race, torn apart by squabbles for power – in fact, they are also a little elves, since the masters of this faction are free to hire troops of the forest fairy people, various stags and flying spirits. Mercenaries from Baria are also not entirely classic – if only because there are inventors among them. In general, the entire faction gravitates towards steampunk, being the only one capable of using heavy artillery.
Necromancers from the Barony of Lot are not classic undead. These are human cultists who raise the dead, summon rats and skeletons, and use the undead for their own purposes. And the toadmen from the Rana faction are an animal race, which is served by worms, lizards, some kind of ripper ostriches, toads themselves and even dragons.
As you can see, each side here is distinguished primarily by unique units, as well as buildings for hiring them. This doesn’t provide the same differences in tactics as between, for example, Zerg, Terran and Protoss, but it still allows for a different feel to playing as each faction.
Interesting campaigns and setting
In theory, the final version will have a campaign for each faction, and in the early version there will be four scenarios available for the knights of Arleon and the bullywugs of Rana. And these are really different in mood, interesting stories in their own way. Baroness Cecilia Stouthart fights foreign and domestic enemies, suppresses uprisings, executes or pardons mercenaries and seeks help from old friends in the fight against the cultists of Lot.
At this time, Rask from South Brook, the first master of Rana, escapes from Barian captivity, where he was enslaved almost from childhood – and he escapes with the help of a mercenary captain, whom we also meet in Cecilia’s campaign. At first, Rask just needs to survive, escape from pursuing enemies, gradually gain strength, and then organize a campaign to revive his native Swamp. People and mercenaries here are mostly shown as ruthless slave traders, but many of the Ran are afraid to get involved with them and agree to side with Rask only because there is no choice – his actions will still lead to the Barians or cultists coming, and obviously not with humanitarian aid.
All this is accompanied by well-written dialogues, beautiful art, nice “pixel” graphics (though sometimes it’s difficult to make out what kind of buildings are on the map and where the settlement is among them) and verses of a beautiful song after each mission, which should merge together after completing all the campaigns.
The soundtrack deserves a special listen.
The game is addictive and challenging
Therefore play Songs of Conquest both interesting and difficult. If in the first missions of the campaign for Arleon the enemy masters practically do not show themselves at all and the passage turns into unhindered pumping, accumulation of forces and the subsequent destruction of everyone and everything, then the AI gets involved, the enemy heroes begin to attack our mines and cities – and the evening ceases to be languid. And in the campaign for Rask it becomes difficult already from the first mission – even neutral enemies are able to beat up our already small army of frogs.
And in the following tasks, the enemy’s masters begin to put pressure almost from the start – they have to smoke them out, lure them into their settlements, which are protected by Rask (but the opponent is not always willing to do this), divide forces between several of their heroes, one of whom brings reinforcements to the other, constantly attack enemy sources of resources and settlements in order to prevent the AI from quietly accumulating forces. In general, you have to turn on and play for real – this is exactly what was missing in recent releases HoM&M from Ubisoft and, for example, in Disciples III / Disciples: Liberation .
At the same time, as I said, even battles marked “Easy” can lead to unexpected losses, which can be avoided if you correctly do everything manually. In particular, move units correctly, wait and use the terrain – throw mines at narrow passages and occupy heights that increase the damage and radius of long-range attacks. To balance the strength of archers, many of them are forced to spend the next turn after an attack reloading. And when moving, shooters’ characteristics, as a rule, temporarily decrease – all this does not allow them to be turned into a universal destructive force, they are here rather to support allies who must lure enemies under the attacks of our long-range warriors.
Well, in general, almost every unit has interesting features that are important to know and apply correctly. For example, hyenas first counterattack and then take damage – this will not be the most pleasant discovery. Ran has mages that attack everyone in range. And the “stompers” are capable of hitting hard and frightening enemies – however, it is often better to spend their turn on a song that reduces the initiative of all enemy units. And, of course, it is important to combine this with the master’s spells – if, for example, you are going to attack with ostrich-like rippers that can run to the enemy in one turn, then it is logical to put enhanced protection against melee attacks on them.
Many modes
In addition to the story campaigns in Songs of Conquest there is a skirmish mode where you can try out all four factions, as well as online and local multiplayer, where you either play together or duel with other users. Moreover, it is allowed to configure the amount of resources and dwellings of creatures, set a limit for masters and determine the growth rate of neutrals. Finally, the game comes with an editor that allows you to create custom maps and entire scenarios – quite a few of them appeared already at the early access stage.
What’s still missing
It is clear that Songs of Conquest not ideal, especially at the early access stage. For example, there is a strange magic system – the available spells of various schools (creation, destruction, chaos and order) and their very level depend largely on the units and what they do on the battlefield. Each of them has its own “essence”, with which your wards fill the master every turn (in fact, they give him mana). Plus, there are buildings on the map and parameters of the hero himself, which give a bonus to a particular school of magic. As a result, spells are often revealed almost randomly as the battle progresses – there is clearly not enough control over this process, over leveling up your great magician. And in general, the importance of magic does not seem to be as great as we are used to seeing in such games.
There’s also a lack of opportunities to collect sets of cool equipment. The characters decide practically nothing in the dialogues – there is no system of morality and the importance of choices/consequences. Leveling up masters is somewhat one-sided, where, as I already said, a lot is tied to leadership – I would like to see more unique specializations for heroes. And finally, I thought it would be possible to make the factions even more different. In any case, it is strange that all four races use the same resources – the Rana beasts and necromancer cultists are begging to be given something special. Well, it is clear that, as always in such cases, there is a lot of work to be done to balance and calibrate everything.
Songs of Conquest has not yet become the ideal successor to the classic "Heroes" And Disciples, but for the first time in a long time we got a game that is as close to this level as possible. We can only hope that in the time before the release (and it is planned in a year) the authors will save everything, multiply it and draw conclusions, focusing, as they promised, on player feedback.
