izigame.me

But now hear my song about the dawn of the night
Let's sing the bard's song~ ♪
~Blind Guardian

You know how some genres reached their highest points back in the days and still struggle making a big comeback? Turn-based strategy genre did that with Heroes of Might & Magic III, which up to this day is considered by many to be the very best TBS. Like Fallout 2 in its own genre. A lot of games tried to imitate it but neither managed to repeat its success. Or at least get close enough. It's 2024. Yet people still play the same ol' game from 1999. Crazy sh*t. Now, when Coffee Stain announced that they're going to publish a new TBS game from a young Swedish team? I was really excited.
Why? Because the game looked totally right. It had charming retro-like visuals (say whatever you want, 2D visuals are the best for TBS genre), it had HoMM-inspired gameplay and... I dunno. It had the same exact feeling Stardew Valley used to have. You know how Harvest Moon fans felt when they saw it? They were like “This! We wanna play this!”. Same exact thing happened to TBS audience. Especially those who loved HoMM series (which is, like... everybody?). Unfortunately, unlike ConcernedApe, Lavapotion went straight into Early Access where game stood until not so long ago. But finally, we've got our release, so... let's have a look?
The first thing you should know about Songs of Conquest is that it's a HoMM clone. Don't expect anything groundbreaking. If something, it has less mechanics than the original. Like I said, it's very charming (despite lack of those juicy castle-building screens, visuals totally work and have that magical aftertaste of SNES titles like Zelda and Earthbound) and after the every campaign mission there's a unique song about its events (a very nice touch I didn't see anywhere else), but gameplay-wise there's nothing new. You know the drill. You capture the points, the points generate resources, you use those to hire / upgrade units and at the end of the day you storm your opponents fortress because their mother was a hamster and their father smelt of elderberries. Sounds rather boring but that's what they've promised us and, well, that's what I wanted.
Why? Well, you see, there are two ways of doing things. Being original and being good. It's great when both happen at the same time, but still, being good without being original can be exciting too. Think of your favorite classic title. No matter how much you love it, most likely there are some things that you'd rather change. Because those didn't age well, because those felt uncomfortable to begin with, doesn't matter. You, as a person who invested hours of your time in it, think that it can be better. That's exactly the idea here. Not just make a new HoMM variant, but to make something people who loved it would enjoy playing. Did Lavapotion succeed in that? Oh, yeah.
The moment I started Songs of Conquest, I instantly fell in love with it. It felt exactly like I wanted it to. It's hard to explain, but in a way, good TBS is a lot like good mouse or keyboard. Click matters. If you know what I mean. There should not be any bull standing between you and your goals and the game should give you all the info you need, so when you actually give a command, you should feel like “Yeah, now we talking!”. Remember how satisfying it was in HoMM? You checked that the path is right and then clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop... SoC got that feeling. Everything you need is under your left hand. You can highlight objects, you can see how far your wielder (you know, dude with the flag, one of those we called heroes in HoMM) can go, the end turn button placed totally right, etc.
In other words, Lavapotion cared and tried to make a game that'll feel good. Auto-battle feature is a nice example of that. You can use it, then check the result and if you're not satisfied? You can just press “manual battle” button and do things your way. No need to load previously saved game or anything. You just check what AI offers you and then decide whether to proceed with it or not. Also, the game doesn't just guess the outcome of the battle, it actually calculates it. It makes a fast battle somewhere on background, without showing you the visuals, and only then tells you the result. Really nice stuff. So... did we get ourselves a next big thing in the genre? Unfortunately, no. Not even close.
As fast as I fell in love with this game, I became disappointed in it. Why? Well, because of how small it is. Heroes of Might & Magic III had 23 missions across 7 campaigns. And it was in 1999, when making games was way harder than it is now, when we have things like Unity (which this game is built on). Songs of Conquest? It has 16 missions across 4 campaigns. And it's not like those are big and complicated missions. Those are just tiny little maps, most of which feel like tutorials. Even the first map in HoMM III was bigger and most complicated than anything we have here. Also, like I already said, SoC is much simpler game. No underground, no puzzle map, no other complicated things. Just some basic “point and click” stuff. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that simplicity is a bad thing. If something, I think it's the opposite. But if you're aiming for casual approach, you should provide decent length. Because when you click-click-click through the mission in about 20 minutes, you want new ones to pop up for some time. Unfortunately, this game ends right when you start getting a taste of it. And it sucks. Sure, you can say that developers added mod support and there are some community-made maps already included by default but personally, I don't think it's an excuse. Saying that it is is like saying that Fallout 4 is a good game because “Look what they did on Nexus!” CoS is way too short and that is. Deal with it.
I also didn't enjoy the setting and story at all. The writer committed the most common mistake out there – tried to throw in some lore without making us care first. You know what I'm talking 'bout. When you start learning about queen X defeating an evil Y back in the days, you're like “OK, whatever...”. Because those are just names! A bunch of letters on your screen (game isn't voiced BTW). You're not involved in the world in any way and with every campaign being only four missions long... Let's just say you can skip all the text without missing anything important. Especially since they don't have interesting story to tell either. I actually hated it how obvious “HoMM III rip-off” thing was. Here's an example for you. The first campaign starts with a queen-to-be entering her lands and finding those in turmoil. Reminds you of anything? It's a bloody Long Live the Queen campaign! The first campaign from HoMM III! And it won't get any better. Factions in SoC are painfully uninspired. Here we have the undead, here are our swamp guys, etc. Boring!
Despite years in Early Access, the game is in a very poor technical shape too. It still has game-breaking bugs, auto-battle feature can take too long (a price to pay for real calculations but honestly, some smart workarounds would be nice) and there are memory leaks. I Alt+Tab and leave the game working on background for, like, ten minutes – it eats all of my RAM faster than Google Chrome. Some features, like animation skip, are still to be desired too. So... yeah. Unfortunately, what we've got here is not a game you'll stick with for a lot of time. It's yet another one of those tiny cute indie TBS games. Something you'll beat in a few sits and then just forget about. Doesn't mean you shouldn't check it out, but you know. There's a good reason people still play HoMM III. Dixi.