The natural thing is to compare Songs Of Conquest toHeroes Of Might And Magic.
Unfortunately, I have only the dimmest memories of one of those games, which never grabbed me.
Each part is turn based.
Naturally, you’ll be wanting to have a go at them, which kicks off a skirmish.
These are remarkably intuitive to begin with.
There was always enough to think about to keep me interested.
The sound and animation deserve highlighting in particular.
Every attack sounds solid, every unit moves and hits hard.
Either that or you’ll schlep home often.
There’s a lot going on, despite how straightforward any individual turn is.
you better be fighting and exploring to level up your wielders, and deny your enemy free resources.
You also need to be defending your settlements, and enemy ones.
This is where Songs Of Conquest can be wearying.
While a defeated army can be restored, this is expensive, and stretches your reinforcements further.
Cards on the table, though: I hate losing dudes.
This is particularly true for the magic system, which takes a little explaining.
Each unit in a fight generates magic points each turn.
you’re free to cast as many spells as your wielder knows and has the points for.
But each unit of a pop in generates the same points regardless of how many creatures are in it.
It’s obviously better to fill an army slot with 50 out of 50 militiamen, right?
They’ll hit harder and live longer.
But if you split them across two slots, they’ll generate more magic for you.
Suddenly that wielder with fewer troops spread across 9 army slots has a fertile magic garden.
All this was fine until I faced off against the necromancers.
My friends, I got utterlydestroyed.
For reference, my fully decked out, very expensive magical forest queens had a special attack too.
It did 30 damage.
Oh, and anyone who survived this assault was getting finished off by rats.
Ten grand those toffs cost me.
I could have had hundreds of milita for that.
I figured out a way around this, eventually.
And, well, I know now, right?
So I don’t know.
