Songs of Conquest

We have so many kinds of fantasy games, that span across multiple genres, and subgenres. From massive RTSs to medieval life sims, engrossing RPGs with the likes of Kingdom Come Deliverance, and of course, brilliant fantasy marvels like The Witcher. But there was a time, long ago in the 90s and very early 2000 when hero-themed turn-based strategy games, were king such as Heroes of Might and Magic. These went out of fashion, but in recent years they’ve been making a comeback, with the likes of today’s review Song of Conquest. As a novice at highly engrossing and richly in-depth turn-based strategy games, I was somewhat nervous about diving into this, but after playing for a lot longer than I expected, I grew to love Songs of Conquest.


What is Songs of Conquest?

From developer Lavapotion and Coffee Stain Publishing, comes a rather beautiful-looking pixel art RPG/RTS hybrid which has been in early access since 2022, and was finally released earlier this year. Songs of Conquest offers an experience similar to that of Heroes of Might and Magic, the Spellforce series, or Eador: Imperium, with a story-driven adventure focusing on hero management and epic conquests across a rich fantasy setting.

Songs of Conquest brings players four epically story-driven campaigns, each one giving us an engrossing story centre on civil war, revenge, or good old-fashioned domination of the lands and resources and retribution. What I admired greatly was the depth of character each campaign had to offer, the viewpoints all being vastly different, yet feeding familiar notions and themes, that complimented each other well in the grander scheme of things. I was quite blown away by the level of variety for the warring factions, in their presentation and lore. I did very much love the look and feel of Songs of Conquest, with myself being a big fan of great pixel art, and the character designs, and enemies all looking utterly terrific.

As for stories, personally, the favour for me was Rasc, a wise and determined frog-dude who decides life as a slave isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, and starts a rebellion against his masters. It’s partly due to the weird nature of Rasc being a humanoid frog, who also fights oppression and tyranny, which are good noble traits, but also the writing and character progression made him highly likeable. His story in particular had the strongest beats, the most interesting personal stakes superb endgame that I felt a rush of emotions as it came to an end.

The other campaigns, which I played another in full, and two mid-way through, as they are quite dense and lengthy, provided the same level of immense writing that gripped me from the start. Everything from narrative beats to pacing was handled brilliantly well and felt like a true and true fantasy epic which spanned multiple realms and personas. I did find there was room to maybe include deeper story mechanics, possibly adding in compelling and drastic player input, and altering the story entirely. But again, we have four decently sized campaigns, which all have strong writing and great characters, so it’s likely best to have the focus of the story not be interrupted by the player’s desires.


A strategic adventure, not for the faint of heart


I will be honest, I’ve not been massively involved with RTSs or smaller-scale strategy games of this nature. I have played a handful of Might and Magic games in the past, but much of my turn-base experience usually goes in the direction of the odd JRPG. But what I deeply appreciate about Songs of Conquest is that it allowed me to get into the flow of its gameplay with some ease, and despite a steep learning curve, it also pushed me to keep going and invest time and patience. This is great as the core gameplay, splitting up deep exploration, and brutal yet rewarding tactical combat rather nicely.

Gameplay generally revolves around exploring a large open map which is filled with various landmarks, cities and hidden secrets, which you can claim as your own. There’s a vast sense of accomplishment from exploring the maps which again, are massive in scale, and so rich in discoveries and combat that it’s some of the most clear-cut fun I’ve had exploring a fantasy world in recent memory. Mainly because I didn’t feel the game wasted my time with exploration, and I felt inclined to travel as vast as possible.

I rather loved having the freedom to explore, go to settlements to recruit followers, acquire places of interest and gather loads of resources to build, refine, and improve my standing in the world. The progression and pacing to developing my kingdom felt meaningful, and as mentioned, never did I find myself feeling time was wasted. With anything including resource/settlement management you will have to grind somewhat to gather resources and progressing/upgrading/researching new weapons and perks will slow down at times. But the maps being massive, and treasures, secret loots, and resources being quite plentiful, I never felt it crawled down to a poor standard.

But of course, you’re often slowed down considerably by enemies in your path. And you’ll be fighting in glorious turn-based, tactical combat where foresight, careful planning and using the right warrior for the job will make or break the battlefield in your favour. So classic, you pick, you choose an action and do everything to wipe the other team out.

You do, of course, must gain followers, including skilled fighters, mages and so forth to gain the upper hand in fights which progressively become much fiercer and more challenging. And believe me, fights can become incredibly intense and difficult even in the early stages of a campaign. There is a way to lessen the burden of the enemy AI, which I felt did cheat at times … Just saying! There is an option to have the battle play out automatically, but of course, this can end badly for you, especially if you spot an advantage during the play which isn’t taken.

But it is nice to have the option to have the action unfold and you can watch while making a coffee or reading all the wild fan fiction on Reddit.

But Songs of Conquest is a game where consideration and planning are key, so auto-playing battles will usually mean you highly potentially sacrifice your troops more than you like. Even on a lower mode like normal, can prove quite devastating if you’re not too careful. Compared to a lot of turn-based games on a grid system, Songs of Conquest’s grid is hexagonal based, which opens up movement, countering and placement quite considerably. Just think if chess’s board was hexagonal, then its tactics and the way it plays change.

And even smaller things such as elevating terrains make all the difference for attacks and advantages. So knowing all the basics like the back of your hand and then some, is important for your success. For this, I would advise doing what I did and watching others play the game to understand what spells, actions and placements you should be doing to gain a slight upper hand, or more importantly just knowing the core basics of survival. As I said, the learning curve for combat is quite steep, especially on harder modes.

But overall, the core gameplay loop is fantastic, and I felt a proper sense of meaningful progression that kept me invested for the long haul. The exploration, and building of my bases and armies are so immense and gratifying, that I could keep doing it and not even need combat as a breaker. But the combat itself, while not overly complex, does require quite a bit of tactical thinking, and learning the tricks of the AI player, as it’s bloody good at what it does, and also it does cheat a little in my opinion. Still, it’s a lot of fun and satisfying when you do win a rather tough fight in the end.

The only thing that I could see being negative at the end of the day is the limitations of campaigns and army size. From looking at other games especially more modern titles, there are usually a dozen campaigns, and armies can be 3 or 4 times the size that we get here. This is through research and comparison, but it’s clear the scale for Songs of Conquests is much smaller, more akin to what I played with Might and Magic 20 years ago, and that’s perfectly fine.

The four campaigns are amazing, and the combat/battles are intense and rewarding on a tighter scale. But best of all, Songs of Conquest has a lot of great content, including a multiplayer mode, and map edition which allows you to make your campaigns if you like. There is some serious content here, and enough to keep you happy for many moons to come!


Overall?

Songs of Conquest was not on my radar, it would be a game that would’ve easily passed me by if a review code had not found its way into my inbox. And I’m incredibly glad I could pick up and play, making me want to check out other games in the genre, or even to go back to Might and Magic once again. I thoroughly enjoyed Songs of Conquest as a complete outsider, while having a steep learning curve, welcomed me in with gripping narratives, and a compelling and brutal sense of combat that complimented the excellent exploration and kingdom-building.

Songs of Conquest gets an outstanding recommendation from me, and I would love to see more frog rebellions soon.


++ Fantastic presentation, and story
++ Engrossing and rewarding exploration
+ Awesome and meaningful progression
+ Tight and engaging combat

-- Steep learning curve
- A couple more campaigns might have been good
- Combat can be too brutal at times


The publisher provided a review copy of Songs of Conquest