Songs of Conquest

This game is very good. The mechanics differences from the original HOMM series actually make the battle gameplay more interesting imo. As fun and cheesy as HOMM3 is, things like stack limits and hero army slot limits actually play into the balancing and strategy of the game very well. The essence system and research upgrades add a lot. Art is great, sound is great.

Adventure map AI is a bit of a weak point, and inherently a HOMM style game is better with more "stuff" (factions, units etc). They plan to add more content and have been improving the AI. I recommend this game.

very good, a lot coming in the roadmap, interesting and challenging campaign and well balanced for multiplayer, very different than homm in citybuilding and combat.

Huge fan of the HOMM series and was excited for this but it just isn't comparable. the maps are a bit of a cluttered mess, combat's a bit off, and it just doesn't feel like a cohesive game.

I really enjoy this game. A beautiful clone of HoMM but with it's own qol upgrades and gorgeous art.

HOWEVER. The game starts with 4 very sparse factions, and now, after paying 40 dollars for the whole game, we have to pay 15 for an additional faction? I feel ripped off. They should be releasing factions for free as the game was released without enough variety. I will not pay for the dlc.

Great little game giving Heroes of Might and Magic 3 a different perspective. For example, to cast spells heroes need the essence of the army which they only get on the turn of each unit. This prevents the massive swings in HOMM 3 where turn 1 you can already cast mass slow or other insane effects. Downside is that if your faction doesn't have units which give a particular essence, you can never cast spells from that school - in HOMM 3 you could tech in whatever direction you please regardless of faction.

PROS
- Limit of units in a stack - being able to run around with a limited army size encourages the use of multiple heroes, smart combat and fighting on multiple fronts. In HOMM 3 sometimes you would lose because you split your army while the other guy didn't and would hit you right as you are the most spread out
- Converting cities and limited building spaces - converting means you remove the HOMM 3 RNG of "is the next town I take the same faction as me or not" as it is clearly best to have more of the same, for example when upgrading your army via research. Limited building spaces in every city also makes you think twice about what exactly you can build - when a small town can only have 5 buildings, you really need to make the right decision regarding what they will be

CONS
- Heroes starting with 3 army slots - an interesting idea this game introduces is having to level up a skill to increase the number of army slots you can have, going from 3 to 9. At first I thought this would add an interesting strategic element to the game where you get to make choices like more damage or bigger army. However I quickly realised that for the first 4-5 levels I would always make the bigger army choice, especially given each filled army slot gives spell essence so more units = more spells. This made the early game pretty boring as my heroes would not really improve until around level 5
- Unit skills - two issues here for me. Firstly, a lot of the skills are reused on multiple units, e.g. "defend", "charger", "wait", "reload after firing", etc. Secondly, it doesn't matter whether you have 1 unit or 50, the ability is always the same. For some units like the pipers (who also give a lot of spell essence), you can have 3-4 slots filled with just 1 piper and activate the skill 4 times giving your army a huge initiative boost. Having 1 slot with 50 pipers should give more initiative than 1 slot with 1 piper in my opinion
- Research trees - I found myself always choosing to increase the max size of units first rather than upgrade them for more damage or health because those upgrades are insanely expensive. Also, building more than 1 of the same research building does nothing which I found weird - I was expecting it to reduce the costs similar to how the market works

The best modern alternative to Heroes of Might and Magic

I overall really like this game. It reminds me of my times as a kid playing HOMM 2 and 3. The music is fun and it's even more fun having friends that never played the series try this game out with you.
Highly recommend as you can sink in hours and then realise that you need to sleep because it's about 3 hours before you have to be at work kind of fun.

Interesting, but far too linear for me. The terrain is set up so that you are travelling through narrow corridors doing a then b then c. There are crossroads and such, but in general they have set up a pretty scripted route. Great for some, not for me.

A love letter to Heroes of Might & Magic with some nice, modern QOL improvements. General background music can be a little repetitive, but the cut scene songs are absolute bangers.

A worthy successor to Heroes of M&M:
More balanced and with more influence from decisions. This game proves that there are still developers who produce games with good content - e.g. I don't like pixel art at all, but that doesn't matter because the game is so good in terms of content that I don't care what it looks like. What I'm missing a little is some background mood music here and there (like in HoMM), then the impression would be complete.

I hope the developers stick with it and I will be happy to buy content DLCs.

P.S. to be honest, after the downward spiral of the quality of HoM&M and the current general state of the gaming industry, I never thought I would be able to play such a good game in this genre. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

I looked for an alternative to HOMM3 and found one. It's different enough to offer something new, and does it well enough to be worth playing, compared to how many of the later Heroes of Might and magic felt like "yeah but why not just play HOMM3". This one is worth your time if you need something new!

Also: Shout out to the devs for supporting 21:9 aspect ratio screen! A rare thing in the indie space!

5/5! Highly recommended

Great game easy to understand, hoping for more factions and campaigns in the future :)

I don't recommend Songs of Conquest. While it has few nice things going for it, negatives unfortunately outweigh positives.

Moreover, developer's choices show significant disconnect with community expectations and lead me to believe the game won't get better with time.

On plus side, Songs of Conquest have gorgeous graphics and reasonably deep, interesting combat mechanics.

When it comes to negatives, the most important are:

Strategical map gameplay is very simplistic and unappealing.
- It lacks interesting choices.
- There is very little variety in map objects.
- Wielders movement is too slow which coupled with low number of wielders turns the game into a slog.
- On default settings you can only have one faction which massively reduces your options and makes every match play the same. (And experimental multi-faction setting doesn't support all game modes).
- AI is brain-dead.

Campaigns are kinda awful.
- Map design of campaigns I tried is basically "corridors" with few mandatory fights - you don't get to make any interesting decisions.
- Writing is very poor, both conceptually and linguistically (we are talking basic grammar and syntax errors).

Besides that, there are number of smaller issues, like general lack of content, and balance problems. A number of features advertised during early access didn't make it to the game (e.g. day-night cycle)

But what's worst - devs approach shows significant disconnect with community. My favorite way to play the game were customized challenge maps. When I approached devs with ways to improve them further, devs instead removed all customization from challenge maps making the experience significantly worse. And they said they are not going to reimplement it near, foreseeable future. When faced with complaints about bad AI, they said (in interview with SPORTS ILLUSTRATED nonetheless) that AI is intentionally bad. I don't know about you, but I think making any aspect of the game intentionally bad is not the way to go.

For now I recommend going back to Heroes III with excellent Horn of the Abyss community expansion and to look forward to Olden Era, which is developed by actual enthusiasts who are constantly in touch with Heroes III community.

It really feels like Heroes of Might and Magic.

Will update the review once I play more. :)

Seems like a heroes of might and magic successor, but beside the looks - be warned that it actually has quite different balance and meta!

A really well executed and needed iteration on the HoMM formula. The highlights:
* Magic system that offers a plethora of different strategies and choices as you play as well as faction Identity.
* Castle building system that forces you to make important choices to your overall build as well as enable you to focus on a specific unit types.
* Very pretty sprites, music and overall art direction.
* Good worldbuilding and faction identity.

My biggest complaint, though is that the AI feels competent at times especially in battles, but then out of nowhere makes really stupid blunder offering you the win. Higher difficulty levels only provide the AI with ungodly unit advantage which feels unfair and lame.

Overall Songs of Conquest is a solid game in it's niche and has huge potential with new factions on the horizon.

Great game for strategy fans. Scratches the heroes of might and magic itch perfectly while still being it's own thing. Works great on the steam deck.

This game offers something unique yet memorable for old school turn-based games enjoyers as well as newcomers to the genre.
Big ups for adding Ukrainian language support.
Don't buy Ubisoft's new HoMM's corpse reanimation attempt and try this instead!

This game is a blast with and without friends. The game is a fresh new twist on the formula of heroes of might and magic with a unique and amazing art-style and design.

A really solid indie venture into a Heroes of Might and Magic type game. It hits many marks from the dormant franchise and brings some nice changes to the formula as well. If there is a knock against it, its that it just needs more content in general. It needs more factions, more neutral units, and more campaigns to help it get to the next level, and be more on par with HoMM. The devs have put out some good road maps so I can only see this game get better over time. Fans of HoMM will find this to be a fun new twist on the legendary franchise.

If you are a fan of the Heroes of Might and Magic games, then this is the game for you.. This game takes everything which makes those games great and make a more sleek and balanced modern iteration of that concept.

I love Heroes of Might and Magic 3 &4 and this plays so much like them. After reading the reviews I was sceptical but optomistic. I'm so glad I spent the money.

Love the art, love the factions and the magic. While the game could use better onboarding there is a rich and reactive strategic system to master.

It looks very pretty. Love the aesthetic. The whole time though, all I wanted to do was play different games like this that I like more. City management seems a bit too restrictive. Heroes (Wielders) don't feel or play unique enough. The campaign was ok, very wordy. I started out wanted to experience each faction and the lore behind it, but man there's so much fluff that isn't important to read. Combat is ok. I much prefer just auto-resolving.

Just an ok game. It isn't Homm 3 if that's what you want. Playing this really just made me want to play Age of Wonders 4 again.

If you are trying to hit the 4X itch, just buy Age Of Wonders 4. Unless you are really limited by the budget or new to the genre.

SOC is basically a discounted version of a proper 4X game in terms of depth and mechanics, one of the few redeeming qualities is the nostalgic HOMM3 graphics.

It's not a bad game but for 4X enthusiasts, this is not it. I will still give this a Recommended just because it's a decent entry to 4X and doesn't cost a bomb especially during a sale.

Echoing everyone else. The game looks good, the campaigns are boring, tedious, and arbitrary. Once the initial newness of it wears off, the game is mostly a chore. I'm certain there's optimal ways to play, but from the PVP reviews it looks like that's poorly balanced and boring as well.

Movement is pointlessly restrictive, especially when key upgrade resources are poorly distributed. Even the L3 towns have to be focused on a single thing, often at the expense of things like basic defenses or troop facilitation. Which are needed because some missions will spawn a powerful invader 2 turns from a city (which you'll be 4-6 turns away from if you're actually exploring). And if they succeed in razing an advanced city - it's another 15 turns to gather enough resources to rebuild it. So you might as well restart the mission, or at least go back 10+ turns so you can optimize your discovery and hero positioning.

The hero system is random - wildly varying perks usefulness and you're given options of 2-3 random ones/level. Magic is needlessly complicated (and also based on if you picked those options during leveling). That's especially bad during campaigns (which can take 4-6 hours across 4 missions) because your leveling choices and discovered equipment in mission 1 to mission 4. But that's the only thing that does. You'll be doing the whole "build up from 1 town with no resources" again, because why would ANYONE actually want to be able to explore different mixes of high-tier units and upgrades.

Hey Hey people, looking for a Heroes of Might & Magic like game? This one is for you!

Excellent turn based strategy with 4 distinct races, amazing spell system, beautifull pixel graphics, a very handy toolkit for custom map creation, easy to play multiplayer (with hot seat option), a soothing soundtrack and over all a game clearly made with love for the genre.

Does have an interesting and punchy combat mechanic. It's satisfying to pick a strategy for your warband and lean into it and watch it work.

Navigating the world can be fun and satisfying. Clicking on all those little powerups and resources is fun.

However the story is horrendous. The map design just kind of feels like they plonked a whole bunch of settlements and stuff around the place and called it a day. It feels like the campaign missions are randomly generated. Can't recommend.

To be honest. I loved HOMM3 but this game has none of its flavour. After 1 hour of play I had no troop improvement or any kind of developement in the game. I was just clicking randomly on my screen and I hadn´t the feeling that I can impact the game in any way.

Maybe it is due to a lack of presentation or I am dumb. I just did not get it .

Not for me but maybe for someone else

lots of fun to play with your friends, Just hope they don't all deiced to swarm you with 600 rats

Have critical localization error that about enemy threat level. I made error report 2 months ago and error is still in there. I think they simply didn't care. I'm tired of this "made localization and forget" trend of gaming industry.

Awesome depth both strategically and tactically, in pve and coop and pvp alike. The depth is there now we just need more width - factions, neutrals, points of interest on map

Hell yeah. The exploration/battle/upgrade loop is surprisingly fun and allows for some interesting tactics. A very fun TBS strategy with great style that is crunchy enough to be interesting, but not overly complex.

I have been a mega fan of Heroes of Might and Magic 3 since it came out and have never stopped playing it. When a friend of mine showed me Songs of Conquest, I fell in love with it instantly and have not yet reinstalled HOMM3, it just tickles that itch and even more. It's just everything I love from HOMM3, but better, with incredible pixel art and a thriving community, supported by devs who are actually interested in what the player base has to say.

10/10 buy this game!

The game is great.
It has an incredibly high skill ceiling with a lot of room for skill expression. Every faction has multiple effective tactics for both early game and late game, and the magic system helps each faction feel unique.

Having said all that, the game is not kind to new players. Mistakes will get punished with full defeats, and the auto battler will usually cost more units than manual battles.

I'd never played Heroes of Might and Magic so when I heard all the comparisons I was a little worried I'd be lost at first, but the campaign hooked me and with a little learning curve I've fallen in love with the game.

The factions are unique, the lore is seeded throughout the levels so you can find fun tidbits if you hunt around and get mechanic benefits for interacting with all the little objects.

The spells took some getting used to but made a huge impact, I've only played Arleon so far but I'm fascinated by the Rana and Barya factions and I'm looking forward to sinking many more hours into this OBVIOUS labor of love from what I understand is a FOUR PERSON Dev team that whipped up this masterpiece. 100% Recommend.

This game (campaign) is AMAZING
Oh what a fantastic breath of fresh air this is for isometric RTS games

BEAUTIFUL art, brutal combat, variety of choices, somewhat rock/paper/scissors based

I wish there was a little more tutorial about the combat, how units interact, which units work well against which, etc

Once I was ahead it seemed to roll out of control pretty quickly

When I was behind (Frogs) it took quite awhile to claw back to victory, perhaps my economy was wrong.

My review is relevant for the single-player campaign. I have no time for multiplayer.

Strong points:

• Amazing music (soundtrack is a MUST for purchase!)
  
• Interesting mechanics, like the good old HoMM series, but with its own nuances. For example, the troops you use have a tight relation with the spells you are able to use, etc.
  
• Visual style looks quite attractive (I am not a fan of pixel art, but here it suits perfectly).
  

Weak points:

• Balance. Balance is horrible. The first stages of the map (while you have small amounts of troops and enemies are also small groups) usually feel interesting (you calculate, you invent tricks to win without losing anyone, etc.). Then there is a mid-game where you could meet a "one-time strong opponent," and as soon as you beat him, the game becomes boring because you just accumulate troops to get to the final battle and... the final battle is completely lame. Changing the game difficulty does not change much; you just have an unfair enemy at the beginning, but if you manage to survive, the end will be the same. It's like preparing for 5 years for a match with a world champion, and he just dies the day before your battle.
  
[*]Plot. Plot is a complicated topic here because it seems kind of interesting. I like how everything is intertwined throughout the course of all four campaigns, BUT! BUT there is no proper ending. The story is just cut in the middle with no explanation of the consequences of the whole ordeal.

Im having so much fun with this game!

However i really need the wielder to be visually a part of the combat.

Also where is my demon faction?

I know I will love the game.
I waited a long time to play and experiment the full game and was happy to finaly put my hand on it when the Early Access was over.
But...

The game isn't really finished and soon after the 1.0 release they already tell us that they work on future DLC.
Why isn't them included in the main game? I don't know, they could increase the price after adding more content, in fact they even did this already, so what ? it's to not increase the price of the main game and make it look more attractive ?
And it's not one but TWO DLC they work on, and if I understood what they said, they will make even more.

I'm fine with DLC if their price match the content in it, and if they are well made.
But I'm not a big fan to see an early access game jumping to DLC just after the 1.0 release and it's something that doesn't help me to feel confident with the future.
On top of that, It feel like they prefer to release the 1.0 faster and cut some content to add it in future DLC, so for owner of the game who bough it D1 etc, it's a weird feeling.

- "Hô you bough the game and trust us ? sorry bro but we needed money, but you can support us and buy one of the DLC that should be in the game at first, just wait a little more"

And after this two DLC, how many more ? I don't like this strategies, it remind me Paradox... I hope I'm wrong

Until then, it's a yes and a no.

Gameplay wasn't fun since the entire pace of the game is dictated by the very 1st battle you do with the opposing faction. If you win the 1st battle, you snowball and win the rest of the game. If you lose the 1st battle, enemy snowballs and you're blasted to oblivion. If you want to win, you'll probably be constantly redoing turns which isn't fun.

Had fun for a few hours until the game devolved into enemies being spawned in my backyard without giving me room to react. If your favorite part of playing say, a MOBA, is getting backdoored then this might compell you. Otherwise, just annoying.

It's a pretty nice game. But who is this genius who decided to switch the mouse's control buttons? "Old school" graphics are a good trick, but it would be nice to make just a little better quality for 4K monitors. Even HMM3 looks much better.
Overall, I recommend this game.

Stunning game. I wish the campaign had more broken up missions to really help set and tell the story warcraft 3 style but it's a gem nonetheless

As someone who's played HOMM2 & 3 (and yes, even 4), and would rather perform a full frontal lobotomy on myself than play whatever the hell Ubisoft eventually made out of the franchise, this ... sort of scratches the itch. The campaigns are fun, but more puzzle-ish than tactical, particularly the ones where you can't lose your primary hero. I find the magic system needlessly overburdened with complexity, to the point where I don't bother building a hero up to take advantage of spells.

I find that the battles are not nearly as much fun. I don't know if I'm just not playing it correctly, or my brain has atrophied to the point where only HOMM 3 style combat makes logical sense, but I find that most battles I just do a quick resolution, rather than playing it out. I *should* want to play out the battles, it *should* be one of the more fun aspects of the game, but I just find them generally unfun, unintuitive (particularly the magic) and often unfair. I've tried a few combats where the auto-combat will crush an opponent with minimal losses, while I will barely make a dent in them (insert gif of Homer reading the "Am I retarded?" book here). Why can't all units elect to wait? Why do I have to use WASD to move around my view of the map? Mouselook worked fine back in the goddamn 90s, and that was (checks watch) 30 years ago.
WHY CAN'T I MOVE MY UNITS FORWARD WHEN I AM DEFENDING A TOWN??

Maybe in scenario or free play some of my issues would resolve, I haven't finished the campaign yet and I've enjoyed the story (well, except for the Necro) enough to continue through those. I'd say if you want a break from HOMM3, give it a go.

Solid strategy game that is a successor to might and magic (never played might and magic but this is what others tell me). World building is solid and the story is surprisingly well done. I 10/10 recommend if you liked might and magic and/or like total war games. Even RTS fans might enjoy some aspects of this

The ui is horrible, to look at the creature's stats you need to do 1 thing, to look at effects - another, to see how much will the damage increase when attacking the enemy you have to wait like 2 seconds each time. Same goes for the towns, you cant simply go in the town and buy units for your hero, for the defence and just leave the town, no, you have to use the hero if you want to buy units for the hero, but you will not be able to buy the units for your town if you use your hero, you have to click on the town, chose " defence " and only then you are able to buy units for the town. You cant simply look at the loot you got from pillaging a pile of things, you have to wait for the each and every single one of the resources you got to appear and disappear separately. You cant look at what the structure does if you own it, it just says that it is owned by you, you have to click on it to see the effects it gives to you. The ui is TERRIBLE and this kind of crap that eats time like crazy is everywhere.
The songs after the missions are cringe, units use the same abilities most of the time ( i mean that you can see the same ability on the different units, like they couldnt make a new ones ), and magic is overpowered.
At first - its confusing to play this game, but after some time it becomes painful to play it.
Also the Arleon faction is a weird inconsistant mush made of elfs, european-like people, weird forest spirits and useless knights.

There is basically no game in it. It is just running around collecting everything literally (there is way to much to collect that at some point it makes it just annoying). Wants to be HOMM3 but lacks all the flair and essence that makes HOMM3 still the best of these kind of games. It is like with 4x where there are so many trying to be Master of Orion 2 but still there is no game out that is as good as MoO2 - except for Stellaris (with missing tactical turn based battles of MoO2)

The gorgeous art style, magical soundtrack, and deep gameplay brought me right back to 2007, when I played Heroes of Might and Magic: Tribes of the East.

Sure, the pixelated graphics differ from modern HoMMs, but the vibe feels similarly nostalgic to me.

I love this game and will definitely buy the DLCs. The team really nailed it—thank you!

What an excellent game! This is a huge gift for all nostalgic heroes of might and magic fans!

A game works perfectly fine on mac book m1 pro and you are able to play online with windows users without any issues.

Great work! Keep it up