Songs of Conquest Preview - Page 3
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Right off the bat, it's important to mention that there are no global spells in the game. And in combat, the only limitation for how many spells you can cast at any given point is your Essence pool. Seeing how the game has plenty of powerful utility spells, using them creatively can win you many a battle.
And as for the damage-dealing spells, while they start off incredibly weak, a magic-focused Wielder can improve their magic damage in a variety of ways. And here's the part that took me a while to figure out. The game has a number of skills that initially give your Wielder +2 Essence of a certain type per combat turn. Which is really not a lot, to the point that those skills read as borderline useless.
What I didn't realize initially is that once you level those skills up to level 2 and higher, they start unlocking new tiers of spells, making your magic significantly more potent.
When it comes to battles, the general template here is once again taken from HoMM III with its hexagonal battlefields where two armies take turns to pummel one another, but with a good deal of twists.
For example, initiative is now decoupled from speed. You can't order your troops to wait, but instead, a lot of them have activatable skills that do something, like prepare an "overwatch" attack or grant some buff. You can position your troops before a battle, but without anything resembling a Tactics skill, the spots available for unit placement at times feel almost random.
Units in Songs of Conquest also have areas of control that grant them attacks of opportunity against enemies that try to move past them. On the flip side, you don't have anything like morale or luck bonuses here. But instead, you get momentum that makes your units fight better after you wipe out a full stack of enemies.
And seemingly straight from some mods, you get the fairly convenient option to first try a quick battle and then either accept its results or resolve the battle manually. Though usually going for the quick battle option is only advised against much weaker opponents, as the game's AI is currently nowhere near where it should be.
At this point, the game has two difficulty levels - easy and normal, and even on normal, you would need to actively be trying to lose when playing against the AI in a skirmish match.
Still, some of the currently-available skirmish maps do offer some nice challenges when it comes to dealing with the neutral monsters blocking your progress. Unfortunately, there aren't that many maps, and the random map generator is not available just yet.
But at the very least, there's already a heap of community-created maps available for download from within the game. A lot of them offer interesting challenges and showcase just how powerful the game's map editor can be.
When not playing against the AI, you can engage in some multiplayer, either online or using the good old hotseat approach. And on top of that, I should note that Songs of Conquest supports Steam's Remote Play Together feature.
I don't know if I'm late to the party, but this feature was mind-blowing to me. Basically, once you own the game, you can click a button and invite any of your Steam friends to play with you, even if they don't own the game. On their end, they don't need to download anything and just get a window where they can share your inputs and play with you as if you're sitting in the same room. Personally, I find this fascinating.
