Songs of Conquest review

 

  At the risk of sounding like a middle schooler front loading a school report: video games are typically products that need to work as intended to be enjoyable. I like to think of this as safe common ground, albeit some that is so glaringly obvious that it often doesn't merit a mention. Lately, though, I've been playing games that I like in theory or want to like more than I do because stuff about them just doesn't work. Songs of Conquest is a game that also suffers from some glaring issues, but it is one of the few games where it is enjoyable desipite its numerous problems. I wish they weren't there, but I am having a ton of fun with it even with the game in the messy state it is in.

 

Wielder war

Songs of Conquest is a turn-based strategy game where you command a few select commander units (known as wielders) around a map in campaigns to capture territory and defeat opposing wielders. It is reminiscent of the Heroes of Might & Magic games (for anyone familiar) in that your commander acts as a sort of container for military units in addition to possessing some skills and stats of their own.

You proceed through the game's campaign (or a custom map of your choosing), tapping around to make your commander capture settlements, seize resources, recruit from camps, etc. and also initiate combat. Combat puts your commander's units on a hex-based tactical map to face off against enemy units in turn-based combat where unit composition and maneuvering matter, though you can also opt to simulate skirmishes as well.

Master and commander

As you progress through the game's four campaigns, you encounter increasingly complex maps with more aggressive foes, and you won't be able to use whatever strategies you've won before to win. There were times in Songs of Conquest where I found myself having to establish a kind of forward operating base and have a supply chain of wielders to fuel its defense and others where I had to resort to raiding tactics to lure enemies out of their impenetrable fortresses.

These dynamics, along with campaign narratives that are competently written (though not terribly original), fuel the experience and breathe a lot of life into the somewhat rote tactical combat (which--again--you can just simulate whenever you want). It also helps that each campaign stars a different faction, each with their own sets of units that have unique strengths and weaknesses.

The invisible foe

There are plenty of additional layers to Songs of Conquest's gameplay that I haven't really touched on, but that's mostly because I can't really engage with them the way that I want to. As mentioned in the intro Songs of Conquest is plagued with bugs, many of which affect menu items associated with the gear and spellcasting systems in the game. Specifically, these bugs tend to make it so certain menu elements just become completely unresponsive.

Most of the time, you can simply just back out of them and just... not cast that spell or whatever. It's not ideal--as it feels like you're being stopped from engaging from some of the game's systems for arbitrary reasons--but the core of the game has enough going for it that fighting through it felt like a minor annoyance. What's less of a minor annoyance are bugs that cause the game to crash from time to time, but Songs of Conquest has a good manual and auto-save system that makes sure not too much progress is lost.

The bottom line

Usually, I have a pretty low tolerance for games being unstable or bug-laden, so I'm as surprised as anyone that I just kept sinking time into Songs of Conquest. But, I did! And I was having fun. In fact, I'd go as far to say I will probably keep playing this game even if none of these bugs get fixed (though, obviously, I hope they do). Songs of Conquest is just that compelling, even in an extremely compromised form.