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Songs of Silence vs Songs of Conquest by Mischief Shai-hulud 11/27/2024, 9:00pm PST
This is one of my all-time favorite Caltrops posts, and it perfectly describes my relationship with these two games:

Fussbett wrote:

Mischief Maker wrote:

Sign that you're starting to take your hobby too goddamned seriously:

Tom ''Video Games are meant to broaden your horizons'' Chick wrote:

Part of the sad story of Kohan II is that pure design is often trumped by flashy execution. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War is a perfect example. Although I think Kohan II is ultimately a better game, I like Dawn of War better.

That's a great quote. I picture Tom Chick starting up Dawn of War and sobbing, because he knows he's playing a game of inferior pure design, falling victim to flashy execution like a COMMONER. I hope that sometimes he uninstalls it after a long game, like deleting porn after a shameful jerk session, swearing never again. Of course later is the re-install and more tears, because watching little dudes cut orcs in half is twice as fun as whatever boring stuff goes on in Kohan.


For me Songs of Conquest is the Kohan 2 in this analogy, and Songs of Silence is Dawn of War.

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Just about everyone has seen the "Hey hey people" youtuber's video praising Songs of Conquest's Early Access for all its technical improvements over the flaws of HOMM3 and praise for the jaw-dropping amount of work that must have gone into animated pixel art for a staggering array of sprites.

But to me the full game is just a dreary chore. It takes place in a Witcher-esque world of low magic, muted colors, and arguably everyone's the villain to a significant slice of the game world's population. The pixel art is dark and full of muted colors to realize this depressing dark age world. As opposed to HOMM3's vibrant technicolor armies of every creature from the D&D Monstrous Manual.



All the bloom in the world can't hide how drab these visuals are. Note also the tiny and hard to read spell icons on the side of the screen.


It does do away with a significant amount of cheese from HOMM3, but arguably the HOMM/King's Bounty system of abstract stacked units numbered and all occupying a single square was a primitive work-around for the technical limitations of early PCs. There's a reason Master of Orion 2 dropped the tactical stacks of part 1 for fully fleshed out fleets now that PCs were strong enough to handle it. Songs of Conquest attempting to keep the stacks but place new rules and limits around them is ultimately just putting lipstick on a pig.

And the titular "songs" are at best generic background filler, at worse stomach-wrenching cringe when the bard sings between campaign missions.

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Songs of Silence I joked was going to eat Songs of Conquest's lunch when the first teaser trailer dropped, but that's absolutely proven to be true, in my opinion. It has a distinct and beautiful art nouveau visual style. They got professional voice acting and a soundtrack by the Final Fantasy Tactics guy. And the setting is fully fantastical and based around my favorite childhood movie The Neverending Story.



Every image a painting. I love a game with a clear sense of the aesthetic!

It's not a clone of HOMM3 or Age of Wonders. Rather it's a modernization of the mostly forgotten strategy classic Warlords III: Darklords Rising. No research or diplomacy, just capturing cities, many of which have unique choices of units to hire, and conquering a relatively huge map full of capture points.

But instead of Warlords 3's abstract dice-based battles, Songs of Silence simulates full-scale battles that look like heavy metal album covers while the player drops spells on the battlefield that operate on a recharge timer and doesn't have any of Conquest's abstract unit-stack-based mana farming. Though like Warlords 3, battles are mostly won by pre-fight prep with army composition and formations. The steps to examine the enemy's army formation could be improved to shave off an extra click or two, but it's nothing like the baffling ordeal of Songs of Conquest's recruitment screens.

Also while the four armies in Conquest are kinda samey mechanically, there's a strong Starcraft undercurrent behind the three asymmetric factions in Songs of Silence; with The Thousand Kingdoms roughly equivalent to the Terrans, The Old Race equivalent to the Protoss, and The Crusade as The Zerg.

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So yeah, Songs of Silence is definitely simpler and prettier than Songs of Conquest, but I think the simplicity is the result of tighter game design, while Songs of Conquest's "complexity" is just another word for "messy." Other attempts to modernize HOMM3 like Eador: Masters of the Broken World have been way more successful due to its willingness to dump tactical unit stacks.
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Songs of Silence vs Songs of Conquest by Mischief Shai-hulud 11/27/2024, 9:00pm PST NEW
    Picked up both of these on the steam sale because this post. Will report back NT by E. L. Koba 12/06/2024, 3:41pm PST NEW
        I was in a bad mood when I wrote that, I was probably too hard on Conquest... by Mischief Maker 12/06/2024, 4:15pm PST NEW
            Caveat: I never played any HOMM so I have no nostalgia for it by E. L. Koba 01/16/2025, 4:06pm PST NEW
                Did you get the names mixed up? Because if so I agree. NT by Mischief Maker 01/16/2025, 4:13pm PST NEW
                    Oops, yes I did (edit button when?) NT by E. L. Koba 01/16/2025, 4:22pm PST NEW
                        Is there drama behind how they both ended up with such similar names? NT by I want to pick a side. 01/16/2025, 5:02pm PST NEW
                            Dunno. Probably convergent thinking. by Mischief Maker 01/16/2025, 7:20pm PST NEW
    What about SILENCE OF THE SIREN!??!?!!??!??!?!/1/1//435445 NT by pinback 03/07/2025, 11:19am PST NEW
        The lack of unit stacks is promising, and I like the music. by Mischief Maker 03/07/2025, 1:13pm PST NEW
 
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