Songs of Conquest
In theory, I should really like this - but after a few hours I found the gameplay loop to be very simple (I've never played Heroes of Might and Magic which supposedly this is very similar to). There's an over world strategic map you walk around on with your hero, clicking on things to either gain money, XP, troops or temporary bonuses. Then there's a hexagonal grid turn based combat mode where you and the enemy take turns to move/attack with one unit at a time (based on initiative). The combat is relatively simple, and the overworld loop is just a clickfest. Really like the art style, but it failed to grab me.
Pros
- Works perfectly well on Steam Deck, and even has options for things like "lower the framerate when it's not needed" to save power
- Really nice pixel artwork
- Has a campaign over 4 acts
- You can outfit your hero with gear you find on the map which affects all of your troops stats
- There's a spell casting system during combat where you generate different kinds of mana based on the troops in your party, but it felt pretty boring. Things like "Gain 10% defense for one round", nothing game changing
- It has a quick battle option. Good for skipping the combat, which is not fantastic
Cons
- You can have more than one hero on the map ("wielder"). Given that there's pretty much a limited amount of XP to go around, the ability to have more than one doesn't feel great. 5 seconds after unlocking that, I immediately just carried on using one main character, and the second one was a troop transport to bring reinforcements from town to my main character's army
- Your hero does not participate in battles at all (except for enabling spell casting)
- There's a research system, but again it's basically things like "gain 10% defense", nothing interesting