Songs of Conquest Nails the HOMM Nostalgia
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- Опубліковано 22 тра 2024
- One of my favorite game series of all time is Heroes of Might and Magic! And today, we play the 1.0 release of Songs of Conquest, a spiritual successor to the HOMM games!
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I'm so excited Day 9 is playing this game again. Hope we get more content for this game
The unit splitting mana gen mechanic is actually what enables early game magic heroes to be viable and fun.
This couples really well with viability of specializing into just a few units later on
but is splitting units like that fun gameplay? like, going into the UI and using the somewhat clunky split unit functionality... is that fun and thrilling?
if it isn't... should that be tied to an important game mechanic like that?
i'm not sure if that's exactly what sean means, but i feel that way all of the time in games at times when you can just feel the system more than the game, and i start to feel more like i am doing database entry than playing
there's no fun game in tediously splitting units for efficiency, yet that tedious activity is tied to a fun combat system. and it's a small thing, but that feels like a rough spot to me
@@ItWasSaucerShaped I think it's less about "is it fun?" or "is it thrilling?". Splitting units to produce more mana *does* add strategic depth to the game, but it feels out of place within the game's universe. A better example than what Sean gave is: Pretend you are one of those archers. Ask them why their range increases when standing at a higher elevation. It's pretty intuitive. "My arrow falls to the ground over time, so when shooting from a hill, the arrow travels farther before hitting the ground!". Ask them why they can move 5 tiles and not 10. Pretty simple again. "Well I'm only so fast! My two feet can't run that quick!" Now ask why they generate only one mana if they both stand in the same spot, and two mana when they stand 5 feet apart from each other. Not so simple anymore - we've entered "system-y" territory now. It can only be answered by some meta analysis such as "It increases the strategic depth of gameplay". But the characters in the game universe wouldn't know anything about that, and they wouldn't be able to explain that mechanic in natural language. So it feels less natural as that mechanic doesn't flow from the world they've built.
That's not to say "system-y" mechanic are bad. Look at classic games like chess or checkers. These are almost purely system-y games. In checkers you are just maneuvering and jumping pieces over your opponents' to capture them. Why can they only move diagonally and on dark squares? The answer here is also "It increases the strategic depth of gameplay", but it doesn't feel weird because checkers isn't trying to immerse the players in some kind of world or theme. So I think there's a bit of a scale, and the more a game is trying to be immersive and represent something, the more a "system-y" mechanic stands out.
It also promotes using higher tier units in smaller number rather than just massing lower tier.
@@ItWasSaucerShaped There are keyboard shortcuts to quickly split units. Like clicking "1" splits one unit from the stack, so it's not that clunky
@@ItWasSaucerShaped i think the reason the devs did this system is to deviate from doomstacking groups. It is not free to do as it first seems so because everytime a stack dies, does not matter if it is 1 or more inside the stack, the player gets a bonus called momentum to boost deffence and damage which can snowball pretty hard if the enemie has tons of single units separeted in small stacks.
So there is risk to play that way to push the max of the mana system, which can be exploited in pvp and in wilder vs wilder battles. The issue l see with it is in neutral encounters when you only need to deal with the units.
there is hotkeys to split them fast so it does not take long to do so.
I agree with Day9's opinion on being able to get right into the game but I think there should be an exception allowed if your playing a story campaign. Not to mention the great majority of people playing this would not be streaming so they would be into the first fight about 10x faster than streamers will. I personally don't want games designed aiming for the needs of content creators.
Also, I think day(9) forgets that we are not all game developers. So his habit of analysing the game rather than playing it is not the norm. Games are also not designed for other game designers, they are designed for players of the games.
I'm a simple man I see Sean, I giggle.
An example of something being a Game vs. A System in my mind is in Elden Ring. In Elden Ring, you start the game and you start playing and the natural progression is to explore new places, defeat enemies, level up, and move forward through the game.
But if you know how to play the system, not the game, you can immediately spawn in, grab a few high powered items, rush to easily cheesable bosses, and get a massive injection of power at the start of the game.
Both of these things exist in the game as part of its mechanics, but one is "playing a game" and the other is "playing the system."
I always see the comparison of a first playthrough vs successive playthroughs, where I might have a specific build or challenge in mind. I particularly enjoy when games have some form of cheese or some later game content achievable earlier if you know where to look for it, or are willing to overcome a higher level boss to speed up reaching whatever is the user defined "start" point of a particular run. Being able to try out weird and unusual combinations reasonably quickly without relying on third party modding tools is always a plus.
HoMM2/3 are so incredible, Day9 im dying for you to revist these. Do it for Big Wizard Daddy Fafnir
ua-cam.com/video/yV8waxKo7u4/v-deo.html
@@Simonf_tv thanks ! somehow i missed this
Big Alchemist fafner? naga start is weak bro
@@dodododatdatdat Fafner is love, Fafner is lyfe
Farmhouses being "a source of riches" always cracks me up.
I love the dramatic last unit death animation
Oh man, I actually still have the 1998 PC Gamer demo CD with HoMM3 on it! There were only 2 factions and one map available. Me and my best friend spent countless hours playing that map over and over again! Now, 25 years later, we still come together with a few friends every couple of months and pull an all-nighter playing 2v2. Don't even know how many tens of thousands of hours I've invested in that game and I don't regret a single second. Can't wait for retirement so we could all be in the same nursing home playing it full time haha :D
I agree that adding "locked" while showing the other buildings and troops not currently available would help someone trying the 1st campaign see what's coming up.
It 100% looked like Sean thought the only Arleon units were militia/archers/footmen/knights.
I think a part of the issue day9 is having is that the campaign is designed as a gentle introduction to people new to the genre, so it progresses very slowly, and day9 is experienced enough to want everything right away. I have the same issue with the game
I'm so happy you're coming back to this game, I've had a blast with it myself and it deserves the attention.
I will say Sean's critique of the lack of base building in the campaign is totally fair. The base building kinda takes a backseat in campaign mode unless you're playing one of the later missions in the campaign because they want to slowly build up the players familiarity with each unit and what they do, which often leads to the towns you take being locked at level 2-3 in terms of building spaces. However that problem is generally alleviated in the later missions and in conquest mode whether you're playing multiplayer or against the AI. You get a lot more freedom there being able to build towns up to rank 5 like what was shown on the main menu when Sean was talking about his criticisms with the game.
Outside of that I understand his discomfort of how you can basically 1 stack lots of units to get a crap load of essence and spam spells but there is kind of a tradeoff to that where you're spending a lot of your early wielder levels on increasing your command in order to enable that kind of "go wide" strategy, but by doing so your spells are a lot weaker cause you have no points into improved spell casting and essence talents and the other tradeoff being it becomes super easy for your opponent to gain momentum by sniping the weakest stacks with either their stronger overall units or more powerful spells.
All that being said I do genuinely hope that Sean plays more Songs of conquest whether its continuing the Arleon campaign, or any of the other faction campaigns now that all 4 of them are out, or even just playing some conquest games against either the A.I or a friend, it would be REALLY fun to watch because this game is an absolute treasure.
Amazingly HoMM3 is still alive. With great expansions created by fanbase like WoG and HotA. There are many days on twitch where more ppl watch HoMM3 than Diablo4. Its great to see how much love this series get.
HOMM was itself a spinoff and no one ever tried to replicate it (at least to my knowledge). This is an amazing revisit to the genre!
Disciples, King's Bounty
@@domisPL_01 o yah... thats the nostalgia right there. To this day I remember I had a troll and so did the computer and they could never kill each other and were stuck in a never ending loop....
@@domisPL_01 ahh kings bounty on the megadrive,(genesis) rented that out for months from my local video store
ghost stacks getting woy out of your control level and rebelling
I'll just add in that the kings bounty series of games from Fulqrum are excellent allthough extremely samey. I recommend looking at Kings Bounty Crosswolds specifically.
I haven't tried the newest one they made as it seemed a bit too different for my liking.
Animal Well being backed by Dunkey and Songs of Conquest being backed by Sseth (in a meager way) while Day9 plays both and complements the shit out of the developers gotta be the best crossover in a while. This timeline is great
How was SoC backed by sseth? im out of the loop
@@hakanbrakankrakan he made a video in 2022 when the game was in very early access and said that as a big fan of HoMM he wanted the game to succed so he probably helped some ways outside the video like talking to the devs and feedback
@@rascalvo Oh I think I watched that, I at least have watched his HoMM stuff
@@rascalvo ngl that's a reach
My only previous exposure to this sort of game was the crusade minigame in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. A lot of people didn’t enjoy it and said it was a pale shadow of HoMM, but for whatever reason actual HoMM didn’t grab me the same way.
My last memory of Day9 was watching his SC2 content back in 2010. It's been a while.
Dead Cells was the first game I saw to do that new pixel art mixed with in advanced lighting and effects quite well.
I think the mana generation weirdness is only an issue in the very early game when you are gaining an advantage by splitting your unit stacks to fill what you normally wouldnt have otherwise. I'm sure later on you're going to be easily capped by the army size and all slots are going to be max unit size anyways.
In fact, you're probably assumed to always fill all available unit slots to generate 'mana'.
I remember that exact demo disk, those games were just something else back in the day
I hadn't thought about the demo cds in PC gamer in decades!
The magic system in SoC is a bit weird, but I think of it more as a squad of troops, rather than one. Or a Roman "Legion" that is self-sustaining which is why it generates specific resource, here being essence of magic.
In Warhammer 40k Dawn of War you also got a squad and usually a squad of Marines is 2 population out of 20, but the same amount could be for a battered squad of just 1 marine, but 2 pop is also for full 9 units.
Aye, game systems can be weird, but let the games be games, shall we? :D
Not a Day[9] Stream without a backseating rant/lession
For real. I appreciate that back seating is annoying but I wish he would just ignore it and have his mods deal with it rather than do these rants every stream
you can split stacks to generate more mana. but consider that every time a stack (however small) dies, the enemy units get a morale buff.
I hope he keeps playing this :(
And in Homm you make 5 stacks if 1 lv1 unit and micro them across map
Sean you really should look up Heroes 3 Horn of the Abyss. The multiplayer scene is STILL played extensively to this day and they actually just came out with a massive expansion at the start of this year. The story writing isn't always the greatest but the amount they've added to the game over the years is wild.
The pixel art with heavy post-processing style you mentioned is generally called "HD2D", I think from Square Enix using that term for some of their remakes and smaller rpgs using the same style. As an obsessive fan of pixel art I actually can't really say I enjoy it too much-- it feels like it ultimately comes from a disdain for pixel art rather than an appreciation for it, since the purpose of it seems to be to "disguise" the use of pixel art as much as possible by piling on bloom, DoF, fog, shadows, god rays, procedural animations and whatever else until it's palatable for modern aesthetic sensibilities. It's a shame too since the art underneath all those shaders is so good!
but the HD2D used in Octopath Traveler 2 looks insanely good - pretty much ruined me for other pixel art games since they set the bar so high.
@@Winddragoon And I personally don't enjoy it at all. Where I find for example loop hero or last spell 10x more pleasantly looking.
I guess different people, different tastes
Millennials and their nostalgia market is literally everything in the media industry these days
We the new boomers!
It doesn't help that a lot of current things are all chasing trends, or rushed production, or some other side effect of capitalism forcing a drop in quality in one area or another. Gameplay, art direction / style, story, or creativity are all stunted by the current market and those who run it.
Because most devs are millennieals. Not exactly a difficult concept to get.
I'm very interested in this kind of game, I may check this one out in the future, if it comes to consoles.
The pixel style is the roughest thing for me here since I feel like it deviates a lot from the HoMM style, but at the same time it isn't bad or anything... I feel like it's kinda like the same issue with HoMM5's graphics (but not as extreme an issue) where it's super different from what HoMM1-3 had going on, but it isn't bad, it just isn't more of the same that you wanna see again and so it just feels off... Like HoMM5 is more 3D feeling so it's a bit more extreme than this game, but this game is still very graphically different... Not different in a bad way per se, but different in a different way that isn't the way I'd want... And like I don't think you need to change the style that much to do HoMM2 or HoMM3's style, except better using modern tech... I feel like it'd be neat if game developers really focused on the content and were like, willing to release games that looked like older game artstyles but more refined... Like there was that spiritual successor to Banjo Kazooie, but like... I think what'd be neat is having games that looked like Banjo Kazooie graphically, but will maybe more detail on the textures... As long as you're clear it's like what you're going for I think it'd be fine (also if you had like, more development obviously that was going towards more content)...
Like if they just took HoMM2 or 3, did the improvements the community did to HoMM3, then added more castles/monsters/heroes/interesting structures to interact with... Like... That'd be enough to be like 'take my money'... Give me a castle with like kitsune fox people and stuff or other wacky stuff... Include also creatures from other HoMM games like, give me a castle in this new HoMM3 that has those multi-headed snakes from HoMM2, or give me like those rakshasas from HoMM5...
Talking about tier Sanctuary have 5 tiers in a rts x-)
Dang that FBI thing was fire.
anyone know what the green bar under the unit counter represents while on the battle map? I notice the green bar under the troop depletes and refills while taking damage.
Yes this game and Hero's Hour are awesome, HH being way more chaotic and better map creator. The art style of songs is beautiful imo.
Campaigns are really great. Though the multiplayer PVP balance is not so good. I like Silence of the Siren also a SCIFI-Heroes 3-4! Its demo 3 soon will arrive with Orbital map layer too! :) Soon EA will come with 3 factions and many things! Also Heroes 7 7.5 mod is quite great now with 13 factions and many many many good things!
About the mana regen per unit: a unit on the battlefield with a number 4 on it, isn't a single unit with 4 health (or w/e) but a group of 4 units. When you read the unit description it says that you get X mana per unit, but appearenlty it's per group. This rewards spliting up your units in multiple groups (What is exactly wat Sean did), but it punishes putting your units into one group.... why though?! I get thet eventually gamers will find out the most efficient (boring) meta for everything in the game, but this is just so forcefull. Sean didn't felt particularly rewarded or clever splitting his units, he just HAD to.
PS; didnt play the game myself, am just rambling, might be wrong.
Seeing him never learn how to use abilities was painful.
Glad Sean is giving it a spotlight, it's a great game.
Did you tried Disciples saga?
This is fuedalism 2 with more steps
The only thing this game nails is the nails in its own coffin. I've never seen worst writing in my entire life. Shame about the art direction, it was fantastic.
Yeah, the faye units are invisible because of the story in the campaign
They should buff the mana amount and make it per unit type.
Game'y is flavored System?
You should really try out Heroes of Might and Magic 3 HORN OF THE ABYSS mod.. it is just incredible.
It's so good! I played through it maybe 3 years ago. Had a blast.
@@francisco2013 They just came out about 2-3 months ago with a new campaign and NEW CASTLE! :)
Sweet. Might reinstall it!
There is also a new board game for HoMM 3 and it slaps as well
Interesting
oh man i remember the HoMM3 demo, that was so much fun
So... I wanted to love this game. That's why I watch this video. I am trying to catch some of your enthusiasm. I love HoMM 1,2, 3 and 5. I play 2 and 3 regularly. But for me waht really hurt the game was the creatures being max/stack so .... what's the point? I usually stop caring about anything as more and more creatures are piling up in my camps while I win battles without any/many casaulties
The second is waiting. I can't wait in combat, which is frustrating to me. Why can I not chose to move my creatures later. I got amazing initiative on my archers? Great, so I can move them right into the range of their 2 ranged units and also take a dmg penalty for my shot.
My melee units are able to engage? great, my ranged units didn't move yet so I couldn't weaken the enemy stack. I go in, take retaliation, lose units, overkill them with the ranged units. Why can't I be able to weaken them with my ranged units and finish them off with my melees?
It takes some unlearning i agree. Idk when you played it last but they made some changes in units getting extra abilities. Also wait is in the game, as an ability in hyperfast units. I suggest playing skirmish mode against normal AI and get your butt kicked like me. Its a matter of taste but this video doesnt do the game systems justice. If you watch a PvP video youll see how unorthodox the games can be.
ofc HoMM 3 is GOD game
This... is not Animal Well
Day9 out here with the you gotta let me play the game, meanwhile also day9 will stop 2 and half minutes into most games for a 36 minute rant before proceeding to the next tutorial tooltip.
you really need to stop advertising these class games that are making me more and more poorer
I find the art style to be too muddy. It's abit of a problem when the art direction in a much older game game is easier to read.
Expand to another town or city
I hope day9 stays bald
How can you play something that is burned? I've heard about CDs but most things need to be cleaned. Is this the same as the blackened water? Does it increase game performance or something?
idk if young or trolling, but burning cds means adding content to a cd
@@evotech No, you cant really get content of a damaged CD, my grandpa had this one was all scratched up and you'd barely get any songs off it
@@TankorSmash you just need to dage it more, it's called a CD right.
Cee dees nuts
I am confused. If you "just wanted to play", why not just play a skirmish map? You're insane, yes, because the amount of time you kept talking about the mana mechanism made me leave this video at the 30 minute mark instead of watching all of it. Yes, game have "mechanics". . . 😕
It was a livestream. He was clearly answering questions in his chat. Keep hating though hater 😂
sadly looks and plays worse than heroes 3.