Songs of Silence Review

Have you ever wondered what happens when you take a genre usually known for its sleek and toned-down art style and design and turn things upside down, introducing a bright and fresh new theme seldom seen before? Well, you get Songs of Silence.

A turn-based strategy game that sells itself as a next-generation strategy game that mixes in aspects of RTS, Turn-Based Strategy, and Management. All of these mix in a harmonious cacophony that is Songs of Silence. Developed & published by Chimera Entertainment, a small Munich-based German publisher with a repertoire of mobile games under their belt.

Their supposed first attempt at a Steam game has seemingly gone over well with the product that is Songs of Silence. In this visually stunning game, you take command of a kingdom, starting in your capital city and expanding, fighting off neutral enemies, and taking over towns and cities. Eventually, you find rivals and enemies whom you have the best in the field of battle.

Songs of Silence has three modes: the campaign, a skirmish mode, and a multiplayer mode. Out of all three, the campaign has the most draw, but as you'll see, that isn't saying much.

Regardless of which, you basically start with a main city and an army. Throughout the game, you will conquer more cities and get more armies, but these two will be the most important ones for you.

Your armies have a certain number of units they can have in the field, determined by the level of your hero leading it. You have a grid where you can put one unit in one cell, basically making up any formation you want. While you are restricted on the main line, your reserves, which usually can only house 6-8 units, don't start with this restriction.

So you could theoretically get a lot more units than you can actively field and keep them in reserve until your hero levels up. The hero can't really die permanently but does end by 1 HP if you win the battle. The hero itself is a unique character that comes with a few traits and unique abilities. They can be a good fight, a summoner, a healer, or anything in between.

In Songs of Silence, units aren't really a factor since you can just train more of them. The game's lack of an 'experience' mechanic means that no matter how many units you lose, it's worth it. They also lack upkeep, so the only thing holding you back is the limit on the number of units you own. It honestly feels like the game could benefit from having upkeep as a thing, making you worry about the units and not being able to run an 8-stack unit of Oathsguard or something.

Your armies, when moving, consume movement points. The game very neatly shows how far you can go, with most armies having around 6-10 movement points. At the end of each turn, the movement points are restored. Movement has its restrictions, however, as you cannot generally move across mountains or over rivers.

You can also hide in the forests, using it to your advantage to commit to ambushes and surprise the enemy. You also have a few formations while moving. You see, usually, you'd be in 'battle formation,' but when moving with more than 50% of your movement points, you change into a marching formation, which is easily spotted. When retreating, the retreat formation is taken, wherein you are easier to ambush and such.

When engaging in a battle, you'll see that the battles themselves run in real-time, although you don't have any control over your troops. This means the most guidance you can give them is via their battle formation. 

Your army can consist of a wide variety of units, each with its stats and abilities. Naturally, for a strategy game, in Songs of Silence, some of these units are better than others, creating a web of counters that you must exploit to win.

Another way you can influence the battle is with the various cards that you can play during the battle. These do everything from summoning a meteor to calling on the reserves or just healing your troops. They can very easily turn the tide of the battle. However, they are not easy to obtain, with your hero starting off with a few and then getting more as they level up.

When your heroes level up, they gain more slots in their army, and they get to pick between three cards. These may be an upgrade or a completely new card that you can use. Some of these cards pertain to the map and the turn-based aspect of the game. See, when not in battle, you'll be exploring and upgrading your cities.

Cities themselves are where you will train your troops, with each city having special pre-built structures that determine what troops you can train. A city, once conquered, will be in unrest, unable to train troops or use cards. Each city also has a prosperity meter. Once it fills up the meter, you may spend resources to upgrade it.

Cities can also have empty building slots where you may place powerful structures via cards that you get from heroes. Upgrading is also done via these cards. That's pretty much it for cities as well. You can't demolish buildings or replace them. You can't even really see where the unit comes from, which is pretty annoying. Other than cities, the map will consist of ruins, lairs, adventuring locations, and Purgatories.

Ruins and lairs are your average early-game exploration areas where you meet smaller armies and conquer them—getting gold and being able to rebuild the areas. Adventure locations, on the other hand, may give a wide variety of rewards, including special artifacts that boost the stats of your army.

Purgatories are sort of gateways that are corrupted and unstable, connecting the two worlds of the game. These locations slowly damage units and are used to traverse the two portions of the map. You may also encounter locations with Silence. These areas are going to slowly wither and die unless you can use specific units and cards.

Songs of Silence has three factions, and they're pretty different from one another, having a unique resource pertaining to them as well as gameplay mechanics related to them. These factions also have their unique heroes that generally add a fair amount of replayability to the game.

The basic gameplay in the Songs of Silence premise of the game is great; the fundamentals and foundations are all there. It does a fairly good job of mixing global strategy, 4X, and the indirect control you have over the outcome of a battle. This, however, gets tiring since there are just so many battles you have to wade through. The 'autobattler' tag is somewhat of a farce at this point, though, as you can't actually auto-resolve battles like you can in games like Total War. 

The campaign in Songs of Silence, for all its interesting characters, does get a bit stale the more you play it. It is very retro, predictable story-telling, complete with time-based defense and stealth segments. That being said, the single-player is still the best part of the game since the multiplayer is worse. 

You barely get to interact with people, and turns are tedious and lengthy. While most of the polished mechanics are pretty well done, the cards are not one of them. They're just glorified buttons that do exactly that: be buttons. There's no deck-building or limited-use cards.

The game does shine in its looks. It is absolutely phenomenal, reminding you of Banner Saga or Wartales. Every nook and cranny looks great, from the cards and units to the map itself. It's all pretty detailed, as well. You can really tell how much work went into the art of the game and how this is probably a product of love. Its music and voice acting are also on the same level, all of which create a wonderful audio-visual experience.

Sadly, for most of the game, you'll be bothered by its issues to really appreciate its good parts. It feels too small and too restrictive, and it really doesn't give you a lot to play with. The campaign is criminally short and, at times, terribly unfun; dare I say, it feels like slop.

Songs of Silence really tried to reach for the stars and do a lot. It strove to be a good 4x game that took elements from all across the strategy mega-genre. It tried to ditch all of the Civ-based gameplay mechanics, but with that came too much simplicity. A large part of the game feels very barebones. The game may look great, but it has hardly anything worth of substance. 

Yet, even then, there's some light at the end of the tunnel because you can also see how much heart went into the parts of the game that are good. This may not be the end of Songs of Silence because its foundations are solid, and with great and unique visuals, it's definitely playable and, at times, really fun. With good balance updates, new content, and a bit more polishing, it can be a lot, a lot more, but let me tell you, no one's going to sing songs about this anytime soon.

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