Strategy & Auto-Battler Combined: A Songs of Silence Review

By Teepu

Player(s): 1-6
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox, PC (Steam)

2024 was an interesting year in gaming, but I have felt strongly that the western strategy genre has been painfully silent over the last decade or so. Sure, there have been some releases here and there, but the golden age for the genre, when I was a kid, has long since passed. Songs of Silence is an indie game that has been developed over time for the PC and just recently released for consoles in full and helps to fill that void.

Rather than create a cookie cutter strategy game, the German team over at Chimera Entertainment decided to apply some concepts that the modern gamer would find familiar. The overworld gameplay is like the old Heroes of Might & Magic games, with combat being akin to the type of thing you would see in a mobile game auto-battler. That is not to say there is no strategy in the combat. More on that shortly though. As you play through a map, you are given a hero (you can get more) who can have a certain number of units they take with them. You can tactically place the units in your army where you like to give them a basic strategy to follow before they go into combat. As you roam the field, capturing cities, defeating enemies, and gaining resources, your hero will level up. When they level up you are given a choice of a "card" to adopt (or upgrade an existing one), while also slowly expanding that hero’s army capacity. This card system is a way to appeal to the people who play mobile games, as it will look familiar, but realistically it is simply a set of abilities your hero has access to in and out of combat. Sometimes passive, sometimes active. Beyond that, while out of combat, you will spend your time moving these heroes and their armies around the field, trying to retain control and overtake the enemy in a turn-based system.

Based on how you placed your units in the hero’s army screen, they will automatically charge into battle. If you placed them up front, they would usually charge forward, whereas if they are in the back, they may move a little slower and try to stay as far away as they can. Beyond this, the pathing and behavior of the units is hardcoded and all you do is watch them go about their business. The way you can contribute to the fight is by using ability cards whenever their cooldown is reset. They can do things such as cast an area-of-effect attack or buff units within a certain range of where you cast the ability. At first, I was a little irked at not being able to control my troops, but with how often the abilities are available for use during battle, I soon found myself constantly juggling my abilities to help my troops win. This means that the initial third of each game you play will be a little slow with the combat, but as you level up you will gain more things to do which will keep you more than occupied. I still would rather control my units, but it is good enough that I felt engaged most of the time. The combat is all in real time, though you can pause combat at any time (as well as speed it up), so that you are never rushed into figuring out how to best use an ability card.

Overall, the gameplay is quite solid. It does not do anything drastically new, but the combat is different enough that I did not regret my time with the game in the slightest. I spent most of my time in the story mode. There are  bunch of missions that take you through a full story that is rich in lore, but basic in its own story. Everybody is born from music, and there are some evil beings and people who would like to silence the songs of a being’s soul and silence the world. You follow a few heroes on opposing sides whose hardships bring them together to take down the ultimate enemy. I quite enjoyed the tale, I liked the characters, and each mission was quite unique, leaving me extremely satisfied by the end. The story mode also offers three difficulty levels, though it does a poor job of teaching you the finer things about the gameplay. I had to look things up a couple times early on, but once I got the hang of the mechanics, I had no problem making it through the rest of the game on my own. There are a lot of tutorials you can read, but not having it taught through gameplay means most players will not even see them. (I certainly did not until it was too late.)

As you play through any part of the game, there are various challenges you can complete that will unlock heroes, abilities, and map modifiers which you can use in the game’s skirmish mode. You can play this either online or against AI. I had a bit of trouble finding people to play with online, so I stuck to playing some matches against the AI. Despite having beaten the entire story on normal difficulty fine, I found the skirmish mode to be extremely difficult and could almost never win. It was immensely frustrating; I do not understand why they could not have implemented AI difficulty levels like they did for the story mode. Thankfully, I am not much of a skirmish player in strategy games, I usually just play the story and move on, but if you are looking for longevity and do not know people to play with, this may become a sore point for you. Or perhaps you will just grasp the gameplay better than me and have no issue. The skirmish AI does feel a lot more aggressive and different than the campaign all the same.

Songs of Silence is a gorgeous game in almost every way, and in the end, I had a blast playing it. My entire time was spent on the PlayStation 5 version of the game. If you enjoy strategy games, you will find quite the gem in this one. It is not perfect: it could teach its mechanics better and have more difficulty options for the AI in skirmish mode, but ultimately this is a solid addition to the genre.

Check Out Songs of Silence on PlayStation:
https://store.playstation.com/en-us/concept/10011866/

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Story: B
Gameplay: B+
Graphics: A-
Music/Sound: A-
Value: B-

OVERALL: B

Pros:
+ Rich lore and interesting characters have me wanting this to become a franchise.
+ Solid turn-based strategy meshed with real-time auto-battler.
+ Campaign is varied and engaging.

Cons:
- Skirmish AI feels broken and frustrating.
- Having to unlock useful things in skirmish mode requires playing skirmish mode first.
- Not enough people online on console.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

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Never turn back!