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Songs of Silence comes from Chimera Entertainment, which previously created Angry Birds Epic and Angry Birds Evolution for Rovio. While these two games are simple strategy and role-playing takes on the Angry Birds series, the 4X strategy game Songs of Silence is very far from Angry Birds. And then again, maybe not quite.
Songs of Silence is a slightly different take on a 4X strategy game and an example of how an established sub-genre can evolve and innovate. In this case, it's by adding automated real-time battles and deckbuilding mechanics. However, the focus is still on building and expanding your army, expanding your kingdom and improving your heroes, and although it is still turn-based, it offers both real-time battles and a clever card system that can influence the battles in different directions.
In a nutshell, the story in Songs of Silence depicts the battle between two forces; the light and the all-consuming and deadly Silence. By taking control of one of the game's three factions, either 1000 Kingdoms, Old Race, or Crusade, you must try to survive the conflict through a series of tactical choices and of course battle scenes. The world of Songs of Silence is a complex web of kingdoms and different groups fighting for dominance and to stop the spread of Silence.
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If you're not familiar with the genre, strategy games like these can often be a little difficult to get into. Fortunately, the campaign in Songs of Silence is quite accessible as it slowly introduces the different parts of the gameplay and you should definitely start here if you are new to this genre. In short, you control forces and troops around a map where you have to defeat different groups of enemies, besiege and take over cities under enemy control and, of course, try to protect the cities and areas under your control. One way to do this is by reinforcing city defences or placing large groups of troops in the cities.
The above is turn-based, as you move around the map and when you run out of moves, it's the enemy troops' turn. Everything else you do in the game is done via some cards. There are three types of cards; Recruitment Cards, Strategy Cards and Battle Cards. Recruitment Cards allow you to recruit different forces, either for your armies or to guard your cities and fortresses. Strategy Cards allow you to reinforce these cities, strengthen your defences and optimise parts of the cities so that the income from the city increases and flows in a steady stream. This is important in a war, as we all know.
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Finally, there are Battle Cards, and not surprisingly, these are used in battles. Unlike Recruitment Cards and Strategy Cards, Battle Cards can be used multiple times in each round, as they only have a cooldown period to pass before they can be used again.
Before going into battle, you need to make sure your forces are in the formation you want for when the battles start, because once the battle is underway, you no longer have direct control over your forces. This is where your Battle Cards come in. For example, they can make your forces faster and more powerful for, say, 12 seconds, they can heal and maybe even revive fallen troops, launch special types of attacks, and much much more. It's like playing a deck-builder on top of an RTS and it's quite an interesting mechanic.
Overall, Songs of Silence works quite well, but the automatic battles can seem a bit too... Yes, automatic. You're basically just watching a battle unfold before your eyes while you wait for your Battle Cards to cool down so you can use them again. It can seem a bit disconnected and the only way to influence the match is to play these Battle Cards. It's not a big problem as such, but I often found myself wishing I had more direct influence on the battles.
The game doesn't offer resource management and the like, so Songs of Silence is perhaps a little too simple for the experienced 4X strategist or experienced RTS player. You don't have the opportunity to fiddle with lots of little things and fine-tune strategies during a battle. On the other hand, it also makes the game more accessible to new players, who may have had a taste of the genre before, but may have found it too complicated.
Songs of Silence has a strong visual side and the soundtrack from Hitoshi Sakimoto, who previously created the soundtrack for Final Fantasy Tactics and Valkyria Chronicles, is particularly excellent.
Songs of Silence is an excellent, accessible and fresh take on a strategy game. The addition of deck-building mechanics makes things a little simpler and there aren't a lot of management requirements, which makes it all a little more accessible. It's exactly these things that will scare away seasoned strategy players, as they won't be able to get their fingers deep enough into the engine room to find it worth their time.
I said at the beginning that the developers from Chimera Entertainment had previously done simple strategy takes on the Angry Birds series - and you can actually see that in Songs of Silence, as we are dealing with what you could call a "strategy game lite". With the available deck-builder mechanics and campaign, Songs of Silence is an excellent starting point for the slightly inexperienced strategy player who wants to get to know the genre better.