Conquest Demo

Strategy games are perfect for multiplayer sessions between friends, because competition is always the perfect ingredient in such cases. However, the same thing works for anyone else in the world, which is why games like StarCraft made such a name for themselves. On the other hand, it’s by no means simple to come up with a winning formula, as many developers found out over the years.

Conquest is about as simple as it can get on the surface, since it doesn’t feature too much of a story and everything is streamlined to be as intuitive as possible. However, there’s plenty of tactical depth involved in the gameplay, so it’s not as easy as you might think to come up with the right strategy. Plenty of options are at your disposal, as well as large enough maps for everyone to enjoy.

To start off with, the matches can be customized before you start playing, because there are a variety of rules that can be changed to fit your preferences. You can choose to play either against other human opponents, or match wits with the AI if you feel like it. Although it uses basic strategies and it doesn’t respond well to unorthodox situations, the AI is pretty slick and you can find yourself on the defensive every once in a while.

Unfortunately, the illusion shatters quite quickly and you are left to realize that the game simply does not feature enough content or variation to keep you interested for more than a few matches. Hence, there’s nothing else you can do besides moving units from city to city, not to mention the fact that the maps are quite empty and barren in most cases. Not only that, but you do not even get to control the production, so all you have to focus on is the movement of the units.

While this would not be too much of a problem, there’s just not enough variety in the units, because they all feel like the same tank/soldier just moving around. The special actions are also quite boring to see in action and everything seems to fall into a routine after a while. Thankfully, the graphics are somewhat decent, but the environments are too dull to enjoy them anyway.

In the end, Conquest’s simple mechanics are pretty attractive, especially if you are on the lookout for something light to enjoy with your friends. However, everything is just too repetitive to remain fun for more than a few matches, which is quite the shame, since this could have been much better.