Hello, I am a big fan of games like Heroes of Might and Magic and Age of wonders 2 as LAN based multiplayer games to play with my family in my own home. I would like to know if this game has any DRM for the multiplayer component? The store page doesn't make this clear. Also is there LAN play?

I have been disappointed by several games on GOG in this regard, such as Age of Wonders III and Battletech, which require an account and registration for multiplayer or other games which need galaxy. In the case of the former, AOE III, you even need to be connected to the internet for LAN play which is frankly ridiculous.

I also love to play LAN with friends, but sadly, this has become a bit rare in games. I think until now, Songs of Conquest only supports online and probably also hotseat.

I had a blast playing Satellite Reign with friends in LAN. If you like Sci-Fi/Syndicate like games, you might want to give it a try.

No LAN, but there is hotseat mode. I haven't gone into an on-line match yet, but when I checked it did what it was supposed to and doesn't require registering an account. Cross play is implemented. As far as i can tell, game is completely DRM free.

Thank you GR11 and Fortuk for your replies. While its kind of lame that there is no LAN mode its good to know that the online is actually DRM free. Also, thanks for the recommendation; Satellite reign looks pretty cool, kind of like a new version of syndicate.

Would you say that there's currently enough content in the game to make it worth its price?

---------------------

It's not perfect, since everything is in the same city, the world domination feeling is a bit gone. But it's still cool and LAN games are rare. ------------------------------

In Songs of Conquest there are 2 campaigns so far & the skirmish mode. I only played one campaign, which consisted of 4 very long missions (aka maps). Especially the later missions were demanding difficulty wise & I could only win them by outmaneuvering the AI. I also played around with the skirmish mode, but only to try various build orders/strategies.

So, yes, I guess 30€/$ are fine. But other people might disagree. I usually have no problems with paying more for a game I like.

It really depends on what you're looking for. if you're in the market for a HOMM style game that is distinct enough and generally more fast paced, it's a solid buy. The game is obviously not as expansive in terms of content at this point as a full-fledged HOMM game, but what's there is good. The content that is currently in doesn't feel like it's unfinished, you just want more toys to play with. Maps are starting to get made by modders and it feels fun to play. To me, feeling fun to play is the most important sign for a game of this type, because no matter how much content you stuff into it, if it's not fun you're not going keep playing it anyway.

If having expansive campaigns is really important to you, there are currently two campaigns but they're not 40-hours type of huge. So keep that in mind. Like I said, maps are getting put out already and they use mod.io so they're not locked behind steam workshop, which is a really positive sign to me.

But "LAN" is just a subset of "normal" Internet MP (aka "Direct Connect" sometimes).

Please clarify - can you not input the hosts' IP (v6 please) or domain name to join his game ?

And if not, and you're forced to go through a matchmaking server hosted somewhere else, then it's basically equivalent to (the downsides of) online DRM :
in the "best" case there's no account verification, but MP will be impossible once these matchmaking servers shut down - see what happened to Gamespy - thankfully (almost ?) all of these Games *had* Direct Connect !

In my opinion, NO. I personally will wait.

A Robust Random Map Generator is a must in my opinion. I will stick to the 3 kings of TBS fantasy games for now:
Heroes3
AOW2
Warlords III DLR

It does appear that you must go through a matchmaking service to play multiplayer. When you host a game you get a code that other players can use to find your game.

This is good as an option, but it would be nice to be able to direct connect to the hosts IP address or to use LAN discovery to find local network games. This way the game can be fully DRM free and playable even if the developers servers are offline.

Theoretically, you can bypass that requirement by playing the hot seat mode and using Parsec to connect to others.