There have been so many games and demos tugging at my attention in the last few weeks. Throw in some health shit and it has been a real struggle to find time to do half of what I wanted to. Yet throughout the last couple of weeks, one game has kept pulling me back in like Michael Corleone in a gnarly old cardigan.
Anyway, Conquest Dark is a new action-RPG with survivors-like elements, roguish progression, a grimdark science-fantasy setting, and a keen focus on loot and gear.
In fact, the game’s obsession with loot and with tweaking your magic powers on the go means that I think it will likely gel with Diablo fans. You know, the sort who love nothing more than grabbing up shiny new incremental upgrades items and XP from the floor and tinkering with their loadouts to get the perfect build.
What is Conquest Dark all about then?
Now, I mentioned up top that Conquest Dark is a survivors-like, so let’s dig into that a little now because this is a congested genre with a lot of games. If you’re a fan of Vampire Survivors and games of its ilk, you’re already spoiled for choice, and if you’re new aroud here, there’s a big list here if you want it.
One of the things that impressed me the most is how, despite what I consider to be huge over-saturation within the survivors-like niche, Conquest Dark is still able to stand out and stand tall.
It does this thanks in large part to its adoption of some of Diablo’s core aspects. This grim fantasy setting, the visceral and tactile combat, the focus on grabbing loot and making decisions as you hone a build – Eldritch Sword Games borrows all the best bits and then squeezes them into a more contemporary roguelite structure.
Every new mission is filled with combat for a set period of time, with boss battles at designated moments, and with pick-ups and learnings that will go on to inform and enhance future efforts. It’s a simple loop, but it works rather effortlessly in this instance.
Characterful combat in the arena
The moody fantasy setting has you controlling a hero sent to fight monsters as humanity battles some terrible evil that arrived with the scary-sounding Black Planet. The cosmic gods are dead, primordial forces are running rampant, and there are armies of undead minions just about everywhere you look. It’s your job, mission after mission, to fight this army of monstrosities back and save the world, I guess.
No pressure, then.
For the most part, each new battle takes place in a fairly boring circular arena. Sure, they look fairly pretty, but there’s not a lot going on in most of them (there are exceptions, with rocky outcrops to avoid, for example) and if I have one criticism of note, it’s that the battlefields could be quite a bit more interesting.
The simplicity of the play space is in constrast to meaningful depth just about everywhere else I cared to look. For example, for each new run you can choose one of several playable classes, then a specialism, and then a starting weapon. These are simple choices on the face of it, but these decisions will shape the course of the run ahead in quite dramatically different directions if you’re brave enough to explore.
One of my favourite things about Conquest Dark is the constant stream of decisions that it throws at you. One minute you’ll be upgrading your gear, next you’ll be adding new abilities or changing the properties of ones you’ve picked previously, and another moment later you’ll get a pair of pants, which is handy as then you can cover up your massive dong/tits.
Sorry – what? Oh yeah, you start out each fight naked. Probably should have mentioned that.
In fact, not only are you starkers to start off with, but as you work through your lives – you have a hard limit of ten per mission – bits of your body will start to fall off. This brutal transformation happens to the bosses too, and in an epic battle of attrition at the end of a hard fought mission, it’s not unusual to see both mains – you and your opponent – missing chunks of flesh and pissing blood all over.
Blood and gore is only one type of feedback. No less visually spectacular are your magic powers. Your attacks can manifest in creative ways during battle, and the different weapons and abilities often connect to create surprising synergies. It’s not unusual to see the arena light up with fireworks as attacks chain together and cause large-scale damage to bosses and mobs alike.
More than just a hack ‘n’ slash
On the one hand, Conquest Dark is a relentless onslaught of attacks, which grow in potency and destroy large swathes of enemy soldiers that become more powerful to reflect your advance. On the other, you’re firing automatically and dodging large mobs that chase you down constantly, much like you do in Vampire Survivors et al.
Naturally, as you progress your power is reflected by the mission and your place within its chronology, but also the difficulty selected and any damage modifiers you have activated. There are several ways to tweak the experience to make it harder and boost your rewards, or you can take your time and level up on easier missions and step things up when you’re good and ready.
Your progression through Conquest Dark manifests itself across a world map, and I really like this system. At a glance you can see how far you are with each of the classes; for example, I need to level up my Barbarians as they’re way behind the rest, especially my Thieves. On top of that you can see which missions you’ve beaten and which ones you still need to beat, track certain persistent stat boosts, and find out more about the lore of the world.
There is loads to keep track of, and that brings us back to one of Conquest Dark’s best features, and that’s its depth. There are loads of different ways that you can build your character for each run, and with a little thought and planning, you can start to lean into your favourite strategies by improving things via the game’s excellent progression system.
It feels a bit like hyperbole to make such a bold statement, but I’ve held back on writing this up until now in order to make sure I was certain before I commited my opinion to print: Conquest Dark is the best new auto-shooter in ages and my favourite since Vampire Survivors. It’s still in Early Access, but I think most roguelite fans will already enjoy this crunchy bullet heaven as it currently stands.
Conquest Dark is out now on PC (Win) in Early Access, and I played via access kindly provided by the game’s publisher, Mad Mushroom.
