Songs of Silence Review (PlayStation 5)

by Jim Smale · December 19, 2024

Songs of Silence Review, Songs of Silence is the next generation of turn-based 4X strategy games. Explore hand-crafted maps, build powerful armies, and crush your rivals in fast-paced, real-time battles where every decision is strategic. Lead one of three unique factions, and carve out your place in a ravaged land.
From dense forests perfect for ambush to towering strongholds ripe for siege, every map presents new challenges and opportunities. Manage resources, rebuild shattered kingdoms, and stake your claim in this living, breathing world!

Songs of Silence Review Pros:

Decent graphics.
7.10GB download size.
Platinum trophy.
Game settings – tutorials on, auto open battle statistics, autosaves stored amount, UI scale, gamma correction, and Colourblind mode.
Controller settings – sensitivity and deadzone sliders.
The game manual is a massive encyclopedia of all controls and actions complete with text and images.
The encyclopedia is all things people and places.
Multiplayer options – quick join, join via a code, host game, and load game.
Single-player has two modes – campaigns, and skirmish.
Skirmish mode will spawn a randomly generated map, you then select the map size, modify game rules, hero selection, and the type of map.
Eight campaigns to unlock, you just choose which one and the game difficulty.
Three game difficulties – story focus, balance, and challenging.
You can replay campaigns.
The cutscenes look fantastic with their art and animation style, complete with powerful voice work.
You command your troops to select them and place markers on the game world for them to move around it.
Four X strategy gameplay.
Optional tutorial pop-ups as you play.
Enchanting soundtrack.
When you interact with other clans and people in the world you can trigger conversations.
Combat plays out automatically for your troops, the control you have over them is by playing cards that have cooldowns.
You can pause in battles.
There are three battle speeds you change with the d-pad.
It’s a four-X game that respects your time, streamlines actions, and makes combat a much quicker and more accessible experience.
In the campaign, the game is split into days and you can only do X amount of actions in a day before you have to rest and the game world advances one day.
Fog of war is in play so you cannot see the world until you uncover it bit by bit.
Full army management is where you can inspect troops and place them where you want them to deploy on each battlefield.
Recruit new units.
Many unit types to recruit and the game really lets you customize your army and get creative with it.
Tooltips are everywhere and sometimes require a button press.
In the campaign, you have an objectives checklist for main and optional side objectives.
I really like the pace and accessible approach they have taken.
It’s cool that you can just sit and watch the fight break out playing cards making it again quicker and simplified.
Earn battle points in the campaign and level up your hero (leader of your army).
Save and load when you want.
You can skip cutscenes and interactions.
The campaign takes in many scenarios like taking out a hit on a hero or taking over a settlement or town, defending your land, and more.

Songs of Silence Review Cons:

Small text in the game no matter the UI scale slider.
You cannot remap or Invert the controls.
It’s annoying that cards don’t have to pop up text to say what they are, over time this gets better but early on it’s quite stressful. You can turn it on to have the text but it resets every battle.
A lot to take in as you are expecting huge info dumps but it’s not there and you still have to learn the new mechanics.
No way to have screens and interactions auto-scroll.
Slow starter and the pace can be a bit up and down.