The impact of Vampire Survivors has been felt most on PC, where every week, you’re bound to find at least one new spin on that winning formula. At the core of it, for me at least, is the rapid sense of progression, both in terms of the character you are and the enemies you face. The absurd excess of it all makes me happy, and any game that manages to replicate that even a little bit is going to catch my eye. Enter one of the more recent Survivors riffs, Conquest Dark.
Apart from having a generic name that is also perfect for the kind of hulking dark fantasy action on display, this game loves to make a lowly start end in near-godhood as your battle against swarms of undead beings escalates in an alarmingly swift fashion. As the developers put it, this is the action RPG in concentrated form.
Conquest Dark’s flavor of RPG is dark fantasy sword & sorcery with a neat twist. It’s an apocalyptic situation as humanity is all but doomed to extinction after the arrival of an undead plague. The kingdoms of mankind have been slowly decimated over 237 years, and the cosmic gods are finished. It’s a very doomy premise, and it sets up a tale of almost primal savagery battling otherworldly horrors.
You begin each run as nothing more than a walking lunch, ill-equipped to be outside, let alone battling hordes of monstrous foes. By performing Rituals, you gain new abilities quite quickly, one after the other with a selection of classes to utilize. Want to be a brute force savage? Barbarians of the Lion is probably the path for you, and you can live out your very own Super Conan fantasies in the process (okay, my Super Conan fantasies). But there’s a decent mixture of might and magic to suit all types and even some blending of the two. I’m equally keen to fire sun lasers at skittering spiders as I am to bludgeon skeletons into dust.
Conquest Dark Sides
While Conquest Dark borrows the rapid ascension to murdergod from Vampire Survivors, it has much more in common with Diablo or Halls of Torment. It’s much more of a hands-on action RPG with exploration, story, and legendary loot to acquire. There’s also a deckbuilding aspect to how you stack your rituals. Yes, deckbuilding might feel like the game is trying to check one too many boxes, but even in Early Access, developer Eldritch Sword Games has made the parts slot together in a satisfying manner. When the game starts hitting its stride, and the intimidating hordes match your power, Conquest Dark is a sight to behold. The run-up to getting there is perhaps a touch haphazard at this point, but once you get there, it’s a pleasing visual overload of numbers and swinging weapons.
There’s undoubtedly some polish needed in the long run, and it’d be nice if the combat consistently matched the spectacle, yet I already find myself in that loop of ‘one more round.’ Let me tell you, when you’re trying to play a bunch of stuff at once, that snack-size loop is a lot harder to maintain, so clearly, Eldritch Sword Games is on to something here.
It’s always promising when an Early Access game has the fundamentals sorted right from the off because it leaves plenty of time to hone the stuff around it. I doubt Conquest Dark will reach Diablo IV levels of visceral detail, but I can see it building on the spectacle of violence it currently presents to make its strengths shine all the brighter.
Conquest Dark is out now in Early Access on PC via Steam.
