Conan Unconquered Review

Conan Unconquered is a game of extremes. On one hand, you have fantastic cutscenes that sell the idea of a massive, 3D real strategy game where one must defend their walled cities from interminable hordes. On the other, you have the actual game – a quasi-copy of They Are Billions, with a repetitive gameplay, unimpressive graphics, and all the scale and pomp of Age of Empires II Remastered.

I had my eyes on Conan Unconquered ever since I watched the trailer and saw Petroglyph was behind it. The studio was a staple of the early naughts, creating the subtle gem that was Star Wars: Empire at War for the deeply missed Lucasarts. As a result, I expected Unconquered to have the same sort of gravitas, perfectly capturing the large scale odds of a gigantic army of enemies laying siege to a walled settlement, a la Total War style.

The end result is significantly less impressive, being less Total War – or even Galaxy at War – and going straight back to the days of Age of Empires and Starcraft. Conan Unconquered is a classic RTS from the old days, where you place down production buildings – be it resources or troops – and churn out units one at a time in order to face an enemy army also composed of single units.

In classic Age of Empires fashion, defensive structures like walls must be built one tile at a time, and can be supplemented both with lookout and archer towers. In order to expand your base, you need to build war standards that increase the tribe’s area of influence – which allows you to build more and more buildings between the terrain’s various natural chokepoints such as lakes and mountain ranges.

While some enemies are scattered around the map, the game rotates around the concept of waves – timed hordes made up of dozens of units that come from one or two or all directions at once and try to overrun your settlement. The constant attacks create an interesting and engaging loop, where you must balance expansion and base building with quick defensive measures to hold off the incoming tide, just like They Are Billions did last year.

My main issue with Conan Unconquered is how old it feels. This is not a game that tries to break new ground or be innovative in any way – every single gameplay mechanic is a direct copy of something else. Normal units and buildings have been seen countless times in Age of Empires, Starcraft, and hundreds of other RTS, while the special units like Conan or Valeria are at their best a hero of Age of Mythology or Dawn of War – like Arkantos or Gabriel Angelos – and at worse a MOBA unit.

Still, the gameplay itself is solid, if non-impressive. Units are very lethal on both sides of the match, taking apart walls and cutting down foes with nary a moment to spare. Special hero units – which respawn when killed – can gather up experience to unleash powerful abilities capable of taking down hordes, and players can summon the giant man statue Avatar of Mitra to crush friends and foes alike.

Performance

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This is all made worse by very unimpressive graphics, which are compounded by the fact the camera zoom is extremely restrictive and the UI fails to adjust to 4K. As a result, your time with the game involves constantly panning out without ever being able to see a large portion of your base – let alone the map – which is a very unimpressing proposition when the game looks so barebones and unnatractive in close quarters.

The truth is playing Unconquered feels like suddenly stepping back in a time machine or accidentally installing an early 2000s games via GoG – complete with amazing looking CGI that in no way reflects the actual gameplay. That’s a trend the industry moved on from about two decades ago and usually only resurfaces during E3 presentations, but Conan Unconquered resurrects it with horrible results. Still, it is not a bad game in it’s own merits, and if you are looking for a They Are Billions clone that can be played in coop, this might just be the game for you.