Conquest of Elysium 3

I went in expecting a budget curiosity from a two-man studio and came out with a spreadsheet tracking which of the eighteen classes I had yet to master. Conquest of Elysium 3 is the kind of game that looks almost offensively bare on first contact - sprite graphics that would have felt dated on a mid-90s DOS machine, combat that resolves automatically while you watch tiny figures hop up and down - and then quietly refuses to let you stop playing it. The core hook is faction asymmetry pushed to an unusual extreme. The Druid expands by claiming forests to harvest ritual ingredients, with almost no interest in mines. The Dwarf Queen cares only about mines, produces units on a fixed schedule, and spends the whole game trying not to lose the tough-to-replace soldiers she was given at the start. The Demonologist summons demon lords from sacrifices gathered in villages, but those demons may turn on their summoner - a risk that actually shapes how aggressively you expand. The Necromancer collects Hands of Glory from large settlements and uses them to raise progressively more dangerous undead. That is not four slight variations on a shared ruleset; that is four genuinely different games layered inside one client. With eighteen classes total and six scenario types that reshuffle the map layout, the replay count climbs fast. The broader class structure even has late-game balance baked in: warlord archetypes like the Baron and Senator dominate the early turns with large conventional armies, while mage and priest classes scale harder toward the end, able to field summoned horrors and near-godlike creatures that can swing the board entirely. The tutorial situation is the honest problem. There is no tutorial. There is a sixty-page PDF manual, and reading at least the first quarter of it before your first session is not optional advice - it is prerequisite. The UI has small text even at its largest setting, notification messages at the bottom are smaller still, and first-time players routinely lose their starting citadel to a wandering animal before they understand the garrisoning rules. That is a real friction point, not a charming quirk. The AI wanders rather than pressing advantages with strategic focus, which means the challenge at mid-difficulty settings comes more from the procedural map chaos - surprise monster lairs, random event storms, neutral armies recapturing your rear territory - than from the AI opponents themselves. Up to seven AI opponents can be added to a match, with ten difficulty tiers and team assignment options, so you can construct scenarios where the chaos pressure stays high even if no single AI opponent plays brilliantly. For the right player, none of that is disqualifying. Sessions play quickly by grand-strategy standards, which matters: a full game does not demand a weekend block the way a Dominions campaign does. Hotseat and network multiplayer are both supported, and co-op team play against AI opponents works well as a LAN or couch option. Modding support exists, including the ability to add new classes and reskin units, which extends longevity further. The operatic soundtrack is genuinely good and sits oddly well against the spartan visuals. If you have ever enjoyed Heroes of Might and Magic 3 for its faction depth, or liked Nethack for its willingness to kill you with something absurd, CoE3 occupies a real space between those two games that very little else does. Diego, Scout Team

Valve rates this game Steam Deck Unsupported.

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