The realms of Might and Magic are expanding.
New lands have been discovered and you must rise to the challenge of conquering them.
Beware, for many warlords have risen to test your leadership and tactics.
You must carefully manage all the resources at your disposal or you will surely be defeated.
Now is the time to recruit your heroes, gather your armies and lead them to victory!
Age requirements: ESRB Rating: EVERYONE with Violence.
Minimum system requirements: Windows XP or Windows Vista, 1 GHz Processor (1.4 GHz recommended), 256MB RAM (512 recommended), 3D graphics card compatible with DirectX 7 (compatible with DirectX 9 recommended), Mouse, Keyboard.
Hey, if you’re a Disciples fan scroll down a bit and we’ll do a comparison. If you’re a King’s Bounty: The Legend fan just think “King’s Bounty: Turn-Based Strategy Edition”. Everyone else stay up here.... full review
Features:
So Heroes of Might and Magic is finally (re-)out! If you’ve never played it, this is a fantastic one to have around. Heroes of Might and Magic is a turn-based strategy series that casts you in the role of an unseen leader commanding a number of Heroes that, in turn, command large armies of soldiers and monsters. The game generally begins with your first town and Hero in front of you. You’ll belong to one of the four army types: either Knight (humans, bonus to morale), Barbarian (orcs, goblins and trolls, immune to terrain penalties), Sorceress (fairies and elves, bonus movement at sea) and Warlock (monsters, large sight range in the Fog of War). Your objective (in this game, always) is to defeat all the other players. Do this by capturing enemy cities. If you can defeat all their Heroes on top of that, or keep them from claiming a city for a week, that player is eliminated. Eliminate all the players to win!
Of course, like in most games, that’s easier said than done. Your armies start in your cities, which can be upgraded once per turn, or “Day”. The first upgrade (usually already completed in your first town) is the Castle, after which you can progress through the options in whatever order suits your strategy best. You might want to start by building up creature structures that will attract troops to your city (both immediately and at the end of every week). Or, you might want to build up your Mage Tower to gain access to spells, though make sure to buy a spell book if your Hero is not a spellcaster by nature!
From your town you’ll want to hire creatures and new heroes to move about the world, capturing resources like Gem Mines. Common resources, like wood and stone, are needed almost immediately, but the rarer types will be needed if you ever way to build some of the game’s strongest creatures and spells. You’ll occasionally find a gold mine out in the wilds, but mostly your income comes from finding other towns and building them up like you did your capital, each fuelling your war machine.
Along the way you’ll find a mess of wild creatures that will try to stop you. Sometimes, if your army is of the same type or is particularly strong, these enemies might scatter, or offer their services to you (sometimes for exorbitant prices), but most of the time you’ll have to fight them to reach the treasure or roads they’re guarding. This will plunge you into the game’s King’s Bounty-inspired combat system, where both sides will manoeuvre in side video along an invisible hex grid. In combat you’ll want to protect your archers, who are almost useless at close range, while outmanoeuvring your opponent on the random terrain. If things get too hot you can run away or surrender if in a fight with an opposing player, but be aware that the former will cost you your army and the latter a hefty bounty. Outright losing, however, is worse, as your experienced Hero will refuse to work with you for a significant period of time, but will gladly offer their services to your opponents!
As you progress you’ll find a world of artefacts to seize, dwellings from which to hire conscripts, seaside towns from which to build ships and, eventually, the enemy towns, where, if there is a castle in place, you will have to lay siege in a complicated battle in favour of your opponent, where they gain bonus weapons and you have to wait with your foot soldiers until a random catapult blows down the walls. Once you win, the city is yours, and you’ll be able to take advantage of the enemy soldiers in your own armies. Feel free to mix and match, but be aware that mixing troops from various army types (not the background in their icon) will result in a morale drop that could hurt you. Victory will require a mix of tactics, experience points and good old fashioned throwing money at it, but in the end you’ll hopefully topple the enemy cities, perhaps follow the mysterious obelisks about the map to the Ultimate Artifact, and win the game!
Disciples Fans:
Disciples owes a lot to Heroes, and so I have less to explain to you, but bear in mind that I’ve only played Disciples II. Like in Disciples you build up your towns and send heroes out in the world to wage war, but in Heroes all towns function similarly to the Capital instead of having the capital dictate the function of all towns on the map, in that they need to be upgraded to function at full potential to produce specific troops, etc. Battles are fought in a completely different fashion, by allowing soldiers to move about the grid, pinning down archers and trying to circumvent walls during a siege. There is also a totally different magic system. All in all, if you liked Disciples you will probably want to give Heroes of Might and Magic a try, but if your favourite part of the game was the combat system you might want to read a bit more into the game before you buy.
Drawbacks:
Unfortunately, as the GOG users have been lamenting on the boards, there’s a problem with this game: It’s Not The Sequels. The number of fixes and additions provided by Heroes of Might and Magic 2 alone is staggering, and the series to come has improvements like but not limited to: two additional army types, Marketplaces for acquiring obscure resources, dynamic resources that match nearby mines to your army type, objective-based games, Hero skills, and more. The games also made a larger effort to fix some nasty tricks and all in all balance. In the end, Heroes 1 has little to fall back on but its simplicity and charm (which both have their benefits, but still) in comparison to the games that followed.
But I say buy it anyway. The game’s not as good compared to its brothers, but that’s like comparing a gem to a slightly shiner gem. It’s still a fantastic game. It’s still multiplayer capable. It’s out now, and except for Heroes V and maybe if you’re lucky enough to find a copy in your local store, its brothers simply aren’t. And lastly, if you buy it now, you’ll send the point to Ubisoft that you want the rest. And you do: those shiny gems would look really nice next to this other one…
I absolutely love the HOMM series...but I have to say that unless you are buying this game out of historical interest in the development of this series, hold off for HOMM2. This game was a huge advance over the original King's Bounty, but it was with HOMM2 that it all came together in a game that will be playable and fun decades from now.... full review
This installment is tedious in comparison and might scare newcomers away...plus, $9.99 is really too much.
I'll happily pay that for the later games in the series, but not this one.
Blackdrazon)
pmanhart)