Fheroes2 project is a recreation of Heroes of Might and Magic II game engine. This open-source multi-platform project written with C++ from a scratch is aimed to fully replicate the original game with meaningful changes for gameplay, graphics and logic (including support for high-resolution graphics, improved AI, numerous fixes and UI improvements), bringing a new life to one of the most anticipated turn-based strategies.
The project is in active phase of development and has new releases each month!
Due to the fact it is just an engine, you still need to own the licensed copy of the original HoMM2 game to run fheroes2, as it doesn't contain any game data.

Predecessor project was dead for many years till it was picked up by the new development team. After about 3+ years of intense development on github platform the fheroes2 project reached 1.0.5 stage with a long list of delightful changes, which you can find at our main project page .

Currently, fheroes2 is considered to be a full faithful remake with high resolution support, improved AI, numerous UI fixes and improvements. Fheroes2 supports Windows, Mac, Linux, PS Vita, Nintendo Switch and Android.
This project aims to be the best way to play HoMM2 nowadays and we hope all true fans will enjoy it!

Although 1.0 version has been achieved, the project will be continued with an expansion development, where the team using open source code of fheroes2 project wants to add some new relevant features bringing back to life this strategy and expand the game experience of true Heroes fans.
Moreover, fheroes2 team is going to improve gaming experience by expanding the project further according to the project roadmap page .

Expansion milestone is still missing good pixel-art artists and sound designers, so any help to the project is appreciated on its way to become an ultimate Heroes game.

Also you can join the development team of our project to prove your C++ skills and help us finish it sooner!

The latest version of the game .

Installation guide for all supported platforms.

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fheroes2 project official discord chat .

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Dear supporters of fheroes2 project!

Here comes a new version of fheroes2 project - 1.0.5!
As usual the team made many changes since the last release and we are excited to share details with you.

Let's start from the Editor relates changes. The team made internal source code restructure to allow to add new artifacts to the game. This change is invisible to players but essential to move forward with the Editor. Additionally, the team has started creating the Editor's UI. There are many changes to be done but we are moving forward. As highlighted earlier the Editor is going to be a part of the same application.

We reduced CPU usage for rendering and sound playback during battles. This helps with performance on low-end devices and also prolongs battery life on portable devices.

The team made significant changes for many UI elements in the game. For example, we added a blinking cursor for text input positioning, added missing shadows for Virtual Keyboard buttons, expanded Evil interface for windows which do not have this feature in the original game and many more. These are tiny changes which in general make the game experience even better.

AI in this release got a huge boost in logic. We fixed multiple issues related to creature upgrades and hiring for AI heroes, make AI heroes to visit castles in advance (just before the first day of week), fixed cases when AI heroes did not meet each other in the middle of a turn and also enhanced logic for heroes to defend castles and attack enemy's castles.

Besides these changes the team updated translations for many languages, fixed issues with several Android devices and fixed more than 30 bugs since 1.0.4 release.

We hope that you enjoy the updated version of the engine and thank you so much for supporting this project and the team!

Thanks for letting us know about fheroes2, amazing project. I used to play Heroes of Might and Magic II with DOSBox, but fheroes2 is just much better. Good luck with further development :)

We are introducing the latest version of the fheroes2 engine - 1.0.6 with many changes done by the team in the last month!

This release brings an updated version of the Adventure Map AI. AI heroes are more accurate in terms of analyzing threats for castles and defending them, they don't visit useless objects and have better estimation of a possible battle outcome when attacking enemies.

However, since the AI has been significantly improved in the last months such changes affect campaign gameplay making it very hard for some players to complete. Therefore, the team added an option to lower the campaign difficulty during playthrough. But remember that changing the difficulty affects the final score of the campaign.

In this release the team polished several tiny issues with original images, sped up loading the game's resources and also improved rendering speed which subsequently reduced CPU usage, leading to lower battery usage on portable devices.

Speaking of UI, the team continues to work on the new Editor. It is still in progress, but we are happy to share more in the future. In the upcoming months, the main focus of the team will be the Editor to bring it to a functional state and make it open for all players.

Besides fixing more than 20 bugs from the last release the team updated several language translations and expanded the list of UI elements available for translation.

We hope that you like this update. Thank you so much for your continued support!

Installation guide.

Dear players of Heroes of Might and Magic II and fans of the fheroes2 project!

A month of work has passed and our team is presenting the newest version of fheroes2 engine - 1.0.7! As usual, we are going to cover the most interesting changes in this release.

First of all, the AI got a huge boost in this update. Now AI heroes know how to use Summon Boat spell.
The team fixed multiple places with pathfinding logic, decisions during battles and also estimation of threats from enemy heroes and castles. AI heroes are going to be more practical towards their castles and when to attack enemy castles.

The team is expanding the translation functionality of the engine, allowing more and more UI elements to be translatable. This is not trivial as the engine needs to generate these UI elements from scratch for all languages. Fortunately, we can make it happen.
Speaking of UI changes we also fixed the rendering of many windows. For instance, Battle Only dialog has properly rendered item lists where you can even right-click on items.

Since touchscreen device owners, in particular Android devices, are limited to device capabilities the team expanded Android Toolset application to export and import save files. This helps players to transfer files between multiple devices.

The work on the Editor continues and in the past month we added UI elements for different Brush types and now it is possible to draw terrains. As of now, the Editor is only for developers as it is not ready to be used but we are happily sharing news about the progress.

This release also brings a lot of translation updates, and tweaks in animation in battles and more than 40 bugs have been fixed since the last release.

Fheroes2 Team appreciates the support of the project and also big thanks for everyone making this happen!

Thank you for this! I remember I tried the mod a long time ago and it was unplayable back then. The new version is enjoyable for many reasons. The best part of it are fast battles and the new AI. New music is a nice change for a long time PoL player as well.

I played a few Broken Alliance games and lost as a blue wizard and a yellow barbarian, on Impossible ofc ;) But as a green Warlock it was as easy as it always is. I managed to complete it in 31 days. About a week longer than in the classic game, both without dimension door in the central town. (as with it you can take almost another week off, if things on the map go your way) It was a lot of fun adjusting to the new AI, which makes life more difficult for your dragons and in general :)

Good luck for the future with the project, I hope you will manage to advertise the game among younger gamers and bring some new players in somehow, as HoMM2 is the best game in the franchise. I wish you also manage to improve AI even more. Maybe I should copy other maps and play them as well..

PS
Have you modified the way castle turrets work? I remember in the base game, turrets would generally do around 30>15>15 dmg to weak lvl1 units like halflings early game. Here I sieged the yellow knight's castle as a wizard at the end of week 1, and my computer opponent not only had 3 turrets already built, but they also did 60>30>30 dmg to my halflings, killing 40 of them in turn one, so even though I had a lucky golden bow, I still had no chance of winning the fight. It was a close battle though, as I chose the Necromancer hero for the haste spell and got that first shot anyway. If only I had got that cold ray or lightning bolt in the second circle shrine on the way ;)

So far, it's unplayable in it's current state. It won't run at all in Linux Mint.

Disappointing, since WINE has become such garbage that HOMM2 no longer works in it, or anything else for that matter.

fheroes2 could be compiled individually for every Linux-based OS. Castle turrets damage depends on the number of buildings constructed in the castle. You can check the ~damage while clicking with right mouse button over the castle.

Dear players of Heroes of Might and Magic 2 and fans of the fheroes2 project!

Today we are releasing a fresh version of the fheroes2 engine - 1.0.8 release.
The past month the team has done a lot of things and we are pleased to share details about our work.

The most noticeable change every player will notice, is the enhanced look of the Save/Load file window. This window was expanded to support much longer filenames and not to be so compressed in size.

The AI in this release became smarter during battles and will kite their shooters if necessary instead of waiting to get hit. On the other hand, on lower difficulties the AI's use of "Dimension door" spell has been given restrictions, making these modes easier.

The team spent a lot of time improving multiple aspects of the UI, including expanding existing translations, adding missing letters in fonts, and making more elements translatable. One of the examples of this work is translated vertical buttons.

The work on the Editor continues. In this release, we completed terrain connections logic to make smooth transitions between terrain types.
An interesting fact is that the team is working on the translation part for the Editor in parallel. At the time when we make it accessible to the public, you will be able to use the Editor in a language of your choice.

Besides these major changes, this release contains a lot of small changes to polish the game engine and make the game play even better. Adding High Score for multiplayer game, fixing rendering issues in the Kingdom Overview dialog, speeding up file loading and many more such things are included in this release. All major translations have been updated bringing most of them to 100% coverage.

More than 50 bugs were fixed for this release.

We hope that you will enjoy playing the fheroes2 game engine.
Thank you so much for your support!

Fantastic stuff, thank you for the team's dedicated work.

Dear supporters of the fheroes2 project!

As usual, after a month of hard work, we are releasing a new version of the fheroes2 engine - 1.0.9 release, filled with updates, fixes and new features!

Based on feedback from the players we made the AI easier on low difficulties. This makes the game more accessible for more players and at the same time keeps the challenge for those who want on higher difficulties. The AI also got a boost in its battle logic and is smarter on the Adventure Map.

The team reworked the game settings on the Adventure Map. This allows players to change game resolution or language without exiting to the Main Menu. This is more convenient.

Moreover, the Hot Keys dialog was upgraded as well and now it is easy to see all button mappings.

Touch devices have an important update: during battles, players have to confirm actions. The first touch event just places the cursor at the touch point, displaying information about the action being performed. The second touch event is confirmatory and performs the corresponding action if and only if this action corresponds exactly to the action of the first touch.

We reworked the "Continue movement" button's logic on the Adventure Map. A long press on this button cancels any created path for a hero. If a hero without a planned path stands on an object, then pressing this button will interact with that object.

The work on the Editor continues and is gaining pace. During the past month, the team has been able to implement roads, streams, monsters and heroes placement in the Editor. There are more things to do before making the Editor public.

Besides the major changes, the team updated several translations, fixed multiple issues in the battle's logic and rendering, and closed more than 40 issues since the last release.

Thank you so much for your valuable support and we hope you will enjoy the game!

Installation guide.

Dear supporters of the fheroes2 project and Heroes of Might and Magic 2 players!

After a month of tedious work, we are presenting a new version of the fheroes2 engine - 1.0.10. As always today's release is full of compelling features and code changes.

The editor being the highest priority at the moment is evolving. Our team added an enhanced erase tool, the ability to put artifacts and treasures on the adventure map and also did important groundwork towards expanding the game with new future heroes. The current state of the editor is still not ready to be open to the public, but this is planned to be changed in the very near future.

We made a lot of changes in relation to rendering and the overall UI of the engine in this release. A lot of small rendering issues were fixed, several dialogs were reworked and we were able to speed up graphics-related code as well. Speaking of UI, the team added a new hero action icon to separate situations, when a hero stands on an action object and when he needs to travel to another place.

Additionally, we updated the town portal dialog to make it resizable in relation to game resolution and the number of available towns.

The AI in this release received a huge boost in its logic: now it can use marketplace to speed up the castle’s development. Important to note, that the AI does not cheat and uses the same exchange rate as human players. The team improved the AI decision-making logic during battles regarding pathfinding and spell evaluation. This makes AI more competitive on higher difficulties.

As in every release before the team updated multiple language translations and fixed dozens of small UI and logic issues, totaling more than 30 issues being closed.

An important update: save files that are created by the engine older than 1.0.5 are not supported anymore. This is done to proceed with the Editor development by removing a lot of "hacks" for old saves. If you have save files older than 1.0.5 and want to play them, use 1.0.9 version to open and save these files. The engine will resave files in 1.0.9 format.

Thank you so much for your valuable and continuous support of the project and we hope you will enjoy the game.

Dear fheroes2 project supporters and Heroes of Might and Magic II fans!

The team is pleased to present the new version of the fheroes2 engine - 1.0.11 after a month of hard work. As in any other release, we made many changes and are happy to share the news with you.

The "Battle Only" mode has undergone a substantial revamp, boasting an improved user interface and a newfound capability to save the state of selections within the dialog. These enhancements promise a more immersive and user-friendly experience for players engaging in battle-centric gameplay.

Continuing our commitment to refining the gaming experience, the AI has received a notable upgrade. The AI makes better decisions during battles while defending its troops.

The work on the Editor continues. The team added a base file format for future maps, which will incorporate a greater number of features compared to the original map format.

Additionally, the Editor has been expanded with Castle and Town placement logic, along with the inclusion of Ocean objects.

The majority of the work focused on modifying the code for the Editor and preparing the game to support the upcoming map format.

In this release, the team also polished multiple places in the UI, such as difficulty selection in campaigns, Tree of Knowledge quick info dialog, making AI heroes' animations depend on their speed, and many more.

Overall, more than 30 issues have been fixed in this release, and many translations have been updated.

Thank you so much for your invaluable support, and we hope you will enjoy this release!

Once again, thank you for all the work you have done on this mod. It has made me replay some favourite maps, like Seven Lakes, Beltway and Broken Alliance several times, with lots of newly found enjoyment. It is still mostly easy to win on Impossible, but it is a different experience and the new AI is not as predictable as the classic one.

I would have many compliments and criticisms, mostly minor, but I know it is still a work in progress. Yet there is one change that you have implemented, which is a huge negative imo, with no benefits at all. It is the obelisk map. In classic Heroes 2, you would sometimes get lucky and see the location of the Ultimate Artefact with around 80% of obelisks uncovered. Sometimes more, but this random element made discovering new obelisks an exciting race. It was worth it to visit every one, maybe risk something for it. With the new system you implemented, I feel it is not worth my time to visit obelisks at all, as the location of the UA will only be revealed after visiting ALL the obelisks. Which depending on the map might happen after you have already won. What's the point then? The new system also keeps a rectangle in the middle area for as long as possible, which makes blind search basically impossible. Blind searching for the UA is not something you can usually afford on high difficulties, as there is usually a better way to use a hero, but it was an exciting option to have.

In the original game, the obelisks mechanic added an important layer that influenced decision making - do I keep risking fighting random enemies for that 1 or 2 more obelisks which might reveal the location of the UA and make the losses of my army worthwhile, or do I focus on fighting computer opponents as a risk free alternative. An important decision that is now completely removed from the game with the way obelisks work. Before it was sometimes possible to get the UA in late mid game at the cost of not gaining other benefits. Now you can only get the UA when the game is basically over already which makes it worthless.

To sum up - with the new obelisk map mechanic you removed 2 slightly randomized elements that made searching for the UA exciting, and replaced it with a system that discourages exploration and the race for the UA, as the player knows it gives you absolutely nothing until you visit all the obelisks. (which on certain maps is impossible until the game is over)

I could have worded it better, but I hope my description makes sense - this is the only change you have made to the game which I see as purely negative and something that makes the game less instead of more enjoyable.

Hi, @ttakitam !

Thanks for your feedback!
Once again, fheroes2 is not a mod, but a game engine reimplementation. These are two completely different things. :)

Speaking about searching for the UA. I could hardly remember people digging it out with a fully revealed cross on the map. Players are always digging UA based only on approximate location in the central part of the puzzle map. I can tell even more: on the latest stream of AbsoluteZero on youtube he managed to find the location and dig the UA out after revealing just 3 pieces of the puzzle map. Playing on impossible mode without a save/load abuse.
Revealed cross on the map before you visit the last few obelisks appears to make it much easier to dig the UA out. I personally cannot tell it's exciting to see the cross too early. I think it's quite fair not to allow player to dig on early game stages with 100% revealed location.