Heroes of Might and Magic®

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. 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 spent hours and hours playing this game! Great game and it takes me to times of my first Pentium and playing for hours and hours. Also great thing was few people could play at the same time. Personally I like second one, which by my opinion is the best part in serial. This game is good introduction to world of Heroes of M&M.

I vividly recall playing this awesome turn-based strategy game against two of my friends in the "Hot Seat" mode. Exploring, treasure-hunting, building and battling with a distinct board-game flavor. A very social and fun experience!

Back when i was little there was a game called kings bounty, but i never played that game cause i was 2. so my first encounter with New World computeing (and for the most part with video games at all) was ye ol' Heroes of Might and Magic. At the time i was just a 5 yearold learning how to press buttons on my computer, but being the natural born game nerd that i am, i soon grasped the basics of the game. At the time i was pretty satisfied with anything that made noises and moved, so i overlooked any and all of its flaws and enjoyed the game for its sheerh entertainment, much like i did with the likes of Starwars rebellion. But i am a man grown now (fire emblem refference... ha ha) and i took a fresh look at the game rather recently. Here is my take. So lets start with the good stuff. The game was pretty deep overall for a game at the time. It actualy has a plotline, for example, though im sure the vast majority will just ignore it. Basicly you are a prince of some far off land, and you go through a portal to escape being killed by your psychotic brother. It happens in royal families sometimes, your brother kills your father and brother and tries to kill you and stuff like that, its just tradition, at least in video games and fairy tales. Anyways you end up in some far off country where there is no supream ruler, but rather a conflict between 3 other waring factions, vieing for controll over the land. Being the noble prince you are, you slaughter everyone else and counquer the land for yourself. Unless of course you chose one of the other three factions. But then you will be at a loss as to how Ironfist (the prince) managed to conquer the land before Heroes of might and magic II came out. The game also has 4 rather unique, if not a little bland factions. But at the time im sure they were pretty distinct compared to normal standards. You have the Knight, which has a force of humans that are pretty well balanced, but cheap, plentyful and weak. with an added bonus of having peasents that kick but in large numbers and paladins that can double attack. The Barbarian, which is somewhat more powerful than humans but more expensive and not really all that special. But they have cyclopses though which is a novelty in itsself. Next up is the sorceress, which leads the fairy people. Sprites, evles and unicorns oh my! Their specialty is more in having fast units, double attacking super archers and their hero's spells, aswell as the interesting abillity to blind people with unicorns... ouch. Finaly we have the Warlock, which, if you can afford his units, is too inbalanced, i can't belive they let this slide, Dragons are imune to magic and insanely powerful. Their secondary unit, Hydras are more powerful than the humans ultimate unit! It cant double attack but it can attack multiple units! anyone who dares say that Warlocks are balanced should try takeing on a hord of dragons. You will die! The next good tidbit is the abillity to upgrade some of your units, which was pretty cool at the time. Seeing the feather in your swordsmans helmet change to blue was allways a cool effect. And watching dragons "fade to black" was allways an awsome feat. Cause then you knew, "I'm gonna win now" Cause yeah, dragons were unbalanced, but they are like a signature unit! The rest of the series they have allways been and allways should be the ultimate player controlled unit. I don't know if V has them or not, but i'm not playing that game at the moment, so who cares. So now to have a little fun pointing out the wrongs this game has done to me. One: The Ai is bloody cheap! The Ai knows how much of the map you have seen, and will hide just outside the fog of war and sneek into your castle if you turn your back to them. If you head off, they will suddenly sneek up on your castle while you are out. Another Ai bugger to pick is their tendency to line up heroes outside the castle, only to cast some overpowered spell on you and run away. This isnt just a Heroes one problem, this is like a heroes tradition. Every game has this, and its so damn cheap and cowardly. Two: The Campaign is rather uninspireing and bland. The game is more about just skirmishing and fighting, preferably with some human budies who arn't cheap, looking at your screen and hideing just outside your fog of war while you head off to war. But as a multiplayer game (which i have only rarely been able to appreciate) its pretty cool. Third: the game is not balanced, Heroes of might and magic III is balanced, but heroes I, or "A strategic quest" for those care for the prefix. Heroes one suffers from those overpowered dragons. Everyone wants to play as warlock, i wounder why. Yeah you can say, "you have to take him out early while he is weak" but on larger maps you may not even make it there on time, pluss you have sneaky ai heroes stealing your castle. Even in one on one, it can be hard to take a castle early on, you don't have enough forces, and by the time you do, the warlock allready has dragons! a good player knows how to build the dragon building early, or at leas hydras. Even a human rush(the pre-evolved form of the zerg rush) can't stop a good warlock player. But as you can see, I only really have 3 problems with the game, so overall this game is pretty good, and look at the awsomely quirky sprites! You just don't see that anymore, unless you play disgea, which rocks by the way. But my all time faivorate Heroes game is unfortunately a sequel, heroes of might and magic III. Now let the war between II and III fans begin anew! Have a battle on Heroes of might and magic one to settle the score once and for all! (use warlocks btw) Review by: Justin (other gamer) - an up and comming video game reviewer and critque