Heroes of Might and Magic is finally back, and I couldn’t be happier. This is one of my favourite franchises of all – I even have the entire, expanded board game adaptation of Heroes of Might and Magic 3 thanks to a very generous brother who bought the whole damn thing for me. The port of Heroes of Might and Magic 2 to Game Boy is one of my most played games of all time – I still regularly load it up on my emulator consoles. People like me have suffered for a long time with Ubisoft possessing the Heroes of Might and Magic property and having no idea what to do with it.
Now it’s free of Ubisoft and, shock horror, when a group of people work on a game series they love for reasons other than “make the executive team enough money to buy more yachts”, the game actually delivers what fans like to see.
To be clear, this game is an Early Access game, and it is being released on the earlier end of the “from Minimum Viable Product” to “full and final 1.0 release” spectrum. However, it’s very clear that the developers went back to Heroes of Might and Magic 3 as the main source of inspiration, and it would take some kind of monumental screw-up to ruin the yellow brick road they’re currently skipping down.
In short, you’re doing all the things you do in a Heroes of Might and Magic game. You’re guiding your heroes around maps that are teeming with both enemy factions and wandering monsters, resource generators, artifacts, traps and magic. At the same time, you’re carefully building up your cities so that they can produce ever-more powerful units to add to your heroes’ armies. Then, when you run into a hostile faction hero or monster horde, you do battle with them in turn-based combat.
Each faction has its own units to recruit, and different factions have different strengths and weaknesses. The heroes, likewise, have different base statistics according to their class, and while you have a lot of control over how they level up, a spellcaster is always going to have the edge there, while the melee brute will always prefer the direct approach to warfare. In comparison to the earlier Heroes of Might and Magic, the tactical differences between these factions feel greater, and the game actively encourages you to specialise in one faction and character type, and I do like that. It forces you to approach each game differently, depending on which enemies you come across.
Being honest here, I’ve only just started to scratch the surface of the tactical depth in Olden Era, and that’s after some intense play over 30-odd hours. On top of that, I wouldn’t be surprised if the developers plan to deepen the experience further as it rolls towards full release. So, where much of the game feels like a love letter to the retro end of the Might and Magic property, the depth is quite modern, and where those early games were a glorified case of “the player who builds the most quickly and efficiently will win,” Olden Era allows for weaker forces on paper to tactically manoeuver themselves into a winning position.
The other thing that Olden Era gets so right is the art. Army units look amazing when arrayed on the battlefield, and each faction looks suitably glistening, vile, intimidating or honourable based on the faction that you choose. Heroes of Might and Magic is at its best when it makes building up an army appealing, and taking these animated chess pieces to the battlefield is very appealing. The world maps are detailed, though perhaps a little too busy for the eyes (a problem that other modern “Might and Magic-likes” are also guilty of – see Song of Silence). The cities are absolutely gorgeous for glorified menus, though.
There are just a couple of areas where I’m concerned. One is that there’s yet another resource to manage in Olden Era, which other Heroes games haven’t really had. It’s called the “law” system, and as you complete objectives on the map, you’ll earn points that can be used to earn additional boosts for your armies, a little like a skill tree. Managing this ends up feeling like busywork for an upgrade system that doesn’t do enough to separate itself from the other upgrade systems that were already in the Heroes formula.
The other thing is petty, but… where on earth are the controller options? I know that once upon a time, strategy game developers chalked up the complexity of their games as an excuse not to allow people to play with a controller, but since then, we’ve had developers figure out how to make everything from Crusader Kings to Civilization, to Age of Empires 2 work on consoles. Even the Might and Magic clone, Song of Silence, got the console treatment. Olden Era is a turn-based strategy game, and the menus that power it are not all that complex. I do fully expect a console port to be announced down the track as the game closes on full release, but for now, that absence is annoying.
It has been a very long time since a game has been that compelling that I’ve lost track of time so much that I see the morning sun come through my window. I’m getting too old to manage that. Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era did that to me. Yes, it’s in Early Access and therefore feels like it’s limited compared to what the final game will be (though I’ve yet to have a crash or see a major bug), but the developers would have to do something catastrophic to ruin this, and I choose to have faith: This is going to be one of my favourite games of the decade.
