Platform: PC (Steam Early Access)
Developer: Unfrozen
Publisher: Hooded Horse
In my nearly 40 years of gaming, if I had to pick a top 10 all-time list, Heroes of Might and Magic 3 (1999) would be among the top half, easily. The HoMM series began as a tactical spinoff of the Might and Magic RPGs in the mid 90s, but quickly became a compelling series on its own. Over hundreds of hours I led armies of fantastical creatures, managed my resources, explored colorful maps, strengthened my heroes, and enjoyed tactical turn-based combat.
The series had a great run from Heroes 2 to 5 through the mid 2000s, but fell off with the last two entries. Over a decade since the last Heroes game, I’ve been content with other tactical strategy series that draw inspiration from HoMM, including Age of Wonders and Songs of Conquest. I never imagined I’d see another official game in the series that could come close to the pinnacle of Heroes 3.
Then, I played Olden Era.
Read on for our Early Access Review of Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era!
HoMM Is Where the Heart Is
Olden Era, like any proper Heroes game, is a dense experience, with layers of strategy, RPG hero progression, randomized maps, and careful knowledge of creature abilities. For this Early Access review, I tinkered with a variety of game modes, setups, and factions.
Olden Era features five main ways to play: Arena, Classic, Single Hero, Scenarios, and Challenges. Actually, there’s a sixth mode as well: a full singleplayer campaign, though Early Access only includes the first act so far (about half a dozen missions).
The campaign features a lot more dialogue and narrative than I’m used to in these games, though it’s certainly not unwelcome. The story is set centuries before the original series, in the original world of Enroth (don’t get me started on Might and Magic lore), with the invasion of an awesome new faction: the infernal body-snatching insects known as the Hive.
Scenarios are similar to campaign missions, presenting story-heavy single player maps as one-off adventures. I enjoyed the Fun and Graves scenario, where a catty, former noblewoman-turned-sadistic-necromancer delights in raising an undead army out of her former people, culminating in an epic fight when the heroic cavalry arrives.
Classic is the familiar HoMM experience, where players field up to eight heroes, manage their castle (or castles as they acquire more), explore the map, and battle neutral monsters, and each other. If this were the only mode available, I would be mostly satisfied.
Arena mode eschews the entire strategic map layer for a single battle, with players choosing their hero, skills, spells, artifacts, and creatures from a randomized list. It’s an interesting way to try different builds and army compositions, or just focus purely on the satisfying tactical combat with a chaotic mix of units.
Single Hero presents a new concept to me, taking the Classic experience but banning the hiring of additional heroes. So much of the HoMM gameplay revolves around using multiple heroes to scout, collect resources, and ferry troops that I was initially taken aback. But it’s an intriguing premise as I was forced to prioritize which sites to visit, carefully build my hero’s skills and army, and ruthlessly manage my time and location.
Finally, there are Challenge missions, which act more like advanced tutorials. The initial tutorial does a good job highlighting the core tenets of the game, while Challenges present specific strategies that are part of the core building blocks for veteran players, but helpful to impart to newcomers, such as hero chaining, terrain penalties, and the importance of counterstrikes and retaliation.
On top of that, maps can have different win conditions other than wiping out the enemy forces, including holding a specific castle, or defeating an enemy hero in a single, epic battle.
There’s an incredible amount of content, though at this early stage, the game is almost entirely limited to random maps, presented as templates.
Random maps were a major draw in the first expansion to Heroes 3, infinitely expanding the game’s replayability. But, I actually prefer hand-crafted maps, which are currently only present in the more story-heavy Challenges, Scenarios, and Campaign. missions. Random maps are fine, and seeing the templates is useful for seeing their overall structure, but the results are often chaotic and messy.
Developer Unfrozen also graciously released the Map Editor. Though it’s in early beta phases, the editor could easily leave the map-making up to the passionate community.
Golden Era
A large part of what makes the Heroes games memorable is their visual and audio presentation. Heroes 2 featured an incredible operatic soundtrack and bright, cartoonish sprites. Heroes 3 found a perfect middle ground between animation and realism, and another timeless soundtrack.
I’m pleased to report that Olden Era continues this trend, with a great art style that evokes all the nostalgia of Heroes 3 without copying too closely. I love hearing the pumping combat music, and unique tracks for each terrain and faction castle.
Speaking of the castle screens — yes, yes, yes! Absolutely gorgeous. The dynamic flying camera always puts a smile on my face. And I appreciate the easy-to-click buttons on the side for all the important tasks, such as building, recruiting, and upgrading creatures.
Likewise, the hero screen and army management has all the little tricks and improvements I would come to expect from a modern Heroes game, such as quickly splitting units into one stacks to absorb hits. I also love how each battle on the map is given a 5-star (er, skull) difficulty rating relative to your army. The entire interface is a major win.
Olden Era was clearly designed by veteran players who know exactly what fans want from the series. At the same time, Unfrozen adds some interesting new features, such as subskills, faction laws, long reach units, focus points, and more. All of these new additions improve and enhance the gameplay experience, to say nothing of the intricate effort at balancing all the skills, spells, faction units, and heroes.
My biggest complaint right now in Early Access is just how darn effective and brutally difficult the AI can be. My skills have admittedly waned over the years, and playing Olden Era on Hard difficulty (which is more like standard for the AI) has been a humbling experience, to say the least.
Well, that and the lack of official team play. Early Access does have online multiplayer, but the only multiplayer I’m interested in is cooperative. Official support for teams is still on the way, as is the full roadmap for Early Access.
I’ve already dropped over a dozen hours into Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era over the last week, and as a working parent, that’s just absurd. It’s a testament to how well this new entry has captured my attention, and expertly revitalized one of my favorite all-time gaming series.
And it’s only going to get better from here.
Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era is currently available via Steam Early Access.
