Yes I played this game, and I may have at the time completed a selection of missions on there. But that's about it. To me, this game was bloody hard at the age of eight and I would have rather played Pokemon Red any day! But people much older and wiser than myself call this the holy land of turn based "non 4X strategy games" of them all. A game which, if you would refer to yourself as a gamer you should have played and completed 100% and own all the expansion packs and have a tattoo of the Game cover on your ass cheeks.
Me... I'll be honest... I think there are much better "Heroes" games out there although the amount of time I put into this game, as I grew older I had a greater and greater appreciation of this game and (as some of you may know) this game is one of my top 10 games of all time! And in this belated review of The Heroes of Might and Magic Franchise I will go through, all the different Heroes Games that I've had the joy to have played! Including:
Heroes of Might and Magic 3
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic
Heroes of Might and Magic 5 ( + all expansions )
and Heroes of Might and Magic 6 ( + all current expansions at the date of July 2013 )
Now, I can hear you reader, shouting out "Bat Thesp Wat bout all da ovar Heroes Games Y aint U doin dem?!" Well, grammatically challenged reader, I'm only doing the games that I have actually played. Right by the side of me I have Might and Magic 8 Day of The Destroyer but in all the five years I've had the game, I've never been able to get it to work on something that isn't a Windows 95! And it's been so long since I've played that game, I would do it an injustice to do a review on it, with my very very limited knowledge! I'm missing a lot of games from my list of the franchise, but I just don't have a clue about them, so I'll miss them out... sorry!
But anyway, with out further ado! Let's get to the review!
(normally I'd put a Spoiler Warning but well... I'll get to that.)
Chapter 1 - Looky Looky
How do I start? Really, how? The only way I really know how is to say how this game looks into comparison to other games.. but ... THIS GAME CAME OUT IN 1999. You know what else came out in 1999?! The original Silent Hill, Pokemon Snap, Even Sonic Adventure, the game that just missed out on being in my Top 10... All of them, 3D games. Heroes 3? 2D. I mean... Look!
That's the battle screen! I would have put the over world map in there too, however let's be honest, the battle screen looks better as an example of the games graphical fidelity.
The defence I think of to describe Heroes 3's look is that it's nostalgic or it's "old school"... You're telling me that a game that came out the same year as Star Wars X-wing Alliance is "more" nostalgic looking? No sorry. The graphics in this game, look dated even for it's age. This game looks is if it was made in 1995 (the year that Mortal Kombat 3 came out) Ironically that's when the first Heroes of Might and Magic came out!
The sound is alright considering, it's much better than how it looks (in my opinion) however the same music will be used, again, and again, and again, and again and again! So you best really, really like the music! Your by your tenth hour you'll just want to play some different music over the top! There's only voice acting in opening cinematic for the game and each campaign, which has it's moments but it's nothing fantastic or memorable. I only know "I think of my beloved Roland and my son Nikolai" because of the cut-scene.
Looky Looky - Conclusion, It's functional for what it is, however it doesn't have much of an excuse considering what other games look and sound like in the time of it's release and even before it. Saying "it's okay because it's nostalgic" Doesn't cut it when you don't say the same for games like Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver which came out before it and look better.
Chapter 2 - Clicky Clicky
The game focuses around your Heroes, the leaders of your army who you control directly on the over world map. They can be from may different factions such as a Demonic Faction focused around Christian Demonic entities such as Cerberus and the Devil, A faction of Orc barbarians, a Jungle focused faction which uses creatures like Hydras, gnolls and lizard men, and an array of many others. Most of these play quite differently, like the Undead who summon units after a victorious round of combat and who can turn captured enemy units into skeleton warriors. However some like the "not quite elven, but elven" Rampart faction who's only special effect is that their units are slightly faster than others.
The game is split into two parts, the first being the over world map.
Here you manage your resources, scout the map find locations in which to explore, such as Naga banks, where you must defeat the guard in order to gain artefacts which your Hero can use or Leprechauns you can find dancing in the middle of a battle field who can give you extra luck in your next battle. The addition to an dungeon plain, where you can travel underground as well as over ground, is a fun addition allowing for strategical map control on certain maps.
In this overworld you can also travel to the different cities and castles that you own, in order to build faction specific buildings, miscellaneous buildings such as markets and taverns to hire heroes for your faction and buildings that allow for the training of different units in your army for gold.
Speaking of gold their are seven resources in this game which you must collect in order to build your epic cities and armies. (From Right to left) these include, Wood (for building) Mercury for building and training certain units) Stone (for building), Sulphur (for building certain high tech buildings and training certain units) Crystals (for building high tech buildings and training epic creatures) Gems (for building High tech buildings and training units) and gold, used in pretty much in everything you do, from buying things to training units. You can ether find these resources scattered around the ground, retrieve them after defeating certain buildings on the map or you can generate them once per day via buildings that can be captured by your... or your enemies.
Speaking of days there's the nifty little feature of the calender which represents each turn made during the game. Each turn represents a day, every week there's a certain event; like a random creature being able to train faster on a certain week and being able to find easily on the map and even a week where every unit that dies in combat is turned into wood... random, but a nice touch! Weeks are incredibly important for a number of reasons. For one, you can only train a set number of units at the beginning of each week, meaning that you have to make sure that your spending your time wisely with the numbers you have, After every week creatures on the map get more powerful, meaning that if you just spend your entire time training units, you'll have your ass handed to you later down the line. This combination means that turtle play pretty much grants only defeat! You're forced to be constantly on the move and spreading your influence. Which is a very good thing indeed.
Now... Heroes... they're a part of of The HEROES of Might and Magic, right?! YES, yes they are. Hugely in fact. Your hero levels up after battles and after finding certain objects on the map. This confers different passive abilities such as units under the heroes command having higher Defence of Moral. The hero can also learn spells that they can use in combat, such as lightning bolts, giant flame walls stopping units from moving in certain areas and even summoning creatures to aid you in the conflict. Not only this but the hero can find loot on their quest and equip them on certain parts of their bodies. Whilst these don't confer any aesthetic upgrades, these can further increase your passives in certain interesting ways. Such as making your units immune to damage inflicted by tier one units such as Skeletons or Imps.
All this over-world gameplay ultimately leads to their battles. The glorious battles. These are as turn based as you get. Each army deploys on each side of the battle field represented in stacks. If you refer to the picture in the Looky Looky section that each of those units would have a number underneath them representing how many units are in the stack. Example being that there are 5 angels represented by a single angel in the stack. As damage is dealt to the stack when a significant amount of it has been dealt a unit will die and the stack will die after all the units in it have been slaughtered. Your units have different stacks and abilities depending on their tier (level) and whether or not they're an upgraded form. Example from Angel to Arch Angel, Arch Angels having the ability to resurrect fallen comrades in battle. Once per turn your hero can cast a beneficial spell in order to help the conflict. Furthermore when attacking a city there will be a siege battle where the invader must deal with defences.
I'm two minds about Heroes 3's gameplay... Firstly, it's fun, their no denying that and it's very compelling with an insane amount of depth and strategy in there. This works a bit both ways due to there not being a detailed tutorial of any kind in this game, instead you're forced to learn as you play, which may be appealing to some people. The second thing is that... well... Due to this teaching yourself style, there's no way of telling that what you're doing is actually any good until the moments comes when you'll ether lose your hero or you wont.
The only description you get of an enemy before you enter combat is a very, very, very rough explanation of how many units are in each stack like "lots" or "a throng" and no explanation of whether or not it would be suicide to attack them. Also the game isn't afraid to dick you over at any time it chooses. Think you're doing well? well surprise here's an enemy hero who is better than you in every way... and he's now attacking you with not a moments notice! Didn't expect this? Well you've lost, gg. This might be interesting for gamers who really long for a challenge, however for me this isn't the case, I like to have details of what I will do when I press the button, rather than just hoping for the best due to my lack of knowledge of the mechanics. Only due to my knowledge of the game since I was an eight year old trying to desperately figure out what the hell was going on did I manage to get some what far in the game... It did take me two years of trail and error though.
Clicky Clicky - Conclusion: Enjoyable and very in-depth, huge time synch in order to be able to be any good at it. Requires a lot of trail and error to play well.
Chapter 3 - Fluffy Fluffy
Without looking online, tell me the story. Can't do it? That's because it's SO DIFFICULT TO FOLLOW. It's drip fed to your very very slowly and very lightly and the beginning of each campaign. The ending is so, so, so, so, so unexpected and so insanely bizarre that it's like taking a trip through the "plot twist forest" with M Night Shyamalan after spending an entire night injecting pure poppy seeds into your blood stream... It's ... weird. It takes off and returns, and sidetracks itself so often that it's, for me, almost impossible to follow, even summaries of the story cut out about 50% of it cause it's so unnecessary. The setting is very nondescript (unless you've played previous games, which it assumes you've done so) to the point where it just turns into a standard stereotypical fantasy setting that doesn't do much to stand out of the crowd with anything other than it's kinda cool looking factions.
I thought of a fun thing to do when a certain Chapter is so particularly bad and all over the place to make it stand out... and I made it ...
Congrats Heroes of Might and Magic 3... You get... THE MOLYN-AWARD! an award that can only be matched, by the quality of Fable 3.
Fuffy Fluffy - Conclusion - Awful, un-followable, bog standard, and with some very odd plot twists that don't make sense. Just.. BAD!
Chapter 4 - Yay or Nay
It's controversial I know. I know for a fact that people will disagree with me, And I know that some of you will take a torch to me at the earliest convenience. But... I don't think the game play carries it enough for me. Don't get me wrong, the game play (easily the best part) is fantastic, while having a learning curve as steep as a vertical drop! And the game as a turn based strategy game is a classic. However it every other aspect, this game is ether just bog standard or bad. For me, I like a reason to play a game other than just playing it. The gameplay whilst being fantastic has HUGE problems and has aged very poorly in my honest opinion, as has the game.
My honest opinion unless you REALLY like turn based strategy games I wouldn't bother, IF your ether a fan of the later Heroes of Might and Magic games or a huge fan of turn based strategy games, then it's worth picking up if you wanna play something from back in the day. And for $10 for the complete edition (with a bunch of expansions) It's hardly going to brake the bank.
Well, that's been my belated review of Heroes of Might and Magic 3, be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments bellow, maybe even try to prove me wrong? Would be nice to discuss it further.
Before I leave you, fine reader, I would just like to take the opportunity to promote a Facebook Page via the name of DGuy Photography (https://www.facebook.com/DGuyPhotography). FOr readers living in the UK, Mr. Guy is able to work for you at a very modest cost if you require a photographer. For those living outside the UK or for those who have no need for a skilled Photographer, his Photographic art is something to admire. So I urge you to go and check it out!
Until next time, My name's been ThespianHunter, I've got an endless sack equipped right now! And I'll catch you next time!
(Next time, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic)
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