Heroes of Might and Magic

This is a /v/ related article, which we tolerate because it's relevant and/or popular on /tg/... or we just can't be bothered to delete it.

A turn-based strategy/RPG game that is currently published by UbiSoft and previously published by New World Computing and 3DO.

About the series itself

King's Bounty

Once upon a time, there was this game called King's Bounty (NO, NOT THAT MODERN KING'S BOUNTY, THE OTHER ONE THAT WAS MADE IN THE 90'S AND RUN ON MS-DOS) made by New World Computing in 1990 which had some awesome things that were unique for it back then. Namely, combining things like leading an army and typical RPG elements that made your Hero stronger (four whooping classes were available: Barbarian, Knight, Paladin and Sorceress) the more battles he and his soldiers managed to win. All of this packed into a non-linear game where you could explore a map and go from city to city, fighting enemy parties and quest-a-lot.

A Strategic Quest

The game was really sweet back then, so New World Computing decided to take it a step further. They made a game in 1995 that differed in certain aspects from King's Bounty. First they made cities manageable to the point where you could build structures and recruit creatures from there. Heroes were divided between two types: MIGHT (which were warriors and powerful leaders) and MAGIC (who were magic users that could zap people with destructive spells). Another was that said game was turn based when compared to King's Bounty. Apart of picking up various things, you also took over sites that produced resources for you to spend on building and recruitment. What's more important, you could control more than one Hero at a time, and recruit additional ones.

Thus Heroes of Might and Magic were born, and the series would be known as one of the most favourite games liked by many.

Heroes II

A year passed since and Heroes of Might and Magic: A Strategic Quest got, with the help of 3DO, itself a sequel in 1996 titled Heroes of Might and Magic II: The Succession Wars, which introduced new elements such as Talents that gave your Heroes new abilities as opposed to simple stat improvements presented in A Strategic Quest. Not to mention the element that would be implemented into every (except one) single Heroes game, and that would be the ability to upgrade buildings from which you recruited your soldiers in order to upgrade them into more powerful beings.

Yet another year passed and in 1997, Heroes II got a expansion pack called the Price of Loyalty, which was simply a campaign and scenario pack with extra stuff thrown in. In 1998 the game was re-released as Heroes of Might and Magic II: Gold and included both vanilla game and expansion pack. Still despite this, no game in the series would become as popular as the one that would appear in 1999...

THE GAME. THE LEGEND. (/v/ has a hardon for it, so do we)

Three years have passed since Heroes II, and after this another sequel appeared, in conjunction with the RPG Might and Magic 7 which takes place a few years after the game ended. (In a similar way, Might and Magic 6 happens a few years after Heroes II ends and Heroes III begins.)

Thus appeared Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Restoration of Erathia, and hit the store shelves with the power of a cyclonic torpedo. Not only eight cities were present in the game with two types of Heroes for each (one of MIGHT like the Knight or Barbarian, and one of MAGIC like Necromancer or Wizard), it also ran extremely fast on any PC and still had beautiful graphics. It took all the best elements from the two previous games, refurbished them and added things such as Undergrounds for exploration and places that would give out for free certain Talents such as Witch Huts and Learning Stones that would give free experience, as well as buildings that allowed to be interacted with like Academies or Hill Forts that respectfully could raise the MIGHT capabilities of a Hero and upgrade units without the need to upgrade structures in the cities.

Even today, TWO decades after, the game is regularly played and enjoyed by its old fans, and there is a whole Russian remake mod called Wake of the Gods...(but then those filthy commies are making a push for every fantasy strategy game in existence).Heroes III was a step up not only in graphics, but also in scale and generosity. Towns gave more income, more creatures, events and opportunities. Resources are much more plentiful, making the start of every game a beautiful adventure with meadows, glittering treasures, mysteries to unlock and beautiful adventures. I'm not crying, it's just dust in my eye.

Of course, the sequel brought signs of a future decay of the series, but we'll get to that: You see, Might and Magic 7 was planned to have the Dark Side Ending where the adventurers repair a Heavenly Forge (Star Trek replicator, yes, the whole series was officially in Star Trek universe, surprise!), and start conquering the world. A bunch of autistic screeching faggotrons threatened 3DO with death (yes, they literally did), and the company scrapped every reference to Ancients and technology from now on. Might and Magic 8 would only have ONE retarded reference. Ever since that day, we are looking for the responsible ones to kill for ruining an entire franchise.

The same year saw Armageddon's Blade, the first expansion to Heroes III, that added the ninth city, Conflux with its elementals along with the Planeswalkers and Elementalists. Apparently Good Ending of M&M7 happened, making the heroes fuck off to space and back to a space station, somehow leaving the Ancient's Gate to the stars and the world behind and forgetting to leave a bunch of Ancient Weapons for the human kingdom, the ungrateful faggots. The surviving demons were retconned into terrestrial elemental horrors and attempted another unholy crusade the turn the world into lava.

Enter new neutral creatures that some campaign exclusive Heroes could upgrade certain creatures into (like Elves into Sharpshooters, or Mages into Enchanters), or new artefacts and campaigns. Reactions were mixed, and disappointed, more to come. Elementalist towns are often banned from Multiplayer due to CHEESE grade units that can faceroll even the Necropolis.

2000 was the year where Shadows of Death, the second expansion to Heroes III, appeared. It didn't give anything new except for new artefacts and campaigns, though as a little grace had Sandro's tale for a treat (and his CHEEEEESE ability to create POWER LICHES from DEAD LITTLE GOBLINS WHAT THE FUCK). The same year was when Heroes III was re-release along with the expansions as Heroes of Might and Magic III: Complete, as well New World Computing and 3DO released Heroes Chronicles to attract a younger audience to the Heroes series. Chronicles was...how to say it...casual. It was in fact Heroes III: Light and Redundant Edition. A mockery to fans as custom scenarios and multiplayer was not included, not to mention that the level difficulties were low, but the number of bugs were high. Still, despite that the franchise prospered...until that happened.

Anyone who finished the campaign would know the Blade of Frost, and Armageddon's Blade would know the world would...

Dark Times Have Come

...destroy the world. Boom, Antagarich is gone because a sword hit another sword. Including the fleet of colony ships in Dragonsand somehow. To think someone would get the data crystals and get in the VARN Nacelle Ship... Anyway. Long story short, Angels open portals when the world starts to go boom and people escape to another world with magic.

Consumed by the success of Heroes III and its expansions, New World Computing and 3DO released Heroes of Might and Magic IV in 2002. Fans were happy because there was a new game, but when they did play...turned out that it was RADICAL. Radical in that the game had a massive overhaul of the Heroes development system (making your based Heroes evolve into one of the forty classes) and you could choose between two structures when you wanted to get a certain unit (thus no upgrading units), or making Heroes as units instead of spectators, removing Portals (seriously, what!?) and making sieges too easy. Not to mention a lot of other overhauls (like making some spells exclusive to each city) and a derpy pseudo isometric 3D combined with a pants-on-head retarded plot that phased out every reference to Ancients and killed off a lot of good characters. This sparked enormous RAGE in the hearts and minds of older fans. Though controversial, the game got two expansions in the following year (The Gathering Storm) and 2003 (Winds of War). Although the amount of changes were shots in the foot, some (like flaggable Wind/Watermills and Caravans) actually hit the jackpot. Although extremely changed, the gigantic hailstorm of flak was undeserved, as it actually is fun to play and once the dust settled, the campaigns are considered very good and engaging, though one creature warbands were the Cheese of undiscovered treasure grabs. Sadly, around the release of the fourth game, 3DO bankrupted hard, taking down with itself New World Computing. Everyone thought that the franchise was dead and that they would never again become the titular Heroes of Might and Magic...until three years later...

The franchise would get a fresh new setting named Ashan, sporting a hardon for dragons. And so, the Heroes of Might and Magic became the same, thousand year old elemantalist cookie cutter fantasy fiction FAGGOTRY, as if we needed another generic fantasy setting "belonging to" EVERY OTHER DEVIANTFAG CLAMING HE HAS BEEN WRITING A FANTASY FICTION SERIES SINCE HE WAS 12 FOR FUCK'S SAKE!!!

Ahem. Sorry.

Now the series is just another average fantasy fiction shit where dragon gods hump the world and stuff happens.

A New Hope

UbiSoft, today known widely (and sadly only) by people for their Assassin's Creed games, picked up the trademarks for the series and hired Nival Interactive (known at that time for their really awesome Heroes clone later turned King's Bounty clone smashed with Magic The Gathering series known as Etherlords or Blitzkrieg, Evil Islands and Rage of Mages series) to make a new Heroes game (despite that it was already in production by 3DO and NWC, but after the two bankrupted, Ubi gained the rights and modified it into a game for the current hardware). Thus in 2006, Heroes of Might and Magic V came out.

The fifth entry in the series was a return to what Heroes III took and polished when it combined the best of the first two games. Heroes V was simply a III in 3D with even more diversities between cities (five were playable) and Heroes (sadly each city now had one Hero type that a city had was both MIGHT and MAGIC with racial skills they could upgrade, but also with personal skills that made each Hero different from each other). Overall the game was very well received, but stuff that Heroes IV presented (like aforementioned Caravans and flaggable Mills) was thrown out.

The same year and 2007 gave us two expansions. Hammers of Fate and Tribes of The East. The first presented Dwarfs and their unique Rune Magic system that ate up resources, as well as a Random Map Generator (as opposed to the previous games that had Map Editors, Heroes V didn't have one). The second was a standalone game that didn't require the vanilla game and the previous expansion. It presented the Stronghold (Orks) as a playable city along with unique abilities that were resolved around Bloodlust, brought back Caravans from Heroes IV, and gave people things such as alternative upgrades for units.

The Bleak Future

With the arrival of Heroes VI and VII, the series is considered dead by own fanbase and managed to instantly alienate any sort of new players. While on gameplay side barely anything changed from previous two games, just running the game is an adventure all by itself due to buggy and clearly unfinished state, further botched by tons of DRM. In other words - the game is close to impossible to run, while the content is bland, unbalanced and simply boring with only exaggerated graphics with overly elaborate equipment for every unit. This is what happens when you let foreign scum "have a go" because they feel too enthusiastic about modifying your setting instead of making one themselves.

Gameplay

Armies

A Strategic Quest

Knight

• Peasant
• Archer
• Pikeman
• Swordsman
• Cavalry
• Paladin

Sorceress

• Sprite
• Dwarf
• Elf
• Druid
• Unicorn
• Phoenix

Barbarian

• Goblin
• Orc
• Wolf
• Ogre
• Troll
• Cyclops

Warlock

• Centaur
• Gargoyle
• Griffin
• Minotaur
• Hydra
• Dragon

Neutral

• Rogue
• Nomad
• Ghost
• Genie

Heroes 2

Knight

• Peasant
• Archer
• Ranger
• Pikeman
• Veteran Pikeman
• Swordsman
• Master Swordsman
• Cavalry
• Champion
• Crusader
• Paladin

Wizard

• Halfling
• Boar
• Iron Golem
• Steel Golem
• Roc
• Mage
• Archmage
• Giant
• Titan

Warlock

• Centaur
• Gargoyle
• Griffin
• Minotaur
• Minotaur King
• Hydra
• Green Dragon
• Red Dragon
• Black Dragon

Barbarian

• Goblin
• Orc
• Orc Chieftain
• Wolf
• Ogre
• Ogre Lord
• Troll
• War Troll
• Cyclops

Sorceress

• Sprite
• Dwarf
• Battle Dwarf
• Elf
• Grand Elf
• Druid
• Greater Druid
• Unicorn
• Phoenix

Necromancer

• Skeleton
• Zombie
• Mutant Zombie
• Mummy
• Royal Mummy
• Vampire
• Vampire Lord
• Lich
• Power Lich
• Bone Dragon

Neutral

• Rogue
• Nomad
• Ghost
• Genie
• Medusa
• Earth Elemental
• Air Elemental
• Fire Elemental
• Water Elemental

The Restoration of Erathia

Castle

• Pikeman
• Halberdier
• Archer
• Marksman
• Griffin
• Royal Griffin
• Swordsman
• Crusader
• Monk
• Zealot
• Cavalier
• Champion
• Angel
• Archangel

Tower

• Gremlin
• Master Gremlin
• Stone Gargoyle
• Obsidian Gargoyle
• Stone Golem
• Iron Golem
• Mage
• Arch Mage
• Genie
• Master Genie
• Naga
• Naga Queen
• Giant
• Titan

Rampart

• Centaur
• Centaur Captain
• Dwarf
• Battle Dwarf
• Wood Elf
• Grand Elf
• Pegasus
• Silver Pegasus
• Dendroid Guard
• Dendroid Soldier
• Unicorn
• War Unicorn
• Green Dragon
• Gold Dragon

Fortress

• Gnoll
• Gnoll Marauder
• Lizardman
• Lizard Warrior
• Serpent Fly
• Dragon Fly
• Basilisk
• Greater Basilisk
• Gorgon
• Mighty Gorgon
• Wyvern
• Wyvern Monarch
• Hydra
• Chaos Hydra

Stronghold

• Goblin
• Hobgoblin
• Wolf Rider
• Wolf Raider
• Orc
• Orc Chieftain
• Ogre
• Ogre Mage
• Roc
• Thunderbird
• Cyclops
• Cyclops King
• Behemoth
• Ancient Behemoth

Dungeon

• Troglodyte
• Infernal Troglodyte
• Harpy
• Harpy Hag
• Beholder
• Evil Eye
• Medusa
• Medusa Queen
• Minotaur
• Minotaur King
• Manticore
• Scorpicore
• Red Dragon
• Black Dragon

Inferno

• Imp
• Familiar
• Gog
• Magog
• Hell Hound
• Cerberus
• Demon
• Horned Demon
• Pit Fiend
• Pit Lord
• Efreet
• Efreet Sultan
• Devil
• Archdevil

Necropolis

• Skeleton
• Skeleton Warrior
• Walking Dead
• Zombie
• Wight
• Wraith
• Vampire
• Vampire Lord
• Lich
• Power Lich
• Black Knight
• Dread Knight
• Bone Dragon
• Ghost Dragon

Neutral

• Air Elemental
• Water Elemental
• Fire Elemental
• Earth Elemental
• Gold Golem
• Diamond Golem

War machines

• Ammo Cart
• Ballista
• First Aid Tent
• Catapult

Armageddon's Blade

Conflux

• Pixie
• Sprite
• Air Elemental
• Storm Elemental
• Water Elemental
• Ice Elemental
• Fire Elemental
• Energy Elemental
• Earth Elemental
• Magma Elemental
• Psychic Elemental
• Magic Elemental
• Firebird
• Phoenix

Neutral

• Peasant
• Halfling
• Rogue
• Boar
• Mummy
• Nomad
• Troll
• Sharpshooter
• Enchanter
• Faerie Dragon
• Rust Dragon
• Crystal Dragon
• Azure Dragon