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
Three years have passed since Heroes II, and after this a new one appeared. Thus Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Restoration of Erathia hit the store shelves with the power of a nuke. 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 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.
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. Not to mention 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.
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. 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.
Dark Times Have Come
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. 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. 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.
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 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.