I'm what a car salesman would call an extremely soft touch. When the kid behind the counter at McDonald's asks me if I want fries with whatever I've ordered, I say "Sure," because I don't want to hurt his feelings. So it's unsurprising that I ended up stuck with Prima's Official Strategy Guide to Heroes of Might and Magic III; after all, the sales clerk had taken the trouble to tell me that he would take 10% off the cost of the book if I bought it at the same time as the video game.
So I bought it.
I had already played through HM&M versions I & II without needing any assistance--without, for that matter, even imagining that I might need assistance with the games. But the sales clerk looked intensely dedicated to his job and had directed me straight to the game within fifteen seconds of my entering the store, so I kind of thought that buying the strategy guide would be the easiest way of acknowledging my appreciation of his dutiful service.
Then too, he had said that "everyone eventually buys the strategy guide anyway." That made me think that perhaps there were secrets buried somewhere in HM&M III, secrets that made the game unlike either of its predecessors. So I shelled out the extra cash and brought the book home with me, promising myself that I would not so much as look at it until I became stuck.
If I had kept that promise, I would not be able to write this review because I never would have had occasion to open the book. I'm not the world's greatest strategy gamer by any means, but the simple fact of the matter is that HM&M III is not the kind of game that requires any kind of demystification.
There are no secret mushrooms (as in Mario Brothers) or carefully hidden artifacts (as in the Final Fantasy series). To play HM&M III is to explore different ways of engaging in combat. And you discover nifty tactics through experience, accidents, and your own imagination. Tom Ono (the writer of the guidebook) has very little to offer in the way of tactical advice. He points out that by combining your forces into one large army, you will have a very powerful force, but won't be able to fight on two fronts.
Thanks Tom.
He also makes a few points about forcing the game's AI to act in certain ways, points that may be useful to players who are new to the game. I fear that their primary use, however, will be to take all the fun out of it.
I'm not trying to pick on the writer, here. He actually produces coherent tips in complete sentences, which is no mean feat for a strategy guide. Unfortunately, however, since HM&M III doesn't need a strategy guide, Ono's tips will only be helpful to people who are trying to get through the game as if it is some kind of homework assignment. He provides strategies for getting through individual maps that I can only assume worked for him. Clearly he did not invest much time in formulating those strategies, though, since they're only designed for players to eventually conquer their enemies and not to do so in particularly elegant or satisfying (or, more importantly, high scoring) ways.
Perhaps the most glaring omission from the book is that it includes no advice for playing against a human opponent. The AI of HM&M III is terribly unsophisticated. The scenarios are a cinch to beat when one plays against computerized opponents. What makes the game most interesting is to play online against other strategy fanatics. And what would have been most helpful for Ono to include would have been a checklist of ways to spot people who cheat during online play (an unaccountably rampant phenomenon).
The most useful feature of the guidebook is the maps. I suppose that a novice player struggling with one of the more difficult scenarios might find that knowing precisely where the nearest gold mine is located is the difference between winning and losing. But that's something that the player could discover for himself and then put to use by starting over. I certainly don't think it's worth paying $20 to have access to information that I can find out for myself in a matter of minutes or that I can access online for free. And I guess that's the worst part. There's absolutely nothing in Ono's book that one couldn't find out in a few minutes in a Strategy/RPG chatroom or in the appropriate lobby of MSNZone.
But don't tell the sales clerk I said so. He was very nice, and I think his acne made him very insecure.
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