dmarusz's Full Review: Heroes of Might and Magic III
Turn Based Strategy (TBS) has been a genre that I have grown into and have enjoyed more and more as I’ve played more games. For those of you who aren’t used to playing these games, and as figures show that is the majority of you, TBS is to thinking what action is to physical skills. So, as someone who now is a card carrying member of the genre, I have heard great things about the Heroes of Might and Magic series. I figured that I would have to dive in.
I started out with the third not because I waned to avoid the first two, but because I had such a hard time trying to shove 5 ¼ floppy disks into my USB port. I then gave into #3 which had the title of an expansion pack. I made my buy on Ebay or Amazon or through epinions, whatever, and with a wince and a hope, this is what I found.
Gameplay was fun. It had a slightly different twist to the genre, although most TBSers would feel right at home with the hexagons, etc. Usually, you are allowed only a set number in your party. Then your are allowed multiple heroes to guide those parties. In this game, you could command an army of thousands. They wouldn’t each be drawn but instead be place in a setting of seven different types of troops with each troop having its own number. This was great. No more having a killer party terrorize the countryside. You could gather up a thousand grunts and defeat the tougher units.
The opposite side to this was that even though you could have as many heroes leading these groups, only eight could be on the battlefield at a time. The rest had to defend the castles. This was a little hampering but some would find it a fun challenge. The heroes themselves did not fight, but instead boosted their units’ skills and occasionally cast a spell. The boost was a fun trick as their bonuses could be stacked very high. A goblin under the right hero could have the same defense and attack rating as a dragon. I found that to be a good diversion from the other TBS games that I’ve played. Too often an elf archer can’t take on a orc warlord no matter how many times he’s leveled. But, be not worried, the goblin still loses, as the hero can’t really affect the hit points of his units. Now, 30 goblins, which cost a lot less than a dragon, we may be in for a fight.
The drawback of this system is that the PC AI is quite sharp and there aren’t a lot of tactical things that you can do in battle. If the PC gets to produce more units, they can overwhelm you the longer the game goes. You have to make these tight, well planned decisions in the beginning of the level, or you might as well start the scenario over.
They have a quest system, but it is not of RPG quality. Usually the reward system is counterproductive. You usually receive something that is not equivalent to the units and/or magic item that you give up. On the opposite side, they have a lot of temporary and permanent power-ups (non-quest related) all over the map. Most of these are free and encourage exploration.
Strategy games are usually made with fairly simple rules. Part of the reason is because there is only so much your brain can juggle. This game tends to take you to the edge of that cliff and stops, sometimes slightly hanging over on your fingertips. Chocked full of power boosting stuff, resource gathering, luck bonuses, etc., at first can seem a little overwhelming. However, later on it keeps mundane missions a little more interesting, and can be done in such a “strategic” way that it affects battle. The one draw back is that in heated mission, it can be easy to forget the minutia.
There is true strategy here, too. A common TBS has you saving often, and then making sure you win 99% of your battles. In this game, there is actually a strategy of retreating and surrendering, that is quite effective. Just because you are outmanned doesn’t mean that you can’t surge later using heroes that have retreated or surrendered earlier.
Some initial levels are too hard and then it will back off later for some reason. The good news is that it has a setting that you can adjust the difficulty per level. The bad news is that harder setting in some scenarios are nigh impossible. It would seem that many situations you can’t beat at the highest setting.
They had a wide range of missions but they weren’t well laid out. If you play a lot of TBS, they’ll seem pretty standard. The originality is off, although not missing. There are some levels that seem well thought; just they didn’t do much to help the overall game play more enjoyably.
One of the cool, but inadvertent, pluses is that this game is so old now that it loads lightning fast on new PCs. On the counter to that, you aren’t going to work your graphics or sound card too far. The levels are fairly stale not in terms of art but in terms of overall visual quality. Nowadays, you could supe these up without doing more than projecting out at a higher resolution. Inside the cities the graphics are fun, but a tad pixilated. The sounds are standard fare by present standards but they do work a mood well.
Overall, I can see why a lot of people have loved this series. It’s been fun to play and has lot of complexity under the simple veneer. Nice work in all.
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