‘Olden Era’ breathes life into a veteran strategy franchise
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I never expected this.
I've written before about my love for the Heroes of Might and Magic (HoMM) series -- but mostly the second and third installments.
For those keeping track at home, HoMM2 came out in 1996, and HoMM3 came out in 1999.
Now, HoMM3 in particular has been kept alive by fans who have made their own expansions to the game, adding their own factions, units, structures and gameplay mechanics.
That's been comforting as the series as, at least in my opinion, really flagged throughout the last…oh jeez, it's been 24 years since HoMM4 came out.
The fourth installment was the final game to be developed by New World Computing and published by 3DO. In 2002, 3DO, which was a parent company to New World Computing, filed for bankruptcy.
Before they ceased operations, they sold the rights to the series to Ubisoft, which continues to own them to this day.
This is a lot of backstory, but, I promise it's important.
After acquiring the series, Ubisoft bounced the series between a few different developers. Their first attempt, HoMM5, in 2006, is actually fairly well regarded by the fans, although it changed the setting entirely in an attempt at creating a clean slate.
From there, it's been a downward spiral. 2011's HoMM6 and 2015's HoMM7 both had some fairly serious issues on both the gameplay and technical sides. After HoMM7, Ubisoft suspended any further development and the franchise has just sat around and rotted since.
So imagine my surprise when, one day, I was sitting on Steam trying to figure out what I felt like playing, and Steam suggested the upcoming release of "Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era."
The heck?
Apparently, Ubisoft had reached an agreement with developers Unfrozen and publisher Hooded Horse for them to use the rights to produce a new game.
Now, Unfrozen are the developers for "Iratus: Lord of the Dead," which is a game that I have not talked about in one of these columns but absolutely should. But let's just say that it was good, and move on from there.
This…this is what a HoMM game should be. It's built very similarly to HoMM2 and HoMM3, so it's already got my attention. But the map is gorgeous, richly colored and, bluntly, feels more like the strategy is emphasized and less like it's meant to show off high-end graphics.
The middle entries in the series prioritized making changes to the original formula, such as changing the battle grid to squares instead of hexagons, making the camera fixed-view isometric instead of 2D, and so on.
I don't want to start ranting, so let's just say that "Olden Era" is a return to form.
But, at the same time, the game has a ton of new features and spins on old features that are actually well thought-out and enjoyable, unlike most of what the middle entries brought to the table.
An example is the law system, which provides the player with a new form of income. Those points are then spent to enact faction-specific laws, which serve as ways to tailor your faction to your specific game and playstyle.
Really like your faction's tier two units? Laws allow you to focus on them, powering them up and letting your town produce more of them per week. Or maybe you'd prefer to grow your economy, in which case you can spend law points to produce extra resources every day -- but at the cost of weaker and fewer units.
Another new income is astrology points, which you can use to research powerful spells in a new way.
There are a certain set of iconic spells -- especially Fly, Dimension Door and Town Portal -- which are, shall we say, broken. They allow your hero and their army various abilities to move around the map dramatically faster and more powerfully than the game is set up to allow. They let you warp from town to town, collecting reinforcements easier and allowing you to pivot offense and defense rapidly; fly over map obstacles and ignore terrain breaks to acquire resources or attack from weird directions; or literally teleport your entire army a short distance.
These spells are staples of practically any game, and in "Olden Era," rather than having to fish for them by spamming mage guilds in all of your towns, you can use astrology points to research them directly. They're heavily gated, though, and even if you rush for them, you have certain prerequisites that you have to meet before you can use them. This is a really good balance -- it feels like a limit break, where you get a huge power spike in the middle to late game and lets you feel like you are doing busted things.
The game's AI opponents provide a robust challenge. I've sank more hours into the HoMM franchise than any game with the exceptions of possibly Minecraft and World of Warcraft, so I know my way around, and I've still been losing my fair share even without cranking the difficulty to max (yet).
The available factions are evocative but combine franchise classics in new and interesting ways. It really feels like coming home, but avoids the key trap of feeling TOO much like HoMM2 or HoMM3. Instead, it takes their best elements and pulls them forward into an updated, sleek new body, with some spiffy new features.
The game is technically in early access, but having played it for around 15 hours at this point, I can vouch that it's basically good enough to be a complete product. There are some sporadic crashes which are annoying, but all things considered I have had remarkably few issues for a self-described early access title.
I am really excited for what is coming down the road for this title as it gets fleshed out and approaches full release, and am hoping the title gets the typical two or three expansion packs that most HoMM games receive, perhaps with some additional factions. I'd also like to see a wider range of three or four player maps, as right now most of the templates are one-on-one, and I tend to prefer slightly grander scale campaigns that can go on a little longer.
"Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era" is available on Steam, in early access, and I haven't really seen anything that I would consider to be objectionable content to warn about. The worst is probably the Hive faction, which are kind of a body horror "The Fly" type of group…but that's just icky and not really anything that your average teenager couldn't handle.
If, like me, you've been jonesing for a classic turn-based strategy experience -- or if you're new to the genre and want to see what all the fuss is about in one of the most storied fantasy strategy franchises --I'd highly recommend giving "Olden Era" a shot.
Arianna McKee is the Design and Editorial Page Editor at The Express.