Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era Demo Preview: Is the strategy series back in a big way?

If there are one or two games that have always worked no matter the weather, it's Heroes of Might and Magic II and HoMM III. Both of these titles permeated my childhood and even the fourth one entertained me for a while. After Ubisoft bought the brand and produced the fifth, sixth, and seventh, the series has been extremely uneven. After seven didn't sell very well, the future of the series was uncertain. Therefore, it was gratifying news when Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era was announced, and a preview was made available to us at Gamereactor. Even more pleasing is that this is a reboot of the series. It also takes place in the same world as the first four titles, but on a new continent.

The first thing to note about the title is that it's more of a "best of" collection than an outright new game, with lots of new game mechanics. In terms of design, it's similar to the older games, with a colour palette and design reminiscent of the fifth. In this mix, there are lots of buildings and other things to explore on the campaign map from the original and newer Heroes of Might and Magic games. However, there are no fighting heroes like we saw in the fourth game. One example of a nostalgic moment was seeing the Dragon Utopia building exactly as it looked in the third game, but in a new title. If you travelled to that building with a hero, you got to fight dragons and if you won, you got gold and artifacts. I'm absolutely convinced that the Olden Era has its strengths and weaknesses, depending on your personal connection to the series.

In Olden Era, you can choose from six different factions. You have Temple, Necropolis, Sylvan, Dungeon, Hive, and Schism. The first four factions are classics, they are your humans, undead, wood elves, and dark elves. They are similar to their counterparts in the series' previous iterations. In contrast, the Hive is somewhat unique, being a mix of an aggressive insect faction and the classic Inferno. Unfrozen has more or less mixed demons (Inferno in three) and insects into a single faction. Schism is the faction that feels completely new and more mysterious than the others. It's based on Lovecraft and inspired by things like Cthulhu. Their favourite setting is ice and snow, not unlike the Tower from the third game, which represented magic and mages.

When you choose a path and the game rules, you get a chance to choose a hero and associated faction to start the game with. Then you are free to gather resources, artefacts, and take control of mines. You'll also build up your castle with buildings so you can recruit increasingly powerful forces to wage war with in a tactical turn-based approach. Little things like the possibility of automatic battles, quality of life improvements, and some streamlining are welcome additions. The game isn't any easier than the third instalment, though, just more time-saving. It's faster to do everything and then skip your turn.

The campaign map is filled with treasures, places to go, and monsters to fight, but is also governed by a turn-based approach. The resources are the classic wood, stone, gold, emeralds, crystals, and mercury. The only resource missing is sulphur, which is replaced by a more rare and hard-to-get resource. This resource is called Alchemical Dust and can be used to upgrade artefacts, some buildings, and improve spells. It's with these new resources and the team system that the balance sometimes gets out of whack. It can quickly become completely overwhelming, yet on the other hand this is something I liked in the third game. The ability to pick up a couple of books and turn your hero into the horseman of the apocalypse, as you start teleporting your character across the map and throwing meteor showers at the enemies. I loved that it could get so terribly unbalanced. That's because I never played this competitively and appreciated the joy of the set-up.

The difficulty is easy to set but not fair. Higher difficulty levels increase the amount of resources and other things opponents start with. It also limits what you have access to at the start. The battles are neither difficult nor too easy by the standards of the series. The enemy can inflict heavy losses on you if you don't think about it. However, I find that there is not quite the same quality, flow, and weight in the animations compared to the seventh. It's something that does not look quite perfect. It's especially noticeable when you move flying creatures, as they jump, speed up, and slow down jerkily. However, using magic and your heroes' abilities is easy as pie. The spell book is easy to read and sort through if you have a lot of spells. I think the animations are better on the campaign map though, they are smoother, prettier, and look better.

The functionality is mostly what you'd expect, you upgrade your character with experience points that let you choose a new ability. Artefacts increase your capacity, strength, or other aspects of your character. You can make laws and develop spells in a separate menu. The systems for this work well. The laws are percentage increases of things which in my opinion is a bit boring. While obviously useful, I was hoping for some ability to recruit exotic new monsters, secret spells, and possibly artefacts to your faction. Instead, it's more gold and extra strength to certain monsters. It's nothing that will surprise you. However, the graphics might. The game looks animated and it works pretty well. I still think Heroes of Might and Magic III was the best designed. However, Unfrozen is to be commended for the consistency of the look, graphics, and the user interface that seems to belong together.

The user interface is relatively clean and gives you up-to-date information pretty quickly. It's easy to see how many resources you have and what you need for the respective buildings in your castle. Despite this, I feel that the colour choices and design are a bit reminiscent of mobile games. I would have liked to see two more factions as I miss a variant of Stronghold and Tower from the third game. At the same time, I think the current factions are robust, have many heroes to choose from, and unique squads with unique abilities on the battlefields. They also have two upgrades to each squad type just like in the five-man expansion Tribes of the East. It allows for an extra choice and is something I appreciate. It's hard to describe this title as anything other than a love letter to the series.

Technically it works great with few bugs and a clean design style to the world and its content. The graphics will probably benefit from this in the long run as a more animated style doesn't lose its lustre as quickly as realism. The music is adorable as usual and I really like the theme of the main menu. The scene with a dragon attacking a castle reminds me a lot of the fifth chapter. It's not a surprise that the music is so good, as they used Paul Anthony Romero. He is known to have created the music for the older titles. Also involved in the project is Chris Velasco who has done music for Starcraft II, God of War, Mass Effect, etc.

However, this is a preview and we are not given much insight into what the campaign will look like. Rather, we only have access to four of the factions, training missions, and a couple of levels with some customisation options. However, the factions are different to each other, and I think this could become a strength when the title fully launches. I also like how vibrant the towns look with villagers and others moving along roads, although the views in the castles are not in full rotatable 3D like in the fifth. Everything from sound effects, music, buildings, and game design is reminiscent of the older titles. This is a love letter to the second, third, and fifth in the series, so I hope the final product is as good as the preview suggests.