I am a self proclaimed Heroes of Might and Magic addict. Though I haven’t actually played a Might and Magic game, I’ve spent days/weeks/months/years of my life playing games from the Heroes of Might and Magic series either by myself or in a multiplayer battle. With that being said, I didn’t know what to expect when I received my beta code for Heroes Kingdoms at the beginning of the month (in fact, I hadn’t really heard much about the game until then).
After playing the game for a good 3 weeks (it takes quite some time before you can see everything this game has to offer), I’m finally here to give you some insight about the experience. And, judging by the fact that the game is still consuming parts of my schedule throughout the day, I have to say that my experiences have been quite pleasant so far. Being a huge strategy/numbers gamer, I’m always into games that require number crunching and constant thinking (it’s no wonder I’m such a huge Heroes fan).
MMOHOMM
In case you haven’t read any news about the game, I’ll fill you in on some of the basic differences between this game and other traditional Heroes titles. First of all, this game is technically classified as an MMO strategy game. Thus, the hot seat battles/gaming sessions that fans are used to are out of the picture and in comes a more drawn out experience overall (gameplay is expected to last for 6 months before a new round begins). Thus, to go along with the MMO style of gaming, you’ll interact with hordes of other players and form alliances to try and win (this game is built for alliances).
To pull off this style of gameplay, Ubisoft had to convert the series from turn based to real time. Thus, rather than taking turns controlling your troops (in or out of battle), every player can perform actions throughout any time during gameplay. The catch is that actions take a certain amount of real time before they come into fruition. Thus, attacking NPCs, upgrading mines, building town structures, learning new moves, recruiting creatures, etc may take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to a few days to perform.
This real time element adds an extra amount of strategy to the already established strategy staples from previous games (such as collecting resources, building structures, recruiting troops, deciding which battles you can/can’t fight). Pretty much all of the statistical/structural elements are in place in this game, while the over world and battle gameplay are the most changed elements. The over world is replaced by different tiers of grids denoting the locations of bases (on the outer map) as well as mines and enemy troops (on individual region maps). Rather than pointing and double clicking on a region to move your heroes, you instead order them to move or perform an action and wait the allotted amount of time until it is fulfilled.
Each region on the outer map can be viewed up close to reveal a 5×5 grid (a.k.a. the region map) that shows the details of the area. If there is a base on the region that the player owns, he can order his troops to do a number of things including attacking enemy troops, upgrading mines to improve production, and building structures that enhance resource revenue, troop production, and creature defense. It reminded me of a mixture of Sim Ant (a large grid of different individual regions) and Sim City (being able to create different structures on empty squares).
The second portion of the game that is significantly changed is that player controlled battles are completely out of the picture. Because of its MMO nature, it would be extremely difficult to see battles carried out in any timely fashion (though I’d like to play Heroes of Might and Magic Online to see how they pulled it off). Thus, though it’s a bittersweet feeling to not be able to partake in the chess-like, hexagon gridded battles of previous games, the more simplified rounds system in the game works well enough and still requires some thought and strategy.
Essentially, the battle system consists of multiple rounds of fighting where the top set of troops in each of the two combating armies duke it out. Each troop is simplified to a mere number called “unit power” rather than having individual stats. This power stat makes up the troops’ attack strength as well as hit points when fighting opponents. Thus, without any modifiers, a pit fiend with 2946 base power would have this many hits and this much attack power (if it fought any troop with lower power, it would kill them without dying itself). After one round of battle finishes and a troop is disbanded from one of the parties, the next troop in line steps up to fight the remaining troops from the other army. This continues until the battle is over.
Now, there are the same types of hero-based combat bonuses present in this game as there were in previous games. Thus, if a hero has high attack and/or defense power, his troops are subsequently also stronger overall; if a hero has spells, he can use them in battle; and there are other learnable skills that affect your overall troops’ fighting abilities (such as improving offense or defense by a certain percentage). To add to the strategy of battles, a rock/paper/scissors (infantry/calvary/shooter) battle system is in effect where troops can gain a +50% power bonus for attacking a troop they’re efficient against.
This game also features special winning conditions required to win the game that I wasn’t able to experience. In order to win, players must collect “Tears of Asha.” These tears are collected by one of three ways, each of which seems to be extremely extensive. The first way involves finding a tear throughout the entire map by finding monoliths. The second way involves burning large amounts of rare resources in an oven. Finally, the third way requires you to create a huge army capable of defeating some brutal foes. Since I wasn’t able to experience this, I can’t give you any hands on impressions but I can say that I wasn’t too fond of the idea. After all, I always was a bigger fan of missions in HOMM that required you to take over all of the other players’ towns and if anything, I liked the ability to choose different maps with different winning conditions (hopefully some other modes will be added later).
My Experiences with the game
The game began pretty slow at first with only one hero and one town at my disposal. However, after about a week, I had built up my kingdom enough to where there were actions I could perform throughout the day, controlling three different heroes and two towns. Though I was one of the first people to join the press beta server, there were quickly a large amount of other players throughout the region that I had to pay attention to. After dominating the first week or so of gameplay (again probably because I was one of the first to join), I hadn’t joined an alliance out of pure stubbornness. Alliances quickly began to grow, though, and I chose to join one for my own sake.
Once into an alliance I was impressed with the amount of communication options as well as the different interactions you can have with others in your alliance. Using the in-game mail system (which updates you whenever something occurs and can be linked to your real-life e-mail address), I could have in-depth strategy discussions with the other members of my alliance. I also noticed that you can donate resources and even bases to other members of your alliance if you so choose.
As for the games’ marketplace, I enjoyed the different additions here as well. Sure, you can perform the typical marketplace transactions from other Heroes games such as buying resources for ridiculously overpriced amounts or selling them at an extremely underpriced value, but there were also other important additions that make the game more tethered to the MMO experience. First of all, I liked the fact that each day and week featured a different set of resources that were either in or out of season (meaning they are worth more or less gold respectively). This added to the games’ in-game currency system.
As for player-to-player marketplace interaction, an auction system is present within the game featuring a request list and offer list. In this system, you can either buy or sell resources from other players according to their availability on these lists and you can set the minimum price you’re willing to accept as well as buy-out prices. Auctions can last from 12 hours to 2 days depending on the sellers’ choice.
After the two week “newbie protection” was lifted from my account, I was finally able to try out some of the pvp actions in the game. There are a number of actions you can do including sieging mines (steals resources and makes them temporarily out of service), scouting enemy troops, attacking enemies’ troops, and pillaging their base. Catapults and ballista can also be recruited to bombard cities from afar (allowing for alliance strategies and player role assignments).
One of the coolest parts of the game, in my opinion, is the fact that it’s free to play and it doesn’t require any downloading to do so. After creating an account and username, you can jump right in and play on your PC, MAC, or iPad. There is the option of a premium subscription which has many benefits such as the removal of base/hero limitations, and other smaller upgrades such as an upgraded battle calculator, but it is completely optional and doesn’t give anyone a large enough advantage that they are insurmountably strong.
Summary
All in all I was quite impressed with this “casual MMO strategy” title and I’m actually still playing it currently. I find the real-time gameplay to be an enjoyably light experience that I can jump in or out of at any time (since everything steadily trudges along). I can’t say that this game is a true sequel to the previous Heroes of Might and Magic games, however, as it feels too different overall in my opinion; being the HOMM freak that I am, I’ll always love the old-school turn based format of the Heroes games. Nonetheless, I find this game to be a satisfying separate game that has captivated a few hours of my spare time every day for the past 3 weeks. Play this game for free at the end of July and be prepared for an enjoyable strategy experience that’s sure to take up some of your spare time.
