Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era Review

• Overview
• Gameplay
• What I Like
• What I Don’t Like
• Voice / Art / Music
• The Tales Told
• You Might Like This Game If…
• Score

Overview

From publisher Hooded Horse

This newest entry in the renowned Heroes of Might and Magic series brings strategic empire building, epic turn-based tactical battles, and in-depth RPG mechanics to a world of fantastical beasts, formidable spellcasters, and fierce champions. Explore a vibrant world full of secrets and dangers as you play through an epic narrative campaign that heralds impending doom, or conquer both procedurally generated and hand-crafted maps, building magnificent cities and raising massive armies of mythical creatures to vanquish your foes.

Made for series veterans and newcomers alike, Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era is built on the familiar foundations of some of the most critically acclaimed strategy games of all time, introducing multiple classic and new game modes whether playing solo or with friends online.

Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era (just Olden Era from here) is a strategy RPG video game by developer Unfrozen. They are the makers of Iratus: Lord of the Dead, and are under publisher Hooded Horse. In a throwback to the classic Heroes of Might and Magic III from 1999, Olden Era captures the same spirit. Actually while there are seven games in the series, none ever reached similar popularity as HoMM 3. Olden Era, then, attempts to take that lightning in a bottle and modernize it. That’s a tall task, and one that I’ve been happy to dive into a little deeper over the last couple weeks. Ever since I reviewed the board game adaptation and heard about Olden Era, I’ve been keenly looking forward to it. It’s pretty cool to see the depth of love this series continues to have so many years later.

Current Release

In Early Access for now, Olden Era claims to fully release in about a year. While we all know how fluid estimates can be, I think that’s a reasonable timeline. With six factions, three game modes, single and multiplayer, and the opening act of the narrative campaign, there’s quite a lot on offer already. Check the final Score for my thoughts on the current EA release, but I’ll keep this post up to date.

Player count

From solo to 8 player maps, there’s plenty of ways to enjoy the game. Soloists can square off against AI opponents in a plethora of difficulty modes, and there’s lots of ways to customize the game settings and even the maps themselves. Multiplayer games can be quite long, but thankfully, while it’s tricky to do, a player can create a new lobby from a multiplayer save file to resume a session. While I can’t say I’ve played any multiplayer, I have heard it’s a well beloved way to enjoy the game.

Play time

This can vary wildly depending on the size of the map, player count, and analysis paralysis. Generally, however, a full start to end game of Olden Era can take from 2-6 hours.

Gameplay

Olden Era will be very familiar to anyone who has played any game in the series, or similar games such as Songs of Conquest, King’s Bounty, Disciples, Age of Wonders, and more. It’s similar to a 4x, but lands on strategic RPG for focusing on heroes instead of city building and expansion.

I’ll talk briefly about some of the main mechanics, but there’s no point in trying to type out every detail. Instead, I’ll share a video which can explain further (and better). What I’ll say is that the core of HoMM 3 has been preserved, then refined and iterated on in key ways.

Heroes

Right in the name, Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era focuses around playing as one or more of a faction’s mighty champions. They have limited space in their army roster for troops, but these troops “stack” such that they represent a bigger army. Additionally, heroes also have their own statistics and abilities, which benefit all friendly units. Then they can carry items in a very RPG-like fashion, with slots for head, body, arms, legs, and weapons. Equipment can be found while out on the map, or bought from the market (if built in town).

Spells

This deserves it’s own category to emphasize just how important spells are in Olden Era. While heroes can specialize in combat (might) or spells (magic), or round themselves out in between, all heroes can cast spells in some form.

There are five tiers of spells in Olden Era, and one category of globals that can only be used when on the game map. Spells have a type as well, from Daylight, to Nightshade, Arcane, Primal, and Neutral. This describes, more or less, what type of utility these spells have, and they vary wildly from stat boots, to damage, buffs to debuffs. They cost mana to use, and have cooldowns to prevent spam. All of this can change if the hero has focused their growth around spells, so if one player wants to really rip into another, they’ll want to specialize and synergize spells with their army for maximum effect.

Overland

The game world is where players will spend most of their time. Players start with a home town, a couple of pre-built buildings, and a set amount of starting resources. From there, they’ll follow a build path to customize the city how they’d like. This will mostly be troop buildings or resource generating upgrades, but there is a small path for wall fortifications and others. Troops are spit out once a game week (7 turns), so players are encouraged to get out in the world, not camp at their castle.

On the world map are points of interest. These vary from loose resources or items to pick up, to special use buildings. Some will be resource generations: sawmills, mines, and even extra troop generators. Others will be free experience points, spells, or buffs, both temporary and permanent. Almost all of these important points are guarded by neutral armies. Neutrals are generally smaller, weaker sets of units from a random faction, but there are some unique neutrals too. These scale with the game world, so players will want to stick around their town clearing and collecting nearby points first, then branch out when they’re ready.

Endgame

The goal of the game is generally to defeat the enemy hero(es) and/or capture their towns. It almost feels like a race, where each is trying to scale their forces the fastest before charging into each other head on. This goal can be switched up, however, and there are a few game modes to try. This includes an arena (single combat only), a narrative one shot scenario mode, and a campaign. The narrative on these is light, fun, and they tell a cool story unique to a faction hero.

Further Details

I hadn’t covered some of the more unique features to Olden Era like Focus or Laws yet. They’re pretty cool additions, and very important to deeper and nuanced strategies, but I’ll let this video explain them and other mechanics:

What I Like

Olden Era has a ton going for it. It’s nice to see how well the mechanics from HoMM 3 and some of the other games have been preserved. And rather than try to break out of that mold, the developers added to it in interesting ways.

Augmenting The Series

Concepts like Focus and Law are pretty cool additions to the formula. Focus gives players another layer of tools to play with. Mathing out just when and how to build focus to maximize unit and faction abilities can make a big difference in combat. Then Laws acts like a research tree, providing a variety of benefits players can race towards to provide an extra early, and late game boost. Likewise, if players math out exactly which Laws to get and when, it can have a huge impact.

Innteresting Factions

One of the other notable changes in Olden Era are the distinctly new factions to play with. Largely taking a different turn from the classic fantasy tropes of the older games, there is a lot of new ideas on display. I’ll just go ahead and list them out, in fact:

• Temple – Replacing Castle, or Haven, this is a human faction of Templars
• Necropolis – Keeping with tradition, the undead faction returns
• Schism – As a splinter faction of Dungeon, they dove into water and transformed using Vori rites
• Dungeon – Slightly different than before, less beast and more conglomerate of races from Alvar
• Grove – Replacing Sylvan, these are your forest creatures
• Hive – An insect faction new to Olden Era. Controlled by the Dragonfly King, they’re melee focused

Faction Tropes New And Old

So some of the basics have been kept, Temple has knights and angels, Necropolis skeletons and liches, and Dungeon has minotaurs and dragons. Grove is somewhere in between, providing the predictable furies and tree-like folk.

Schism is new and features a lot of the color blue. They have a number of aquatic looking units with a whole lot of tentacles. Most notably, however, their strongest unit is basically a Cthulhu-like deep horror. They’re combat focused, with an faction ability called Communion. This actually increases the number of units in their stacks the more battles they win, yet fades away a little each turn.

Hive is also new, and very cool. They are pretty much all insects, and while I do wish there was a little more creative variety to them, they’re certainly unique. The standout favorite unit for me is called Parasite. It’s literally a giant slug that’s eaten the head of a man and is controlling his body! They’re a melee focused faction with no ranged units, and they have the special ability to hatch eggs on the battlefield, creating extra troops that last the battle.

Easy To Learn, Hard To Master

While I can’t claim to be a master of the series, nor probably ever will, it’s awesome to see a game with such depth become so popular. Specifically for me, I appreciate that the game doesn’t expect mastery before I can enjoy it. Yet I really like just how deep of a game it is to bite into, should players spend the time to master it. So even if I never get that good, others are going to have a blast with it.

Multiplayer aside, the difficulty scaling on single player and AI scenarios is just right. Playing on easy allows someone (myself included) to learn the game while making tons of mistakes. In fact I can even basically forget about entire mechanics and just focus on my army. From there, however, it bumps up. Normal difficulty requires a basic understanding of all mechanics, good play, and some strategy. Further difficulties require in-depth knowledge of a faction and their units, careful planning around hero builds, perfect use of the provided mechanics, then specific tricks and strategies like ones talked about in the beginner tips video above. Utilizing one stack units to tank enemy counterattacks, prevent losses, and snowball your army is a good example of that.

In addition to to the normal modes, there are challenge maps to test these very skills. The way they’re laid out makes them come off as advanced tutorials, but they’re actually quite a challenge. I couldn’t beat any of them, but I suppose I still have a lot of learning to do…

Addicting Gameplay

There is definitely a “one more turn” effect going on in Olden Era. It’s something that’s captured me for several long nights now, and that’s a rare thing these days. Even though some of the game’s nuances don’t seem to want to stick with me, it’s still a ton of fun to play. I find the many options within a faction a blast to tinker with, and the variety of maps add another layer of challenge to take on. With so many customization options, classic game modes, story modes, and campaign, the game just keeps on delivering.

What I Don’t Like

I’ll preface by reiterating that I’m not the type of player who can dump a thousand hours into a game. I don’t have any on Steam over 200 hours, and my play time of Olden Era so far is around 30. Some would say that this is not enough to truly know a game, but I think that’s OK. I won’t be commenting on the absolute state of each faction or their units, nor the items, spells, maps, or any other hyper specific details that can affect gameplay at a high level. Instead I’ll mostly be focused on what I experienced as a relatively casual enjoyer of the series.

Strict Adherence

This is a tricky one to properly describe. I don’t want it to sound like I don’t like the classic HoMM style of gameplay, but I would have liked to have seen a little smoothing out some of the edges of the old mechanics. Some feel like they’ve been ported 1-to-1 instead of get revamped to make the game better.

So one example is how the game’s snowball effect works. Falling behind, even a little, can be a death sentence. Opponents who outpace you will continue to do so when they reach higher difficulty areas and gain the xp and loot to push even further ahead. Yes, there are some very specific cheese strategies to help deal with that, but I feel there should be some type of mechanic to assist with it as well. I’m not saying people should be punished for good play, just that I feel there should be some kind of diminishing returns for it, such that there’s the possibility to catch up over time.

Another thing I thought could have used updating are the outpost towns. While you can capture extra towns out in the world, they’re all the same. They look the same, function the same, and while you can capture some from other factions, it isn’t as big of a benefit as it sounds because Law upgrades will only work for your own faction’s units. I think I’d have liked to have seen some visual difference between capitals and outposts, or between upgraded and not upgraded ones. Or perhaps allow the outposts to change factions, something along those lines.

Sieges

While sieges are a cool mechanic, I feel they’re underutilized. It’s almost a carbon copy of HoMM 3 with little changes. Catapults slowly knock down walls, a front gate allows the defender to leave at will, but otherwise there’s nothing else to do in a siege. Some upgrades allow a tiny bit of variance, like arrow towers that deal (some) damage, or have some traps on the ground, but they hardly make a difference. As it stands, the sieges are far too easy to win and it’s very hard to defend a town without your main hero, even against a fairly weak army. I suppose it does prevent a first level nothing from camping out and capturing your town over and over, but I think the entire siege mechanic could have used some modern day touches.

Confusing Character Design

This is more of a personal preference, but I will say that while I like the ideas behind Olden Era’s factions, I’m not over the moon about a lot of the unit and hero designs. Without going into too much depth, I’ll just say that I’d have liked to have seen a bit more distinction between the mass of limbs and multi-colored bloom effects. One example I mentioned already is the Parasite, which I love, but I’ll call out the peasants as well. Carrying their prized pig one hand and bushel of hay on their back, they have a ton of character. That’s the type of stuff I’m talking about and would have liked to have seen more of rather than just – it’s a big wurm.

Rough UX/UI

Yes there is a separation between UX and UI. While UI is the actual presentation, from beatification including colors, to font, flair etc. UX refers to the user’s experience, and is how easy it is to navigate the menus or interfaces. How many clicks does it takes to reach important information? Is there enough tooltips, icons, or other ways to easily get information at a glance exist? Things like that.

One example is how there’s little information about what an upgraded unit does. The stat increases are crystal clear, but the abilities they have, and especially something more subtle but super important like attack type, are not. There’re several units where their upgraded forms look nearly identical, then you realize on the battlefield one has a single target attack and the other is a multi hex AOE.

Voice / Art / Music

Voice

On the subject of sound effects, this is a hit or miss. Sound is there, but I don’t think it has the same punch as HoMM 3. I’m not sure it’ll get another pass before release, but a little more audio feedback for certain events would be nice.

For voice, it’s overall quite well done. It’s only in the campaign and cinematics for now, but the actors deliver their lines in an appropriately heroic tone, and the audio capture is done well. I don’t have any complains about it and I’m looking forward to more in the game’s full release.

Art

While I do like Olden Era’s art and design style overall, there’s some noticeable downsides as well. Some of the factions are a bit boring, and their units are convoluted and confused, mostly swirling limbs and muddy effects. I will say, however, the series standard of having bonkers gorgeous looking town backgrounds has been preserved here. They are mind bogglingly fantastic, I don’t think they could have been any better, and that’s why some are sprinkled in this post.

Music

Paul Anthony Romero is back! He was the composer for HoMM 3, so it’s good to see him return in another nod to the classic. As usual, I’ve had the soundtrack on repeat while I’m doing other things (like writing this). Most of it is quite bombastic, but there are melodical pieces as well. I’ve grown quite fond of the battle themes, and Autumn, especially. It all fits the series perfectly, but it is a little over the top for regular listening.

Factions each have a theme, the menu has a theme, combat and world biomes have their themes, and they’re all fantastically well done. I don’t think any are quite as memorable as Heroes 3’s, despite Paul’s return (what, no opera singers?!), but they hit the brief perfectly. Have a listen:

The Tales Told

Since the full game hasn’t released yet, I’ll only briefly talk about what’s available right now:

Story Scenarios

First up are the eight story scenarios. These follow different heroes on bite size narratives that predate the other games in the series. They’re small, contained, full of character, and fun to play. They focus on faction mechanics, so there is little in the way of normal town building and conquering. While there’s no voice over for the writing in them (and I’m unsure if there are plans to add that), they’re not long winded anyway. Much of the character personalities are in line with HoMM tropes too, so there’s comedy to the evil undead and bombastic heroism to the good characters.

Campaign

Fighting for control of Jadame, players take on the role of a hero called Gunnar. After a brief investigation into some strange events, it’s discovered that the Hive faction is taking over the continent. It’s up to you to build your forces and stop them in an epic campaign of struggle.

Alright, so I’m not over the moon about the campaign that’s looking very bog standard so far, but at least it’s done well and fits the theme. I’ve enjoyed the individual stories more than the campaign so far, but it’s still early. There will be a lot more to see in the full release.

You Might Like This Game If…

Anyone who enjoys the HoMM series should feel right at home in Olden Era. I believe it’s a better entry to the series than 6 or 7 was, and a return to form. And while I am a fan, I’m not a hardcore one, so I couldn’t say if someone who’s dumped hundreds or thousands of hours into the series will find Olden Era as enjoyable. Yet for a casual like me, I find it quite fun.

For anyone who is new to the genre or thinking about getting into this type of game, Olden Era is a great start. It has quality of life features missing from the old games, but doesn’t overcomplicate it’s systems like some of the other modern entries. It perfectly captures the best parts of HoMM and delivers it in a modern package that’s easily digestible. If playing a hero galivanting across the land with an ever increasingly strong army ready to strategically topple an opponent sounds interesting, Olden Era is it.

Score

While this is still a preliminary score during the Early Access period of Olden Era’s release, I quite enjoyed my time with it so far. It most certainly captures the best parts of HoMM, especially the third game, and it’s great to see the return to form. Give the people what they love! Despite being in EA, it’s already in a very playable state, and I think the bulk of the remaining work should focus on a tighter UX/UI. I’m sure there will be balance changes, most flying right over my head, no doubt, but I trust the team at Unfrozen have the game well in hand.

I can’t wait to fire it up again in a few months to check out some of the updates, and a few months after that when the full release hits. Hopefully the campaign turns out to have a more interesting conclusion that just a bug beatdown, and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes. Even still, the single story scenarios have been enjoyable, and while I still have a lot to learn in classic mode, it’s been equally fun every step of the way.

Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era gets a nearly full stack of 4/5.