Heroes of Might and Magic 2 – New World Computing - 1996 - First time playing?: Yes!

The king is dead, and his two sons are in conflict over who ascends to the throne. One prince is good and the other one is great. Archibald, I would die for you, you're such a darling, you're great. It is said that once the king is dead that the seers will vote for who takes the throne, but all of the seers mysteriously died from absolutely no intervention from Archibald. Listen, it was just a complete freak accident that a dragon swooped in out of nowhere and devoured one of the seers, and Archibald absolutely did not blow up the boat that the other seer was in. Nor would he poison another seer, why on earth would he do that to win the seer's favour? Archibald, who of course didn't do it, blamed Roland instead, as Archibald did not do it so he knew it must be someone else who conveniently is his only competition in claiming the throne. Archibald hired a new seer to succeed all of the dead ones from earlier, and after a nice talk with the seer, Archibald had swayed him with his diplomatic charisma and cool knife tricks and ensured his vote, while Roland is chased out of the kingdom for all of those murders that Archibald didn't do. Roland, not knowing when to quit, continues to attack Archibald and his forces to reestablish himself in the kingdom. Now, it's up to you to choose which of these princes you wish to follow in their quest for the crown. But really, we all know who to vote for here.

Heroes of Might and Magic 2 is a massive game. Every Might and Magic game is massive, in fact. As usual, I set myself the requirement of beating the game before reviewing it, but I want to be transparent and say that beating Heroes of Might and Magic 2 really isn’t even close to the full picture. You’ve got the main story consisting of two campaigns depending on which prince you choose at the start, those individual campaigns featuring branching paths that lead to different levels and even the ability to betray your prince and switch sides mid-campaign. On top of that you then also have the expansion pack which features four more campaigns to play through, all of which also include branching paths, and once you’re done with all of that there’s still nearly 100 standalone maps to play which aren’t tied to a campaign but are frequently MUCH larger than any of the maps you play in the campaigns, resulting in much longer games. So what did I do? I played through Archibald’s campaign once and played a single scenario map. Yeah, I beat the game, but that barely feels like scratching the surface right? In spite of this, I still missed my usual goal of aiming for updates every weekend. Even if you do the bare minimum, Heroes 2 is still a very long game.

Thankfully, I love Heroes of Might and Magic. The entire Might and Magic franchise is filled with deeply engaging gems, Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and Might and Magic: World of Xeen being two of my favourites. I had never played any Heroes game other than HoMM3 however, so this was my first time playing Heroes 2. Happy to say that the game still holds up very well. It’s definitely not quite as refined as Heroes 3 but the core gameplay and game flow is still there and as solid and engrossing as ever. Exploring, claiming castles and resources, taking over the map, building up your army of monsters and battling your enemies with those monsters in tactical combat.

Typically starting with one hero and one castle, although that can vary from mission to mission, surrounded by a starry void that vanishes to reveal more of the map as you approach it, it's up to you to scout out the area and build up an army. Your 'heroes' are essentially commanders of smaller squads of monsters and soldiers, a maximum of five different units for each unit. Units can also be stacked with others of the same kind, allowing a hero to have an army of 2,000 skeletons in their army all taking up the same amount of space as a single skeleton, truly some magnificent skeletal clown car tactics. The more units you have stacked, the more damage they do as they all attack as one, and in addition the more collective health they have, as you have enough skeletons to… well, I'd say "use them as meat shields to protect the rest" but that terminology doesn't really work in the case of our boney bois. Heroes themselves don't fight directly, instead staying on the sideline while their units fight for them, however they are also capable of learning a wide selection of magic spells, either for directly attacking or debuffing the opposition or for healing and protecting your own units. As your hero fights more and more, they also gain experience and eventually level up, improving their base stats which impact the power of both their own magic spells and also their units' attack and defence, as well as getting a choice of two skills to learn with benefits such as faster movement on the overworld, the ability to learn more powerful spells and passive effects such as higher morale and luck, just to name a few. Lose all of your units, then you lose your hero. Lose all of your heroes and towns, then you lose your life.

Starting out you'll only have a few very low tier units, so how do you get stronger? A lot of ways. More units can be purchased from castle towns for gold, as long as the town in question has the training facilities for those units. If you don't have the training facilities for the units you want to recruit then you'll need to build some, using a combination of gold and the five resources spread across the map; ore, wood, mercury, crystal and sulphur. Mines for all of these resources are hidden throughout the map, which can be claimed by one of your heroes in order to get 1-2 of that resource added to your treasury every day. Every turn in Heroes of Might and Magic is a day passed in in-game time, with various resources such as mined materials and gold income from your castles being added to your treasury at the start of every new day. The start of each week also produces more units at the training facilities, ready for you to hire with gold and add to your army.

A single castle can only produce so much at once however, and a single hero can only explore so much in a single turn. You'll be quickly outpaced at this rate, so getting more castles and more heroes is essential. Heroes can be hired for 2,500 gold at castle towns and you can have up to eight heroes at one time. Heroes come in different classes, six in total, two of which are classified as Might classes while the other four are classified as Magic classes. Might classes gain physical attack stats faster than magic stats, while Magic classes are the opposite. On the Might side of classes there are knights and barbarians, while on the Magic side you have wizards, sorceresses, warlocks and necromancers. There's variations between classes in terms of what skills they start with and what they can learn via level ups, such as necromancers starting with the ability to raise fallen enemies as skeletons to fight alongside them. Multiple heroes means much faster map coverage and better defences for your castles, as long as you distribute your units effectively among heroes.

When a hero approaches either an occupied castle or an enemy hero, a tactical battle is initiated. This style of tactical combat is pretty simple, no geo effects or complex modifiers beyond the usual buff and debuff magic, just simple move and attack stuff here. This is where you control your units as you and your opponent take turns moving each of your units on a hexagonal game board. Units vary in strength, movement stats, HP, defence, attack range, flight and so on. Certain units also have a chance of inflicting a status effect when they attack a unit, such as medusas having a chance of petrifying. Magic can be cast during your turn, but only once per turn and at the cost of your hero's MP.

The units are varied and have a good sense of individuality even with fairly simplistic combat, as these tactical fights are merely a portion of the bigger picture, but there’s definitely some balancing issues. The knight town’s units especially are near completely useless. Their strongest unit, the Crusader, has a pitiful 65HP, with mediocre attack and defence stats that while decent are not enough to make up for such poor HP, and the damage dealt by them is thoroughly mid. Meanwhile, the warlock gets green dragons, already outclassing Crusaders by a landslide with 200HP, but they can also be upgraded to black dragons which have a staggering 300HP. The wizard’s units compare similarly, with their strongest unit, the titan, having just as much HP as the black dragon and ranged attacks, at the cost of not being able to fly. What doesn’t help is that not every unit can be upgraded, so a few towns such as the necromancer town, which produce the respectable bone dragons, will end up still behind warlock and wizard units since unlike those two, their best unit can’t be upgraded to a stronger form. Heroes 3 fixed both of these issues, and while that game has some balancing issues too, they’re nowhere near as blatant as Heroes 2, though since any hero class can capture towns of any other class, it could be argued that in the end every player is still on an even playing field once they move on from their starting town.

Optimisation is very much the name of the game here in Heroes of Might and Magic, figuring out how to get the most productivity out of each individual turn. Your enemies are quickly taking control of the map and building a powerful army to destroy you with, so you have to build your forces up even quicker. In general, the best defence is offence, since exploring the map and claiming mines and castles is how you gain the means to build an army that can defend you. There’s a lot to consider here, such as when you’re ready to venture into uncharted territories beyond those barricades of monsters, how many heroes you’re able to divide your units between without spreading your army so thin that you’re defenceless, how to keep up with production costs for new units while also getting those town upgrades you want, how close enemy heroes are to your own heroes and your towns and how much of a threat they pose, how close you can get to enemy towns before they retaliate before you’re ready, if the cost in lost units of taking off a strong opponent that you can just barely beat is worth it in the long run or if it will result in you being too defenceless for follow-up attacks, there is a ton to keep track of here and leave this doll’s empty head spinning. It makes your risks and tactical decisions paying off all the more satisfying when you start conquering more and more of the world and taking castles by force, knowing you outsmarted your opponent and now get the catharsis of overpowering them and crushing them. Heroes of Might and Magic is a wonderful series if you have some darklord fantasies to live out. Let’s bring in a new reign of terror for those pitiful humans and their pathetic crusaders!

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The campaign is a lot of fun too. The gameplay here isn’t too different to the scenario maps, but the campaign maps are linked together in a way that makes them satisfying to conquer, with what routes you take in past levels affecting what buffs you have access to in the following maps, such as stronger heroes or easier to recruit neutral units. In the penultimate map you even have a chance to carry over the army you build up in that map over to the final map, a highlight of the campaign for me for sure. Additionally you have Archibald’s running commentary throughout his campaign which is always a treat. Starting with the campaign is the best move for a new player as there's very few beginner maps in the standalone scenario maps, resulting in the size and difficulty of the majority of the maps there being very overwhelming, while the main campaign eases you in a bit more gently, while still of course ramping up in difficulty as the game goes on.

Something in particular I like about Heroes of Might and Magic is that it’s simpler than many 4X strategy games and such, but manages to maintain the depth and strategy to stay engaging, while still being more accessible and faster paced. It’s a great middle ground between the simplicity of something like Warlords versus the complexity of Age of Wonders. Heroes isn’t quite a 4X but definitely has elements of it, which help to flesh out the overworld strategic gameplay and feel less like it’s simply just “get a big pile of units and fight”. If you've only ever played more tactical strategy games or J-strategy games like Nectaris, this series can be a great entry point into the larger scale strategy of Western strategy games, while still being a superb game that is beloved by strategy veterans as much as new players. One bit of advice however, definitely start out making lots of alternate saves in the middle of maps when starting out. It will take a few games until you're fully comfortable and confident in your understanding of the game's mechanics and strategy so don't feel pressured to adhere to a "no mid-level saving" playstyle out of the gate, especially with how massive many of these maps are.

A lot of what I’ve said has been generally about the Heroes of Might and Magic series as a whole as opposed to Heroes 2 specifically. Part of the reason for this is that if I talk about how Heroes 2 compares to the other games in the series I’ll end up talking primarily about Heroes 3s improvements, which is unfair to Heroes 2, which remains a solid game worth checking out that helped set standards for the series in place that Heroes 3 would build upon. The best starting place for the series is likely still Heroes 3, but Heroes 2 is an excellent addition too if you want more of the series or if you want to start a little earlier in the timeline. Something I will point out though is that the game was rather crash-prone for me. I was playing the Windows port, there’s also a DOS port which may be more stable. It’s not too much of a deal breaker thankfully since there’s a frequent autosave but it’s still a nuisance.

Heroes of Might and Magic 2 is available on GOG, including the expansion pack and both the DOS and Windows versions of the game. It’s an absolute steal if you can grab it on sale, this seires is some of the best bang for your buck you can get in terms of longevity.

- Page written by MSX_POCKY, 28th May 2023