Heroes of Might a Magic: One of My Favorite Games

Heroes of Might and Magic is a strategy RPG released in 1995 by New World Computing. It is the start of one of my favorite series of computer games. I spent a lot of time playing this and the sequels in the 1990s. It is a spin off of the Might and Magic series.

I think I first played this game a few years after it was released. Without a subscription to a video game magazine or internet access, I wouldn’t have known about a new video game until I saw it in stores or was told about it by a friend. Instead of hearing about it from a friend, I learned about this game from my sister’s boyfriend.

Eventually, I got my own copy of the game. It was part of a collection that included the second and third games. While my favorite of the series is the third game, I wanted to go back and play these in order. The first game has a lot to offer, and it is one of the better games from the mid 1990s.

TLDR: An excellent retro strategy RPG game for the PC.

Narrative

One thing that I remember about this game was that it came with a very thick manual that explained the story. It was like getting a novella along with a video game. I loved it when companies did this back in the day without forcing people to buy a collector’s edition.

Thankfully, the story has been simplified when it was put on the internet. The story in the manual tells the story of Morglin Ironfist fleeing Varn (the setting for the first Might and Magic game) and arriving in the land of Enroth. He fights three other warlords for control of the land.

Lord Ironfist is the leader of the knight faction, which is in red. Lord Slayer leads the barbarian faction, which is in green. Queen Lamanda is the leader of the sorceress faction, which is in yellow. The last group in the warlock faction, led by Lord Alamar, is in blue.

In the game, the story is straightforward. The campaign has you fight through the different regions of Enroth until you’ve conquered the land and defeated the other warlords. You don’t get a lot of character development, and you don’t learn much about the heroes you’ll be relying on as generals.

Overall, I like the story quite a bit. It isn’t as involved as the stories in the sequels, but there is a simplicity about it that I enjoy.  

Gameplay

I love the gameplay in Heroes of Might and Magic. It looks more complex than it really is. There is a lot to cover when going over the gameplay, but it all comes together to create a game that is easier to learn than you might imagine.

There are three parts to the gameplay:

• World Screen — where you move your heroes around and gather resources.
• City Screen – where you’ll build buildings and recruit soldiers and heroes.
• Battle Screen – It is where you fight in a chessboard style combat.

 There are a few resources that you’ll need to manage:

• Gold – This is used to buy buildings, recruit soldiers, and hire heroes. You get this through taxes that are automatically gathered each turn.
• Wood
• Ore
• Sulfur
• Crystals
• Mercury
• Gems

All of these are gathered from mines on the world screen. You’ll also come across some caches of resources lying around. There are also artifacts as well.

Before you get to fighting enemies, you’ll have to recruit soldiers. The types of soldiers are specific to the four factions, but they can be paired with any hero; however, be aware that this can impact the morale of your army in battle. Here are the soldiers and factions:

Knight (Red)	Barbarian (Green)	Sorceress (Yellow)	Wizard (Blue)
Peasant	Goblin	Sprite	Centaur
Archer	Orc	Dwarf	Gargoyle
Swordsman	Wolf	Elf	Gryphon
Pikeman	Ogre	Druid	Minotaur
Cavalry	Troll	Unicorn	Hydra
Crusader	Cyclops	Pheonix	Dragon

There are also a few miscellaneous characters in the game. These are characters that only show up on the world map. Here they are:

• Ghosts
• Rouge
• Genie
• Nomad

A hero can have a party of five characters. They have their own stats, and you’ll need to think about which characters you’re going to leave behind, since each faction has six possible characters they can recruit. This would change in the sequels, and I wish it were different in this game.

Overall, I really love the gameplay in the Heroes of Might and Magic series. It becomes fairly simplistic once you understand how things work. I remember being a little lost when I first started playing, but after a few hours, I figured it out.

Visuals

Heroes of Might and Magic has an art style that I really like. It is more cartoonish than the other games in the series, and it almost looks like it should be more comedic than it is. The sprites are too big for their own good. The graphics on the world map and the city screen are wonderful.

There are three areas I want to go over. The first two are great. The graphics on the world map are excellent. You can see what everything is, and what obstacles you’ll have to overcome. On the city screen, things look great, and I enjoy seeing a visual of what monsters are living in the buildings.

My biggest issue with the graphics comes on the battle screens. The sprites look great, but I feel like they’re too big for their own good. There are only five sprites on each side, and if they were smaller, then you could’ve fit all six possible units on the screen for each army.

The spells are good. I also like how magic, fire, and blood erupt from the sprites when they’re attacked. It looks funny because of how over the top it was. The walking animations are a little awkward and simple, but that is something that I enjoy about the game.

Overall, the graphics are nice. Some things are a little goofy and comedic, but that works for me. I like the way the game looks despite all the faults. It isn’t as good as the second and third games, but that isn’t a big factor in how I feel about the game.

Reviews at the Time

Heroes of Might and Magic was met with universal praise when it was released. The game brought home a host of awards from the various PC magazines, and its worst review was a 7/10. I’ll be looking at four publications for this.

Arcane, a short lived publication, gave the game a 7/10. This was considered a good game by the magazine’s scoring system. The reviewer liked the game overall, but found the gameplay limited, some of the graphics weren’t to his liking, and they didn’t like the sound.

Computer Game Review had three people review the game. Those scores were 89, 92, and 91. They called this an excellent successor to King’s Bounty, a game I keep forgetting about. They criticized the limited animations as being goofy, but found the game to be a solid strategy game.

PC Gamer gave the game an 88/100. The reviewer called the game “remarkably strong,” even if it is a simple strategy game. They went on to say that it wasn’t “flashy” but that the graphics don’t take away from the gameplay. They wrapped up by calling it one of the most enjoyable games of 1995.

Electronic Entertainment gave the game an A. The reviewer didn’t add anything new to what was said about Heroes of Might and Magic in the other reviews. It is a short review, and the only thing that received less than an A was the graphics, which received a B.

The reviews were a little surprising to me. I liked the game when I first played it, but I wasn’t expecting to see how much the media loved the game. With scores like this, I would’ve expected to see more people talking about the game online. Maybe it is being outshone by the sequels, which is a strong possibility.

8.5/10. This is still a great game. It is hard not to compare it to the sequels, especially the third game, which is my favorite of the series. I love the gameplay, but the graphics are a little weaker than the rest of the series.

Pros

• Easy to learn
• Great Graphics
• Nice story

Cons

• Not as good as the sequels

Conclusion

When I first started playing this game, I didn’t own a console and was only playing PC games. I also didn’t have a subscription to a magazine, so I never knew about new games until I saw them in stores. It was a fun way of doing things, and it sometimes happens now as I occasionally stumble across indie games that I’ve never heard of.

The first Heroes of Might and Magic is a great game, and the developers would improve on it as the series went on. It is a lot of fun to see where things started and how they’ve changed. This one has fun and cartoonish graphics, and the gameplay is great.

This is a fairly unique game. You didn’t see anything else like it at the time, and that was a small part of why I liked it. It is still one of my favorite games of the 1990s, even if I like the third game much more than this one.

If you liked this post, please check out some of my other posts about my favorite games, such as My Favorite Games on the NES and Genesis.