I played the first two on an Apple IIc clone. It came with map templates to encourage you to map dungeons and towns out with pencil and paper. Feels more immersive, in retrospect, to have to organize your own satchel of maps when you needed to revisit an area
i don't think you are remembering the HOMM games, which were self-mapping. towns had no real interior structure, and there were no dungeons (there was an underworld which was self-mapping, like the overworld).
I followed this avidly through the early access period. It’s really nice. I hope the announcement of the new HoMM drives more people to try Songs of Conquest, because for me, it does a fantastic job of revising and modernising the old formula.
Nope, it's not an RTS, but back in the 90's - when computers were bulky, few, and preciously expensive, Internet access was charged by the minute, and friends not always within PC carrying distance - hot-seat games such as the HoMM or Worms series were winning the battle for screen-time over the likes of StarCraft or Quake in basically almost any social context.
We'd sometimes meet up and try to take turns to beat a particularly difficult mission, but by the time anyone had a second (imagine!) computer in their house, broadband Internet was getting widespread. My first ever StarCraft LAN was in 2009, IIRC.
In high school I was living very close to the school and me and a group of friends gathered at my PC to play Worms after school and sometimes during school. HoMM took longer so needed more organization.
The top HN post talks about the importance of removing stuff, and based on this press release Olden Era takes the opposite "kitchen sink" approach. More heroes, more factions, more abilities, more spells, more character tree options, more more more. What makes HOMM2 and HOMM3 so unbelievably good is that the developers said no to so many things and instead spent their time on perfecting the game mechanics of the original DOS game.
It's still early, and the game might turn out great. I think the visuals look promising. But even if Olden Era flops good things might come of it. This genre of game was left for dead ages ago, and a revival of the genre is a good thing for sure. There are two generations of gamers who have never played the originals from the previous millennium, even though the games have held up incredibly well. Revived interest in these games might also encourage indie developers to take a stab at it.
AFAICT they only announced six factions, whereas the original game shipped with seven. The article doesn't seem to suggest there will be more heroes, just that they were paying attention to making each hero more distinct from the rest (which is IMO a good thing, since the heroes were a bit generic in the originals).
The spells system main difference is to reduce randomness, which again seems like an improvement.
So the area where MORE seems to be happening is in the skill tree section (and the new Faction Law system). I guess that's worth criticizing, but then again if you don't make some new stuff, why bother releasing a new game and not just a HoMM3 reforged version?
The original HOMM was a very simple game. HOMM2 was released one year later, after learning what worked and what didn't in the original game. Then, after three more years of work HOMM3 perfected those game mechanics. That's how HOMM3 ended up in a local maximum.
If you want to make a game that's better than HOMM3 in some meaningful ways I think you have to start with a much simpler game that shares some of the game mechanics. That means taking features out. Then you build on top of that to take the game in a different direction. If you take HOMM3 as a starting point you end up adding the features that were intentionally left out 25 years ago.
You also have the balance problem - it’s hard enough to make the three factions of StarCraft balanced and competitive against each other - with six or seven you have definite winners and losers when played optimally.
The later HOMM games DID take them in different directions- some of which are amazing on their own, to be fair - but being saddled with the history of HOMM3 held it back, in my opinion. Judged on their own they’re interesting and fun, but as “HOMM3 but better” they fall short.
Learning the original backstory for HOMM3 is eye opening - and one of the biggest rifts in the community is if the original vision is “good” or if what they shipped is “better” - I’ll admit to being in the latter camp, I think.
The Cove is acceptable but feels (to me) like an even more unbalanced version of Conflux - fun to play as not so much against.
I just don’t know if the sci-fi/ Factory town is something I can ever really get strongly behind. And this is from someone who has no problem with tech mods (GregTech New Horizons!) in Minecraft.
HOMM3 is very unbalanced and I think it adds to the charm. Some spells are useless and some spells are so good they almost break the game. Same for some unit stacks. Discovering cheesy strategies that allow you to take on a horde of computer enemies was part of the fun. If you make a multiplayer game you can't have that level of whimsy. (I don't know what HOMM3 multiplayer is like and I don't know how people make it work.)
They make it work by banning certain spells/heroes and reducing the game to a single "aspect" if you will - when and how you do the break. It's completely different.
You can learn a lot about the game from watching, and it'll improve your play, but it's not at all like a comp-stomp.
Community mod, that re-balances game mechanics, fixes bugs, adds features like advanced keyboard shortcuts, fullscreen hd, two new factions, online multiplayer lobby.
Vastly different spell strength plus random spells in mage guilds sucks. Even highly varied random starting artifacts is bad. Utterly useless skills like Diplomacy. There are small and aggravating quality of life issues like the autopathing taking more movement than manually doing things because of the way diagonals work.
I also consider the really abusable monster AI to be a detriment, though some people like this as it lets you access powerful resources "too early."
Useless skills were a big part of the fun as you would scheme to lock in all your basic skills to avoid duds. And if you didn’t, you had a game of risking certain choices to get benefits early at the expense of late game hero strength.
The wildly varying hero starting strengths weren’t as fun but I did enjoy how picking up on that taught the game mechanics. I remember HOMM mechanics details better than nearly any series.
Yeah this is most modern games - bewildering options. It’s the reason I stopped playing the Witcher 3 and various other games, and why Stray was amazing and so much fun to play
I think the follow up games to HOMAM3 suffered a lot from focus on graphics and looks, opposed to investing more time into gameplay, map design, and computer opponents. They lost a lot of charm. Skeptical, whether yet another 3D graphics title will reach the heights of HOMAM3. Just too much effort spent on unimportant stuff. Maybe hire some good 2D artists.
Big pet peeve also: A Heroes game without a hex grid battle field just feels wrong. Square logic is easier, but come on, get good developers and look at something like https://www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/ and figure out the logic. It is not magic.
What a coincidence, i just got back in HoMM yesterday. It started when I stumbled upon a video of the world championship — didnt know that was even a thing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cu8PdY2JnnI
One of the best games I played back in the day. However, I'm not "hyped" by this news. I'm way too afraid Ubisoft will favor nice gfx instead of a polished gameplay.
I hope to be wrong, and I'll probably give it a chance, but I definitely have no expectations regarding the games.
> All campaign missions have nonlinear events that allow hero choices, like encouraging a cowardly knight to fight alongside you or letting him flee," says Golubeva. "These choices will have consequences down the line. But the grander non-linearity comes from choosing the missions themselves - some of them are mutually exclusive. Do you support Sylvans or Temple in a conflict? Your choice will change the map of Jadame, the standing of factions, and fates of certain characters."
Ugh. Shut up Ubisoft. No, you’re not going to have meaningful non linear choices in a game like this.
I have a jaded sort of opinion that games like HOMM 2/3 and civ 2 and aoe 2 were really popular at the time because multiplayer was mostly about low skill LAN matches with your friends. On some level the presence of online multiplayer, discussion boards that layout meta ideas, and more common balance patches make strategy games much less fun. Because most people don’t really want to play them proficiently. They want to roll the dice and experiment and try and get an advantage and then give up and restart before finishing 2/3 of the game when the other player starts to snowball.
There were many strategy boards and meta discussion at that time.
Also, I really enjoyed those games as single player as well.
Civ is still very popular. RTS has died out, which is kind of sad. I’m not sure exactly why, I think we can make various speculations but it seems it just doesn’t have a proper niche anymore.
There may have been but they weren’t prominent in most people’s play. And they were just not nearly as competent. That was back in the day when people were arguing about controllers vs mouse for fps aiming.
These games are just not great for multiplayer. The gameplay of effective, competitive multiplayer is the opposite of what people enjoyed. Grinding out a few seconds off of your aoe 2 feudal age research time sucks. But it’s what matters.
Orienting on serious multiplayer sucks but casual is hard to encourage
For an example of this see some recorded online modern HOMM3 games. it’s all about the “break” and one battle with the enemy - which may be simply conceded and the game over.
Competitive RTS and variants has always been much different than the average player plodding along - my StarCraft games were closer to comp stomps or tower defense than anything featured online. And the tower defense genre covers that more completely for many people.
Not really competitive, but I once had a game, where I found 50 mighty gorgons and went on to defeat the main army of a friend, but the issue was, that he had town portal and I did not. So he could scratch together armies from every single castle he had and defeat me in the second battle.
After that, I saw clearly, how pointless it is, when you don't get important spells like that. But then playing against 6 bots on "king" or similar in a team became a great fun. Oh how they cheat ... or are "lucky". I swear, every single time I play the swamp folk, the computer players end up having more wyverns then I have, because they get all the neutral buildings around their castles. Infuriating!
Yeah, the existence of town pornhole is so important that either you need to guarantee starting towns get it, or you need to ban it outright. I believe most competitive play has it banned because of how powerful it is - but sometimes a scroll of town portal still appears ... or a shrine.
That was always one of the balance problems; the spells are either insanely powerful or absolutely useless. Summons boat
For fans of the heroes of might and magic I highly recommend trying "The horn of the abyss".
It is a community developed HOMAM3 extension pack, that is being enhanced and has, IMO, many new features while being fully compatible with the game spirit. And they fixed a ton of UI pain points. Coming with a very powerful map editor means that there are community created maps (up to "giant size" -- two steps larger than extra large) that take weeks of challenging play time to conquer.
Pair that with a full HOMAM3 version from "good old games" for about $10 and you will have an unlimited play, no registration, no licensing classic, valid forever. My 2c.
I was surprised at how well the community of HOMM3 players is doing. The expansion has support for online ladder play and people are quite active there.
HOMAM3 was my favorite game during grad school times (sharing top spot with Civilizations 1-3) 30 years ago.
Those computers and disks were long gone, but 3 years ago I found it on GOG, looked up some online maps, found HotA expansion and we are now playing that a couple of hours a week with my wife after work.
If someone told me that a few years ago I would laugh. The game does have a staying appeal.
Hot seat co-op comp stomp is some of the best conversational computer gaming around.
It’s turn based so there’s no real world time urgency, only one person is actually “doing” anything at a time, so the others can lounge around and talk, and the game is just exceptionally polished (and even balanced with a few tiny house rules like no infinite ball of skeletons).
The addons that stay true to the spirit make it even better.
FAIR WARNING: the online versus play that still is quite active is an entirely different game; you must watch enough to learn what a “break” is and how the online etiquette goes. It’s very interesting because it’s the exact opposite of the favorite strategy of turtling until unstoppable.
I hope they actually provide a working multiplayer, unlike HOMAM7, where the multiplayer is completely broken, and therefore fake. With HOMAM7 you buy a game thinking you will be able to play with friends, but beware, the game desyncs the moment when you could in any way interact with another player on the map. I will not forgive Ubisoft for pulling that one. I even reported this issue, but the technical support was very lacking and they acted as if this was surprising. Some back and forth with them led nowhere.
Since then I am very cautious when it comes to any new Heroes games. If Ubisoft has its hands in it, I would recommend everyone to first check whether what they deliver is actually working. Do not buy until proven to work. Otherwise they might pull a fraud you.
65 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 110 ms ] threadWe'd sometimes meet up and try to take turns to beat a particularly difficult mission, but by the time anyone had a second (imagine!) computer in their house, broadband Internet was getting widespread. My first ever StarCraft LAN was in 2009, IIRC.
I've done both thank you.
In high school I was living very close to the school and me and a group of friends gathered at my PC to play Worms after school and sometimes during school. HoMM took longer so needed more organization.
We’d be deciding to play Action Quake together, or maybe StarCraft or Tiberian Sun/Red Alert, or watch someone play Half Life, or HOMM3 hot seat.
The last would often win out if it was more of a chill night.
Open-source engine for Heroes of Might and Magic III :
https://github.com/vcmi/vcmi?tab=readme-ov-file
https://vcmi.eu/
It's still early, and the game might turn out great. I think the visuals look promising. But even if Olden Era flops good things might come of it. This genre of game was left for dead ages ago, and a revival of the genre is a good thing for sure. There are two generations of gamers who have never played the originals from the previous millennium, even though the games have held up incredibly well. Revived interest in these games might also encourage indie developers to take a stab at it.
The spells system main difference is to reduce randomness, which again seems like an improvement.
So the area where MORE seems to be happening is in the skill tree section (and the new Faction Law system). I guess that's worth criticizing, but then again if you don't make some new stuff, why bother releasing a new game and not just a HoMM3 reforged version?
If you want to make a game that's better than HOMM3 in some meaningful ways I think you have to start with a much simpler game that shares some of the game mechanics. That means taking features out. Then you build on top of that to take the game in a different direction. If you take HOMM3 as a starting point you end up adding the features that were intentionally left out 25 years ago.
The later HOMM games DID take them in different directions- some of which are amazing on their own, to be fair - but being saddled with the history of HOMM3 held it back, in my opinion. Judged on their own they’re interesting and fun, but as “HOMM3 but better” they fall short.
Learning the original backstory for HOMM3 is eye opening - and one of the biggest rifts in the community is if the original vision is “good” or if what they shipped is “better” - I’ll admit to being in the latter camp, I think.
The Cove is acceptable but feels (to me) like an even more unbalanced version of Conflux - fun to play as not so much against.
I just don’t know if the sci-fi/ Factory town is something I can ever really get strongly behind. And this is from someone who has no problem with tech mods (GregTech New Horizons!) in Minecraft.
If you want to watch just a bit go on twitch. There is often at least one or two HOTA matches going.
You can learn a lot about the game from watching, and it'll improve your play, but it's not at all like a comp-stomp.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMiGHcM6dlw&list=PLnz-Oj9Xf0...
Also HOMM3 evolved over 25 years is arguably just HOTA
This game still has very active pro-scene
Vastly different spell strength plus random spells in mage guilds sucks. Even highly varied random starting artifacts is bad. Utterly useless skills like Diplomacy. There are small and aggravating quality of life issues like the autopathing taking more movement than manually doing things because of the way diagonals work.
I also consider the really abusable monster AI to be a detriment, though some people like this as it lets you access powerful resources "too early."
Thats a feature! It allows skilled players to outsmart the game. Speed up and snowball opponents.
HOMM3 is all about getting to the point where it feels like you are cheating.
Like stack of upgraded vampires, max earth magic and resurect, etc.
That's what made that game so much fun.
The wildly varying hero starting strengths weren’t as fun but I did enjoy how picking up on that taught the game mechanics. I remember HOMM mechanics details better than nearly any series.
Now I have maybe 15 minutes a week.
Big pet peeve also: A Heroes game without a hex grid battle field just feels wrong. Square logic is easier, but come on, get good developers and look at something like https://www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/ and figure out the logic. It is not magic.
[0] http://www.heroesofmightandmagic.com/heroes3ab/forgetown.sht...
I hope to be wrong, and I'll probably give it a chance, but I definitely have no expectations regarding the games.
And this is without taking into account if the game will be any good or not.
Ugh. Shut up Ubisoft. No, you’re not going to have meaningful non linear choices in a game like this.
I have a jaded sort of opinion that games like HOMM 2/3 and civ 2 and aoe 2 were really popular at the time because multiplayer was mostly about low skill LAN matches with your friends. On some level the presence of online multiplayer, discussion boards that layout meta ideas, and more common balance patches make strategy games much less fun. Because most people don’t really want to play them proficiently. They want to roll the dice and experiment and try and get an advantage and then give up and restart before finishing 2/3 of the game when the other player starts to snowball.
Also, I really enjoyed those games as single player as well.
Civ is still very popular. RTS has died out, which is kind of sad. I’m not sure exactly why, I think we can make various speculations but it seems it just doesn’t have a proper niche anymore.
These games are just not great for multiplayer. The gameplay of effective, competitive multiplayer is the opposite of what people enjoyed. Grinding out a few seconds off of your aoe 2 feudal age research time sucks. But it’s what matters.
Orienting on serious multiplayer sucks but casual is hard to encourage
Competitive RTS and variants has always been much different than the average player plodding along - my StarCraft games were closer to comp stomps or tower defense than anything featured online. And the tower defense genre covers that more completely for many people.
After that, I saw clearly, how pointless it is, when you don't get important spells like that. But then playing against 6 bots on "king" or similar in a team became a great fun. Oh how they cheat ... or are "lucky". I swear, every single time I play the swamp folk, the computer players end up having more wyverns then I have, because they get all the neutral buildings around their castles. Infuriating!
That was always one of the balance problems; the spells are either insanely powerful or absolutely useless. Summons boat
It is a community developed HOMAM3 extension pack, that is being enhanced and has, IMO, many new features while being fully compatible with the game spirit. And they fixed a ton of UI pain points. Coming with a very powerful map editor means that there are community created maps (up to "giant size" -- two steps larger than extra large) that take weeks of challenging play time to conquer.
Pair that with a full HOMAM3 version from "good old games" for about $10 and you will have an unlimited play, no registration, no licensing classic, valid forever. My 2c.
Those computers and disks were long gone, but 3 years ago I found it on GOG, looked up some online maps, found HotA expansion and we are now playing that a couple of hours a week with my wife after work.
If someone told me that a few years ago I would laugh. The game does have a staying appeal.
It’s turn based so there’s no real world time urgency, only one person is actually “doing” anything at a time, so the others can lounge around and talk, and the game is just exceptionally polished (and even balanced with a few tiny house rules like no infinite ball of skeletons).
The addons that stay true to the spirit make it even better.
FAIR WARNING: the online versus play that still is quite active is an entirely different game; you must watch enough to learn what a “break” is and how the online etiquette goes. It’s very interesting because it’s the exact opposite of the favorite strategy of turtling until unstoppable.
Since then I am very cautious when it comes to any new Heroes games. If Ubisoft has its hands in it, I would recommend everyone to first check whether what they deliver is actually working. Do not buy until proven to work. Otherwise they might pull a fraud you.