… and it looks perfect
So, not a remake, but a throwback. The thing that really stood out to me was how bland the music was though. The HoMM series has such incredible music in every entry (maybe not in 6, haven’t played it), but these songs sound super generic. Still, the games are great and it’s awesome there’s a new entry.
I agree that there is something bland about the aesthetics of the game. From a distance (or in a thumbnail), it looks very good and faithful to the art style of the original games, just with some extra bells and whistles. However, upon closer examination there is something about the design language which feels like I’m looking at a mobile game ad. It could be that I associate HoMM with a hyper specific micro genre of fantasy art. My views are very HoMM 2 coded, and that game feels its art was ripped from the book jackets of Del Rey and Tor published paperbacks circa 1987. I love the look, especially the hero portraits.
So, this new look doesn’t really do anything for me. I’m not knowledgeable enough to suggest that AI was used to design some of these assets, but that’s the impression the art gives me, which I’m sure was not their intent.
Its a Ubisoft game… What’s the catch?
Edit: didn’t realize it was from hooded horse. Never in my life I thought I would see Ubisoft license out an IP they own to a non Ubisoft team. I feel stupid for this and I’m sorry.
But, it’s not? Unless you’re aware of something I’m not, this game is published by Hooded Horse, and developed by Team Unfrozen.
Well I feel stupid. I’m pretty oblivious to homm and don’t really follow it. My bad for not looking too deep into it. Reason I assumed it was a Ubisoft game is because I saw somewhere on YouTube Ubisoft promoting the 30th anniversary. And Ubisoft is the current IP holder of homm. I never in my life thought Ubisoft would license out an IP they own to a non Ubisoft team.
No, you’re fine, I totally understand the mistake. I AM a pretty big HoMM fan and I was unaware that they had licensed out the IP as well, so I can’t blame you for not knowing.
Yes.
I realize when you search Steam there’s a lot of successful iterations of the classic Fire Emblem formula. Makes me wonder if any teams have done the same for HOMM3. I remember there was the fanmade expansion for it, it seems viable to invent a story/system from scratch.
EDIT: I should read other comments before commenting.
For those unaware, there is also Heroes of Science and Fiction, which is essentially homm 3 with a fresh scifi coat of paint and lots of qol stuff. It’s in early access but man it catches the vibe so well.
You gotta share the link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2147380/Heroes_of_Science_and_Fiction/
Oh man it looks great
I never really got into Heroes of Might and Magic. Somehow the kind of strategy this is never really captured me.
Oh shit. Free demo too. I’ll see if it has the same magic for my kid that it did for me
The day they start charging for playing a demo…
The Zone of the Enders series is most remembered for ZoE1 being the game everyone bought to play the MGS2 demo.
And the Crash Bandicoot and Spyro games on the PS1 tended to have the demo for the latest of the other unlocked with a button sequence on the main menu.
I want to say Final Fantasy also did that nonsense with one or more of their numbered installments?
And all of that forgets that, in the days prior to the internet (or, the internet arriving on consoles), it was very popular to subscribe to a magazine to get a monthly demo disc.
Haha I absolutely bought ZoE1 to get the mgs2 demo.
I then forced myself to play ZoE.
I remember telling everyone I liked it. But at my age, I can’t remember if I actually did.
I was randomly up at 4, shouldn’t have been on my phone at all. Word salad.
So many incredible memories with that game! My friend and I used to play really long hot seat games culminating in a big battle at the end. So much fun.
There is also Hero’s Hour, a fresh(relatively) indie take on the HoMM series. One major difference that might be polarising is that every unit is displayed rather than being a single stack, and combat happens live rather than in turns. But you can set it super slow and pause too if need be.
I generally hate RTS, but I really enjoyed it. It’s got a fair bit of content. And so many factions that are all quite different from each other.
I have a fairly decent computer(4070s and a 7800x3d), it took about 100’000 units in active combat to start slowing it down. So no worries about how big HoMM armies can get and if it could run them all live. It can. Most of those units had to be summons, as it would take a pretty high levelled hero to have the stats necessary to field more than 10k units.
I loved Hero’s Hour, mostly because of it was built using Game Maker Studio, that scrappy drag and drop game making tool.
It’s fun new version. Fresh but familiar.
Been waiting for this to release for a while now. I am occasionally still playing Homm3 Complete and have tried Songs of Conquest , which is a decent newer alternative, but I don’t think it comes close to Homm.
Had the same experience with Songs of Conquest. Beautiful game, but something felt off that I can’t put my finger on. The game felt really snowball-y, where your chances to win depend strongly on what resources you control early on, and the magic system (while interesting) felt really imbalanced. Nothing really managed to recreate the HoMM feeling for me.
No way! I loved II and III when I was at school. Absolutely giving this a blast tonight.
Man I really used to like HOMM3 back in the day, but the gameplay is just so dated right now.
Dude, the gameplay, especially with HotA aged very well.
As someone who’s has hundreds of hours on this and many 4x that came after it, agree to disagree
Fair enough. For me, the gameplay formula is a bit like chess. Very analytical and logical, and it just works perfectly.
I remember spending a very long time trying to download a demo of that game over dialup, was absolutely worth it
