Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to this new episode of Fog of Warcast. And i as you might have heard here, I am not Andreas. It's actually Johan doing the introduction from once and we are not the usual guys. I mean, I'm here.
Speaker: Andreas is still here. Unfortunately, Magnus Ek is not here, but we have been joined, which is fit and apt for this episode. by I would say the guy that's played the most of Heroes of Might Magic ah that I've ever known a guy to play and that is Pontus Valtré a very warm welcome to this podcast Fog of Warcast it's great to have you here and would you like to introduce yourself who are you and why are you here
Speaker: Thank you very much, Johan. um Yeah, my name is Pontus Valtré. I live in Stockholm, as Andreas does, and on working as an actuary during my days.
Speaker: um As you said, I played quite a lot of heroes. a Heroes 3, mainly, ah during my days. And otherwise, i to play quite a lot of Polish Gate 3 at the moment and here is Hearts of Iron.
Speaker: yeah but Because you're in the same Hearts of Iron group that me, Andreas and Magnus are also in. there yeah So I know there's a lot of that. You said you played Baldur's Gate 3 recently.
Speaker: I mean, this is a strategy podcast. We won't hold that against you, but I would have preferred if you would have played something strategy gamey. But I mean, you're guest, so we're letting that slide.
Speaker: Yeah, because I was playing the very famous strategy games PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. And I've actually been playing Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, so I mean, none of us have been playing strategy games for the past time. But Andreas, how are you?
Speaker: Well, I'm an excellent, actually. It's ah really refreshing to not be doing the intro. And I am recovered from a weekend of board gaming with, well, you two fine gentlemen. So, yeah finally, like, back on track.
Speaker: it's It's good that are you're back on track. I have to apologize to all your listeners. We were spending the weekend together also with Magnus and as soon as these guys left, I came down with a terrible, terrible cold. I'm just getting out of it. So if I'm sounding like the Swedish artist Torström during this, I apologize. It will be better next time.
Speaker: I think you more apt since we're doing you say this in English is if I sound a lot like Bob Dylan. Yeah, it I also have the Bob Dylan shirt on me. So, i mean, this this could can only get better there. But we're not here to talk about Bob Dylan or what Pontus does for living or where Magnus is.
Speaker: He will probably be back next episode. we We are here to talk about... Heroes of Might and Magic. And I think this is a game series that everyone has an opinion on.
Speaker: And most of the opinions are probably Heroes 3 is great. Everything after Heroes 3 is crap. I know that you, Andreas, do not share this value.
Speaker: But But yeah just a brief little history what we're going to go through. and We're going to mention quickly King's Bounty, and then talk a bit about Heroes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, and also the upcoming games.
Speaker: But I would like to have our guest here to start. Fontes, you've played a lot of Heroes, and you mentioned it in the intro, but which Heroes of Mike and Magic game is your favorite, and why is it your favorite?
Speaker: ah Heroes 3. um I've played the four first ones. So Kingsbound to Heroes 1, 2, 3. I have looked at a couple of other ones, but ah I've considered them worse than Heroes 3 and never really played them.
Speaker: Heroes 3 was straight up, in all manner of speaking, better than Heroes 2. So when Heroes 3 came out, I directly...
Speaker: went over to Heroes 3 and have another neither gone back nor gone forward. You stopped at Heroes 3. That's basically what the game became as good as it could be.
Speaker: and Yes. In that instance. ah Then I have to ask this. Favorite faction, something like that, just for viewers, listeners, sorry.
Speaker: I um a like the factions that are doing magic but still have strong units. so So dungeon and tower.
Speaker: Onion and Tower. Yeah, and I do like them. There's there's also something fun about Necromancers. I do love them. Even though they were introduced firstly to Heroes 2, I don't think they were in Heroes 1 originally.
Speaker: ah So there's quite a new faction. But Andreas, so what about you? which Which game tickles your fancy? Well, this one is tricky because Heroes of Mighty Magic 3 meets the best Heroes of Mighty and Magic.
Speaker: It is also very old. um Very, very old. And this is a recurring theme on these podcasts. Like, oh, has have you played any new strategy game? Yeah, I played a little bit of North Garden and I went back to play a 20-year-old Turtle War game.
Speaker: And it is the same here. Where I might diverge a little bit is that I actually grew up with Heroes of Might Magic 4. And I think it is a really good game.
Speaker: It is not objectively, it's not as good as Heroes of Might Magic 3. um There are things about 4 that just makes it less playable in some ways.
Speaker: And we're going to go into it. But I like it. I like it a lot. There are also advantages to it. I also want add that in every strategy game, if you give me a faction that has archers, which are strong enough that I don't need to lose units in a battle, I'm going to play that faction.
Speaker: So for me, that's Ramparts in Heroes 3. Yeah. Heroes 4 is really annoying in that they swap the factions around the bunch. So almost all the units remains in some way, but they are in in like new mashed up factions, which is going to confuse me a lot.
Speaker: ah yeah Yeah, I can get that. and I mean, yeah Rampart is is also a really fun faction. I mean, I don't hate any faction in it. But to come back to the point you said, me and Pontus, we grew up with two and three. And for me, it kind of stops with three. That's that's kind of the the best game there is. I gave four Sean.
Speaker: And I know we had this discussion during our board weekend, and and board gaming weekend. It wasn't a board weekend. yeah But it I know, i come down hard on Heroes of Magic 4 and probably a lot harder than it deserves, especially when you start comparing it to 5 and 6, which are really, in my point of view, unplayable games. But looking at Heroes of Magic, I think something that you said before we started recording, Andreas, is
Speaker: They had a core concept with Heroes of Might and Magic 1, then the evolution from 1 into 2, and the evolution from 2 into 3. three I mean, was kind of a core formula there.
Speaker: and Or do do you guys agree with me here, or...?
Speaker: Yes, so i have never actually played a King's Bounty, but from Heroes of My Thematic 1 onwards, there are a bunch of things that just, well, essentially are the same all the time, like...
Speaker: The way cities works, the way you move one single um avatar around the map, the sort of the layout for your units, the fact that you essentially have this this sort of style of one stylized unit with a number beneath it to de determining how big it is rather than having many of whatever it is you have.
Speaker: like These things recur throughout all the games, and it also means that the gameplay loop has some similarities for all the games. Essentially, you... get some kind of hero, you try to slowly build up your city, you try to slowly stack an army with him, you run around on the map, you soon run into the problem that if you split up into two armies, each of them can be beaten, so you need to concentrate everything in one army.
Speaker: You sort of lay the focus of one point of the map most of the times, even if you have like small secondary heroes doing small things on the map. like yeah And it compared to other strategy games, it sort of brings you into this sort of following this one guy doing this one thing and most of the time.
Speaker: And that just kept going for a really long time. And the city battles were just upgrades up upon upgrades and better and better. But it was sort of the same stylized feel of battle. It's sort of the same hex based.
Speaker: Everything was sort of similar until I would say Heroes 5 came and started breaking it. Yeah, yeah i I can agree with you there. And i think that's been a reoccurring theme between 1, 2, 3 and also 4 that you had. You essentially have one Batman and he has a bunch of Robins running around doing the menial task. But you have this one guy up there.
Speaker: Pontus, you mentioned you played a lot of 2 and then transitioned over to 3. What do you think it was the... if I mean, there were some, but which do you think was the the biggest change between Heroes 2 and Heroes 3? Yes, I'm going to say Heroes 1 and 2 because I can't be bothered to see saying Heroes of Might and Magic and then the number. I'm going to say Heroes 2 and 3. Bear with me.
Speaker: ah Yeah, that is fine. I think every everyone does, just because Heroes of Mathematics is such a long thing to say. um i think there are several, so to say, upgrades between 1, 2, 3.
Speaker: ah one two three ah one I could mention is is the factions I think in one in the heroes one there's four factions in the two there's six and in the three it's eight in the base game and then in the expansion there is nine um so um that that is one dimension the second dimension is graphics it's just getting better and better um a third dimension is gameplay it gets easier to
Speaker: um to play it's more um
Speaker: visually good. ah You can do more things. um And the last one that I think of is um how the units are upgraded.
Speaker: So in the first one, I'm not sure if any units are upgraded or just a few. In the second game, there is a few, but maybe half of them.
Speaker: And in third one, it's all of them. Yeah, I think in Heroes 1 it's like one or two units, if any, of that can get upgraded. But some can probably check that out.
Speaker: Yeah, I can totally agree with that, with the feel and the aesthetics with it coming up and the more factions. and But also something that that makes this series great is also, for me at least, the the soundtrack.
Speaker: of it is, and i I don't say this enough for for games with good soundtracks because there aren't that many out there or we haven't touched all of them yet, but it has a really compelling soundtrack that I still to this day can use as music for Dungeons and Dragons campaigns or other games when you just want to set a mood. I think that's also worth ah a little mention and that's been consistent throughout 1, 2, 3, 4 four Five, I didn't play enough to bother to listen to the music because I just thought it was really, really ugly.
Speaker: Yeah, like I can... um it concur with you there the the heroes of mathemagic games have really good music i've listened to it while working ah the five also has really good music um so so i've actually listened to the heroes five music uh but not played the game um The opposite here, Heroes of Mathematic 5 arrived just at a time when I started listening to angry metal music, no matter what I played.
Speaker: No footsteps in Counter-Strike, just angry metal music. No cannons in Cossacks, just angry metal music. No fairy soundtrack in Citizen Heroes, just metal music.
Speaker: So Heroes Mathematic 4 is the last one where i actually listened to the soundtrack and it was amazing. yeah Yeah. um Even though they had some really weird coding ideas. So it was with this one thing. I don't know it was a bug or if it was intended or it was patched after I bought it.
Speaker: But there is one of the factions. ah They have some weird names in Heroes 4. But it's... ah um God, I can't remember it. It's the...
Speaker: sort of dungeon-ish faction chaos faction fire magic faction they have swapped everything around in 4 compared to 3 but hey they have this really sort of operatic screaming thing going ah whenever you enter their tents And then it quits when you exit them and it returns when you enter them and quits. And it got really jarring if you needed to recheck something in the same city several times.
Speaker: You get just get met by this screaming tent every time. More or less. More or less. But I think the music is also something that kind of cements a lot of people to to having Heroes of Might and Magic 3 as one of the best games. I mean, there's nine beautiful factions in it ah and all are playable.
Speaker: some Some slight uses in in power scaling for them and some are downright always gonna be bad but the music the look and feel from it the campaigns the and single and play missions the hot seat I mean and also the kind of basic but basic but stunning graphics for for what they are I mean it's a really
Speaker: good-looking game. ah Even now, I mean, almost... What what is it? I think it was released in 96? like Something like that?
Speaker: yeah So, I mean, it's nearly 30 years old. Here's 3 is 99, I think. Here's five um the Heroes 2 is somewhere in between. yeah Heroes 2 is 9 to 6. Yeah, okay. but Are you standing corrected?
Speaker: Sure. It's nearly 30 years old and and it still looks great and it's still playable. Unless you try to play multiplayer because that doesn't work anymore. But unless you track down mods and stuff like that. But I mean, it's still a great little game. Yeah.
Speaker: but Which one did you say wasn't multiplayer-able? ah When you take Heroes 3 from Steam, and me and my girlfriend tried it, it doesn't work. you You need to go from other sources. so you i there There are two ways to play it, if I'm not misremembering. Either you use the HD mod, it seems to also add a multiplayer functionality, or you need to buy the remastered version, which is a rip-off.
Speaker: Yep, it is. and But that is ah should have functional multiplayer as well. Yep. It's a little bit annoying. I used to play a Heroes 3 multiplayer. We had a bunch of people who were attending board meetings together.
Speaker: and essentially, we used to pass a computer along hot seating whilst having meetings. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and that's kind of, I mean, me and Pontus, before you guys and not knowing this, me and grade and used to play a lot of Dungeons and Dragons. And when someone was away or out doing their own stuff in those campaigns, you went down and took your turn on the hot seat computer.
Speaker: And played Heroes of Mind and 3. So, I mean, it's always been a part of this kind of fantasy setting for me. When someone says, name a fantasy game, I tend to go directly to Heroes of Mind and Magic.
Speaker: That or Baldur's Gate. I mean, but since this is a strategy game podcast, we're going to say it's Heroes 3 for it. Yeah. for it yes But now we've been diving into Heroes 3. Do we want to run through 1 and 2 anymore? or how can we do I think essentially that 1 and 2 are building on top of each other to come to towards Heroes 3.
Speaker: I think the it's more interesting to talk about the shift between Heroes 3, then 4, and then what they try to do with 5 and 6 and what they're going to try to do with the upcoming games. because there is like There is a shift between 3 and 4. Some things are probably good, but most of them pisses me off.
Speaker: ah But Andreas, I know you are the defendant of Heroes of Might of Magic 4, so I'm going to let you start here. Okay, so let me introduce Heroes Might of Magic 4 for all you guys then.
Speaker: ah It's um released in 2002.
Speaker: But compared to a lot of early 2000s games, they still hadn't gotten to the point where they really wanted to do 3D animation stuff with the graphics.
Speaker: Which means that if you look at it, it is essentially a Heroes of Might and Magic game. If you recognize Heroes of Might Magic 3, you will recognize Heroes of Might and Magic 4 until you get into some of the gameplay.
Speaker: But it means you have the same sort of layout, you have the same sort of map, it's cleared up a little, so it's a little bit clearer, a little bit less messy. Icons are a little bit bigger, a little bit easier to recognize, nothing massive. It's just sort of an update until you start playing.
Speaker: And the thing is that what they first of all changed, which will jump out to everyone, is the entire mechanism of the heroes. And in a game called Heroes of Might and Magic, as you can guess, heroes are a big deal.
Speaker: so as I said in the Swift rundown before, ah the core gameplay loop is essentially build up a town, get a hero, stuff an army into him, go out on the map and do things.
Speaker: if you're If you have an army with no hero, it can't leave your town. ah And that is the same in Heroes of Mathematic 4. But they, for some reason, made the hero and a unit on the field.
Speaker: So in 1, 2, and 3, the hero is sort of something abstract. say An army has a hero, but there is no hero on the field. it's just sort of an an icon off to the side, and it has a spellbook, in and it can cast spells or have abilities and stuff.
Speaker: In 4, it becomes a unit, stuck but together with the rest of your unit. It has a health bar, a mana bar, and it just functions as a unit. The advantage to this is that it's way clearer when your hero is doing things.
Speaker: You can only cast a spell if it's your hero's turn, not just in general if it's your turn, for example. The bad thing is that you can also snipe off heroes. yeah ah Heroes can die, not just from your army losing, but essentially from anyone just firing an arrow at them.
Speaker: yeah And this is also one of the best gameplay mechanic weaknesses because it's ruined multiplayer. Multiplayer essentially just became about hero sniping.
Speaker: or building formations of other units around your hero. It was so tight that you couldn't shoot into them. It also meant that playing the faction I described previous, which was called Asylum, I just remembered, they had a bunch of fire magicians who could cast the AOE damage spells.
Speaker: And essentially, one of the metas became just level up a fire magician, cast fireball on the other side's hero, blow them up, win. um And that was probably the thing that annoyed most ah classic or most veteran players of Heroes 3.
Speaker: They also changed the recruitment formula. So in Heroes of Mathematics, in the old style, once every week, all of your buildings from which you can recruit soldiers ah had their populations replenished and you could recruit a bunch of of units once every week.
Speaker: ah In Heroes of Might and Magic 4, they are spread out across the weeks, like once every day or every third day or whatever, depending on the replenishment rate you could recruit.
Speaker: And these are really the big two things. They still keep a large amount of resources. ah We're going to have to talk about resources and strategy games sometimes, but in Heroes of Might Magic, you have a lot of resources and you need each one of them for specific purposes.
Speaker: and They retained most of the same functionalities, the spellbook system, the spell system. They maybe dumbed it down a little bit. And then they did something which the expansion fixed, but which I think annoyed a lot of people.
Speaker: They removed unit upgrades. Yeah, I also have to say in regards to this, they also removed the amount of resources. I mean, they stuck sulfur and gems and all that into kind of one resource tree instead, which I didn't like.
Speaker: It also... No, no, they kept, so sulfur is one, mercury is gems is one, crystal is one still. I think it's five with a... Yeah, it could be five. Sorry there.
Speaker: They did one more what bad thing, which I should mention. Yep. So this is still one of the games where you have the hex-based battlefield moving units around. They made the hexes invisible.
Speaker: Yeah, which is just done. I don't know how many times I tried to step onto a tower in a city battle and just speak right next to it. And the guy just steps down and now he's in the worst position possible instead of the best position possible.
Speaker: Yeah, um but I mean, I give this a lot of heat. and It's not as bad as I remember it, probably. I have to replay it. But but the hero sniping bugs me.
Speaker: It really bugs me, especially in multiplayer, because it it makes it, as you say... It's like playing an undead faction in Warhammer Total War. You hear a snipe and the undead break.
Speaker: They crumble. And in that sense, yes, it works. But in in a game ah as Heroes Mind Magic, it it was too big of a shift for me going from three to four to have that hero sniping system.
Speaker: Yeah. But then again, it it is a good-looking game. It it has a nice vibe. it's not yes It's not the same vibe as I got from Heroes 3, and I think that's probably the thing that makes it slightly worse for me. And as we said before, Heroes 3 is kind of the pinnacle, the lynched up the best of the games here. I don't know, Pontus, how do you feel in this
Speaker: ah Regarding the shift from from three to four? ye I would say I agree with you in a lot of ways. I tried four once or twice, I think. had a good friend that got it, and and we tried it out together.
Speaker: it... it ah do
Speaker: It was just worse in some ways that I didn't like. ah it was The graphic looked nice, but it wasn't the same. And in some ways it was more clumsy, even if it looked better.
Speaker: ah they they started doing a little bit ah of 3D as well. um and and yeah i i didn't get the same feeling as Heroes 3.
Speaker: like I didn't think it was a better game, and I went back to Heroes 3. so So basically for you and me, Pontus, we judged it on it's not as good as Heroes 3, so therefore it has to be really bad. Let's go back to Heroes 3.
Speaker: but yeah yeah That's one of the weird things about this game series, because you can actually do that. Heroes 3 is massive. There's so many fan-made maps. and there was First of all, there are so many original like yeah core game maps and core game modes and core game scenarios.
Speaker: And then there's all the fan-made stuff. And it's just immense. yeah Do we maybe want to touch a bit on, kind of because Pontus, I know you have a lot of things to say about this, it the community, I mean, the modding community and the fan base community of just doing the maps and and all that.
Speaker: Because, I mean, when I log into Heroes 3, there's still new maps coming out. there's There's still new mods coming for it. So ah do you want to touch something on that, Pontus?
Speaker: ah Yeah, and it's quite fascinating with Heroes 3 because it's still large so support group that is working with Heroes 3. There are still people doing maps, there are still new mods coming out that are updated as we speak. um For example, Huta, Heroes of the Abyss.
Speaker: ah There was a a faction coming out just a few months ago. ah So so um it's quite amazing with ah a game that is almost...
Speaker: more than 25 years old, that is still this much enthusiasm about. yeah. um yeah Yeah, it's always nice to see a live and thriving community still engaging in it. And I think that's one of the big parts of what makes Heroes 3 still playable, I would say.
Speaker: But we also...
Speaker: I really don't want to do this, but I think for fairness and for all sake, we have to get into Heroes 5 and 6, unfortunately. and i Andreas, do you want to lead the charge on these games?
Speaker: Well, I can try. Heroes of Mathematic 5 is interesting. If you look at Steam, it actually has very good reviews. People like it. I don't.
Speaker: Heroes of Mathematic 5 is still keeping the sort of overworld map style of the overworld. And I will add that 6 sort of starts to get rid of it in favor of more and more of a sort of third-person RPG-feely style.
Speaker: It's sort of hard to put your finger on. But already in 5, it gets more sort of... and early 2000s 3D on the map as well as on the battlefield.
Speaker: ah For some reason they really liked the idea from Heroes 4 of not properly displaying the grid. um It's a fun when I look back at screenshots of it. um It looks in many ways more like a fighting game.
Speaker: rather than a battlefield. um And they're really trying to add a lot of 3D graphics. And the game is from 2006. And I think that might be the problem. Because in 2006, RPGs were getting really good graphics again, really proper graphics again. And it feels a lot like they wanted it to look more and more like an RPG.
Speaker: And this is essentially what lost it on me, actually. The game just didn't look nice when I played it. It was hard to get the strategy game overview feel from it.
Speaker: The map was more zoomed in, more 3D, more animated, more messy. It just felt more and more like a turn-based version of Spellforce or something like that with a hero and his army running around in an RPG than a strategy game.
Speaker: ah So that is my skating criticism yeah as well as a swift, short the description. Yeah, I can agree with that, especially the last one with when you said it felt like Spellforge.
Speaker: for But ah because I had a feeling it felt like Warcraft 3 but turn-based. And Warcraft 3 came out 2002 or something like that. I did not like it. I did not like the way they tried to do something that this could be Heroes 3, but 3D graphic.
Speaker: No, it just didn't do anything for me. But still, lot of people like it. Respect to them. We can't like everything. ah You are objectively wrong. Try to play Heroes Magnetic 3 instead. It's a much better game.
Speaker: But if I have to say something good for for Heroes 5, it would probably but be that it it had a the campaign was a lot better than the campaign in Heroes 4, I have to say. from From what I played, what little I played.
Speaker: I love the campaigns in Heroes 4, but they're very short. Yeah, kind of what I was trying to get to here. ah Pontus, did you ever delve into Heroes of Might and Magic 5?
Speaker: ah Usually I'm not a very conservative person, but when it comes to Heroes 3, or Heroes, when it comes to Heroes, I am very much so.
Speaker: I did ah play a little bit of Heroes 4. I went back to Heroes 3. After that, I've never played any other here is three here Heroes games.
Speaker: I've always been enthusiastic about new ones coming out. And then I've heard myself around and haven't heard...
Speaker: That grew great career reviews, so I never started playing them. Yeah, you in Heroes 5 you did not miss anything. But I have to say one thing for Heroes 5 that's on the positive plus side.
Speaker: It's not Heroes 6. And that's the only positive I can say about it. Yeah, I want to add something before we move on to Hero 6. Before people start shouting, you people might already be shouting at us.
Speaker: If I'm not misremembering, you can get sort of degree the grid back. I can't remember if it's a mod or if it's a setting, but you can get a grid. Unfortunately, the grid is made out of squares.
Speaker: And Hero 6, this... this Becomes even more apparent. You get the sort of squares on the battlefield map. And they're ugly. Yeah they're really really ugly. but that Highlighted a sort of neon green thingy.
Speaker: Yeah but that's not the biggest issues I have with Heroes 6. To consider Heroes 6. Because if Heroes 5 still had a good reviews. Heroes 6 has really poor reviews.
Speaker: Yeah, well, first first of all, I'm going to start with this. I don't remember which episode I had, but when if yeah but it was when we talked about the worst strategy RTS games we've played, and I smashed the last Command & Conquer because you had to be online.
Speaker: yeah And for Heroes of Mathematics 6, they had this online coupling. You had to be online online. to get certain functions like get Dynasty weapons, XP system and and being a game when it came out servers weren't always up, they crashed so you kind of missed out on this which which is so just a dumb way, don't do that, never ever.
Speaker: I shouldn't have to be online to play a game in single player, that's that's my prerogative to think. And this is the game that also kind of clumped down the resources. They removed sulfur, they removed gems, so they went from five to four resources, which kind of makes a lot the economy game too easy in that way. And they also introduced town conversions.
Speaker: which means you could convert every city you captured to your own faction, which kind of eliminates point of the game that they had, that now I have these different units, how can I stack it up?
Speaker: If you just town convert it, which I think is... It's not in line with the game ah or the feel of the game. I do not like that. And for me, this this game is when they lost the soul of the series.
Speaker: yeah Yeah, so Hero 6 is essentially where I stopped playing. I dipped a little bit into it and I stopped. And there are some reasons for it. The first is that this is one of the games that feels...
Speaker: or felt to me to be actually smaller than the other. Heroes 4 was still a big game. In many ways, it I think it was in some ways larger than 3, depending on like which metrics you you evaluated on.
Speaker: Five felt a little bit cramped and six felt RPG small rather than strategy game. And this should be added is in 2011. And I've been talking about previously on this podcast that about how I feel that sometimes during the last 10 or 20 years, um a lot of strategy games try to simplify change
Speaker: as a consequence, ah essentially became worse. a Complexity is one of the things that makes strategy games really interesting. It's where the challenge is. You have to plan around there being a lot of features, a lot of resources. You need to find the exact right mix of resources and resource gain in order to supply your army, stuff like that.
Speaker: And this just wanted it streamlined down to essentially hero walking around with soldiers and fighting. That's what I felt. Yeah, yeah i this might be controversial, but I don't want to classify it as a strategy game, yeah Hero 6. I want to classify it as a tactics game.
Speaker: because they they removed and simplified so much of the strategy that is until the point it gets what you said, Andreas, heroes walking around and fighting it out. Basically that.
Speaker: And yes, I can agree with the, the feeling it came in the that age when strategy games were at an all time low because first person shooters and quick games were all the rage.
Speaker: And, And it's sad. It is actually a really, really sad to see that, especially when they've done so good before and kind of ending on that note.
Speaker: But Pontus, you spoke a bit about the, they have some things upcoming. Yeah. There is also 7, but it ah as far I had never played it. I never played it. 7 essentially it looks like a prettier version of 6. And when I look at reviews, it's pretty much what they described it as. Right. So just take maybe we can do this, Andreas. When you edit this, at just take what I say about 6 and then repeat it again. And we say we've done 7. I've never played 7.
Speaker: I stopped after 6. Yes. Yes.
Speaker: ah But they are going for for newer games, right? Or are they going for a remastered edition now? I'm not totally sure.
Speaker: It's called Heroes of Might and Magic Olden Era. so So it's not Heroes 8. um And I think it is an official prequel to the genre.
Speaker: I'm not exactly sure what what it means, but I think and I hope that it will be kind of a um remaster of like the olden days of the game.
Speaker: Yeah, actually quick good link now. am incredibly excited about this game. I have it on my wish list on Steam. um It's supposed to be released ah before ah um this summer or in this in in the second quarter of 2025. And that worries me because that's soon.
Speaker: And if you say second quarter, just a few months ah um from the end of the quarter, then you're probably delayed. yeah But looking at the screenshots or at least the art for it, it essentially, what they're presenting is essentially what Fyber should have been.
Speaker: um very cleaned up, very modern styled version of Heroes of Might Magic 3. It looks more like fairy tale art rather than 3D generated or 3D animation.
Speaker: um
Speaker: Like, essentially what they have shown so far looks beautiful and is essentially what all the Heroes of Magic 3 players wish for. But I also have only seen anything about this on Steam. I haven't seen any marketing for it and I am the target audience for this game. Yeah, I would say I'm also the target audience for this and I did a quick googling now just to look at it and...
Speaker: Damn it, I got excited. but This is the game I want. This could be the spiritual kind of follow-up Heroes of Might Magic 3. So I think we need to do this. When it comes out, we need to play it, and then we need to have Pontus back here on the podcast, and we can talk about this game.
Speaker: Because and this looks like... what I want from Horizon Mike. should probably be sad. So the developers is a studio named Unfrozen, which I've never heard of, but the publisher is Ubisoft. So it's still Ubisoft. And well, if Ubisoft markets a game, then it's probably going to arrive. Yeah.
Speaker: And it's probably not going to be a ripoff. Yeah. No, I mean, you can say a lot about Ubisoft, but when they market a game, it's going to come out. so So fingers crossed for this. I mean, time flies when you do have fun, as we've had here. And I mean, before we round off, I just have to to ask you this, Pontus, and Andreas, you can take a little bit, think about this.
Speaker: Just quickly, Favorite hero and worst faction in Heroes 3, Pontus.
Speaker: I think favorite hero would probably Dessa or one of the logistics heroes. ah Kudre is one of them as well.
Speaker: um And the worst faction for me would be a Fortress. ah they They are slow and they're not very good. Okay.
Speaker: Andreas I'm gonna put the same to you you can choose from 4 if you want to yeah no this is the problem a heroes is ah the heroes in heroes are hard for me to remember because 3 and 4 are just so mashed up at this point um and I never really developed favorites the same way as I did in 4 but talking about heroes in heroes 4 is also sort of meaningless because they are so very different I remember I liked... I think it's Pyre, because he just looked cool when I was young. And he has logistics, and I love logistics, because that means you can move far.
Speaker: Moving far is nice, especially in a game like this, where ah where where where you essentially are one guy on the map. Logistics is a need to have for me. um Worst Faction.
Speaker: This one is a wee bit tricky, but I think the one... I dislike the most. it's It's a tie between Fortress and Stronghold for me. Yeah,
Speaker: I can get that. I'm going to be a lot quicker about this since I thought out the question. and I loved Sandro. I've always loved Sandro. I love to play Necromancers. And he...
Speaker: He looks cool and rule of cool. And for me, it would be Fortress. I mean, they're slow, not very strong units. Did not like them. Doesn't suit my play style.
Speaker: yeah So think Stronghold is a brown. Yeah, they are, but they still get goblins and wolf riders and behemoths and rooks and all that. so that they they kind And the ballista, I mean, they they have some... I think that's it, actually. In the Heroes 4, Cyclops start off with AoE damage that really OP.
Speaker: And whenever I play Stronghold, I feel like, oh yeah, damn, I'm getting Cyclops, the best ranged units. And it doesn't kill anything. No, but they're good they're good in sieges. They can take out a tower, but nothing else.
Speaker: yeah Pontus you have something? ah Yeah I realized that I said the wrong hero Gunnar must be my favorite hero he's a minotaur he's a dungeon and he's a logistics guy Logistics and tactics right?
Speaker: and You can use a list. That's so good. and And I also want to say one thing before we we stop for the day. ah One thing that made the Heroes game, and and for me especially Heroes 3, really good was the use of Hot Seat.
Speaker: Because ah back in these days when you Like not everyone had ah even a computer. ah If you wanted to to play together, multiplayer was really, really hard. So you needed to do LAN.
Speaker: And to do LAN, you had to like carry these ah massive computers around. so So that was also quite tricky. So having a game like Worms Armageddon as well,
Speaker: where you could um sit at the same computer and play with your friends. it was sir It was really amazing. Yeah, I agree. i want to Before we round off, I want to talk a little bit about two things.
Speaker: First of all, I want us to still say something about like d the fact that the all-then Heroes of Magic games, they look and feel in many ways like board games.
Speaker: And the new one is like role-playing games. And um I know we're all board game geeks as well. ah In my case, I think Heroes of Might and Magic was one of the reasons I really started liking um like these more complicated board games.
Speaker: I actually blame Heroes of Might and Magic for this. And I think that's also where I got really upset about 5 and even more upset about 6 when they stopped feeling like board games. How do you guys feel about that?
Speaker: I can agree. I mean, ah yeah, I played War of Fantasy a lot, but... and it's It's not kind of the same thing, but Heroes of Might Magic 3 kind of opened my world to two more complex board games. I agree, and I just want to add on to what Pontus said about the hot seat. That's probably also why I'm so fond of Heroes 3, because it's...
Speaker: Eating pizza in ah the basement, either in my room or in the basement at your parents' house, Pontus, and just doing an all-nighter switching seats in the compute before it the computer. It's an amazing feeling.
Speaker: It's nostalgia. Yeah, it is. that is as sad were like It was just a few years ago we actually sat in a boardroom having meetings, like grown-up people meetings, passing a computer along, hot seating as well. ah so it still holds up.
Speaker: Yeah, i mean, me and my brother did that on a train to trip to Gothenburg, just passing the computer back and forth. and So that's an amazing thing. But you had one final thing.
Speaker: Yeah, Andreas. Yeah, but I swapped it for another final thing because ah just sort of to bring it back to strategy games. So the Heroes of Mathematic formula we described in the beginning It is sort of different from most other strategy games. um It has a lot of this sort of... There was a reason it could diverge into a sort of RPG, sort of tactics game ah because of this sort of where stylized very stylized choice ah of like graphics, of playing on the map, of having your single unit...
Speaker: um and the the sort of representations of numbers as a strength of each um unit representation in your army. This is a bit different from almost all other strategy games. And I was a little bit curious how you guys feel that it holds up I mean, the closest thing I guess we have is actually the Paradox games, which we play a lot.
Speaker: um There are some similarities between Heroes of Mighty Magic 3 and Europa Universalis, actually. yeah this Apart from that, how how how is that sort of mechanism holding up compared to where strategy games in general has moved on?
Speaker: Well, I do like it and for my part. I mean, i can still come back and play Heroes of Mind Man 3 and think it's a good mechanic. It's an interesting mechanic. And... I would like to see more games do that kind of thing. I mean, and those are more role-playing games with a strategy in them in the Pathfinder series, especially yeah the latest Pathfinder, where they kind of just incorporated, here's a Might and Magic fighting system between armies.
Speaker: That holds up well. It's a good system. And it's a good system if you want to represent a lot of units at the same time, but you don't want to take the power of the like Total War or something like that. You want it to run smooth on not such a powerful computer. I think it's a really good system, actually.
Speaker: So I like it. I think it stacks up. I think it holds up. Pontus, would you agree here or do you totally disagree?
Speaker: ah No, I think I would agree to that assessment. it's ah You don't get the the that battlefield tactic of the Total War series, for example, but um you get more...
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's it's a mix between um ah RPG and strategy. ah go like Looking at the map similar a bit to to maybe Civilization and and Paradox Games.
Speaker: um
Speaker: Yeah, so so basically there. But Andreas, do you like it? Yes. yeah I think in many ways, if you don't if you want to make a strategy game and you don't want to make it so into like one of these really complicated battlefield where everything from ah elevation to terrain...
Speaker: where essentially everything matters, this is one of the really nice ways to stylize it down to just sort of the numbers. yeah I think this is a very good way to simplify the classic heroes formula. And actually, even the bad games, the ones we didn't really like, they still stick to a formula which simplifies that part in the right direction and keeps it very low...
Speaker: ah low bar for entry and it's easy to get into and yeah it just does it very well I like i like that is it sticks to landing as a strategy game and um even though it is very different in many ways and the part where your are strategical moves a lot from the battlefield to picking the right fights managing your resources ah the best way managing your numbers making sure they go up rather than down ah things like that And on that bombshell, think it's time. Heroes of Might and Magic used to be good.
Speaker: down you Yeah. ah Hopefully it can be again. ah Make Heroes of Might and Magic great again. That's the bombshell we're we're ending on today. ah Guys, it's been lovely fun. Time flies when you have fun. Andreas, we will see each other for next episode. And Pontus, it was a great fun having you here. And we hope we will see you again in this podcast.
Speaker: ah Really nice of you to jump in here and spend an hour drinking beer and talking about Heroes of Mathematics with us. Thank you for having me. Oh, yeah. you're You're so welcome to be here.
Speaker: And to all our listeners out there, we don't know what the next episode will be about, but we will yeah tell you shortly. Have a good evening or a good morning or a good day, wherever you are in this world. And we'll see you next time.
Speaker: Take care and bye.
