Review by: Brian Clair

Heroes of Might & Magic continues along the lines of the popular Might & Magic first person role playing adventure games. However Heroes gives up most of the Might & Magic engine and strikes out on its own to create a new, addictive, fantasy/strategy game. Heroes of Might & Magic places you in the role of one of the great Heroes of the land, who, in command of mighty and powerful armies, hunts for wealth, power, and land. Heroes of Might & Magic gives you several play options: single-player games, campaigns, and network play over the Internet against your friends.

You start off the game with one city and one hero (whom you get to choose in a campaign). The surrounding land is filled with resources such as mines filled with crystals, jewels, gold, ore, and more. You use these and other resources to build more buildings and cities, and even to recruit certain units. To survive, you must quickly build up your capital city with improvements. Most of the improvements allow you to recruit different troops of which some are: minotaurs, dwarves, sprites, druids, gargoyles, and cyclops. Which troops you can recruit depends on the type of city/town you control; and there are four different types: Knights, which give you human units such as calvary, pikemen, archers, and paladins; Barbarians, which give you units like: orcs, trolls, wolves, and ogres; Wizards which give you: centaurs, gargoyles, dragons, and hydra; and Sorceroreses which give you: sprites, unicorns, elves, druids, and phoenix.

In addition to troop types, you can also build taverns, which increase morale, thieves guilds, which give you information on your opponents, and magic guilds which allow your heroes to learn spells. The game is played by you building an army with your heroes, and taking them through the countryside to find treasure, fight enemies, challenge and capture enemy cities and heroes and more. As you gain strength and money, you can hire another hero and expand your base of power. Magical artifacts and spells that you can find will also help turn the tide of battle in your favor. The game also comes with a map editor, so once you finally go through all the included missions, you can create your own. There is of course, much more to this game but I won’t go into long drawn out details here.