Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era is proof that you can usually tell if a strategy game has the goods within an hour. In this specific instance, my biggest criticism of developer Unfrozen's prequel is that I had to stop playing it after an hour. Gazing at distant building upgrades, powerful spells I was unlikely to unlock within my demo, a snowballing army of mythological monsters, Olden Era was laid bare.
Now, a caveat. I've spent so many hours in the likes of Civilization, XCOM, and Total War that I could have used the same amount of time raising a small homunculus to play my strategy games for me. But when it comes to Heroes of Might and Magic, I've only dabbled – blasphemy, I know – and so during my hands-on for Olden Era, I approached it as a devotee of the broader genre rather than a dedicated fan of the series itself.
