Ever since I realized I could put my old Sold Out published copy of Heroes of Might and Magic 3 in storage and reliably load up Heroes of Might and Magic 3: Complete through the Good Old Game Preservation Programme instead, this classic has rarely not been installed on my PC. Which is why, when Hooded Horse and Unfrozen announced Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era as a classic-style approach to revive the series, I was both overjoyed and a little nervous. Thankfully, I needn't have been. I've been playing both over the last couple of months, and I've never appreciated Heroes as a series more.
Heroes of Might and Magic is an odd and unique strategy series in several ways. For starters, it's a spin-off of Might and Magic, an old school crunchy dungeon crawling RPG classic that I'm sure was very good but is way too intimidating for someone who grew up mostly on colorful platformers like Sonic. By the time I came to its strategy spin-off, really getting into it with Heroes 3, exploring huge maps with a massive amount of freedom while building up my town and monsters was a compelling loop that could be as friendly or as daunting as I wanted to make it.
