A (New-ish) Game for Lovers of Heroes of Might and Magic 3

Do you, like me, get warm and fuzzy feelings from this sound?

My Heroes of Might and Magic journey started with HOMM 2 🖇️ – but I’ve probably spent the most time with HOMM 3 🖇️.

I still play it from time-to-time, but I’m also always interested in modern takes on the formula.

One I like, is Hero’s Hour 🖇️ (currently 55% off!). Here the world map portion is very similar to HOMM, while the combat is more of a free-flowing auto-battler.¹

But my favourite is Songs of Conquest,

and it’s currently 72% off on GOG 🖇️!² It’s also available for iOS (both iPhone and iPad!) — but I haven’t tried that version myself.

Some feelings of mine towards HOMM 3, which will be relevant here:

• I never played the campaigns, and mostly just jerked around on single scenarios and random maps.
  • After a while, I started downloading custom maps as well.
• Even though it’s a suboptimal way of playing, I’ve always preferred only having a few heroes and castles.
  • I know that the best thing to do is to have numerous heroes (many with almost no units), and use them to run around. However, I’ve always found this play style really annoying.
  • I find it a bit of a chore to juggle different faction’s units. (I wouldn’t mind having one main hero for each different faction, though.)
    • You also get morale issues if you mix things up too much.
  • I also didn’t love it when I had to think: “How many of my units should I have on my main, and how many should I split off towards a second viable hero?”

With Songs of Conquest, it feels like someone custom-made a modern Heroes-like just for me.

Here are some of my favourite changes:

Combat

• At the bottom of the screen, you can see the order units will go in.³
• The battleground not only has elements that block you, it also has high ground (which will affect damage).
  • You can also place your units before entering the battle.
• Attacking with a unit will end its turn – but if it has a movement range of 4, you can move 3 first and then 1 more if needed.
  • Ranged units can also move and then shoot – but they’ll do half the damage.
    • They also have both a regular range and a “deadly” range (which deals double damage).
• Units have attacks of opportunity – so they will attack units that move out of their range.
• Not every unit can “wait” – it’s a skill that some units have.
  • And almost every unit has a special skill!
• Magic works differently:
  • In HOMM, you have a spell book with accessible spells, and a pool of mana you use to cast them. You can cast one spell per round.
  • Songs of conquest instead has 5 different types of mana (called essence) – and by default your hero (called wielder) starts out with 0 mana each combat.
  • However, units will create mana for your hero each of its turns.
  • You can cast as many spells as you want each turn – but it takes time to build up to the more expensive spells. They cost mana of 1 or 2 types.
    • You can see the available spells on the left side of the screen.
  • You unlock access to more powerful spells (in the 5 different schools) with skills.
  • You can also start combat with more mana through both skills, and by controlling builds on the world map.
• The UI is also generally much clearer and easier to use.
• You can also simulate combats, for a quick result. But if you don’t like how it went, you can choose to do it yourself instead!

Overworld

I know that some of these are controversial – but if you look at my feelings towards HOMM, you’ll know why I like this.

• Settlements are really cool:
  • Each settlement starts as size 1 – but has different potential: From maximum size 2 to 5.
  • This unlocks building sites, in three different sizes.
    • The buildings are also visible (and loot-able) on the world map.
  • However, even with the largest size, you can’t buy every building the faction offers!
    • This makes it so you need to get several towns to get access to everything.
    • And here we’re at perhaps the most controversial change: You have to convert settlements of other factions! You can’t keep them as a different faction.⁴
  • If you’d like, you can build several of the same building – so a town can be all tier 1 unit buildings, or all wood producers.
  • There’s also a building you can use to buy units from other settlements – so you don’t have to ship units around.
• Stacks of units can’t grow into infinity!
  • For instance, a stack of dragons can only consist of 3 each.
    • However, this number is something you can upgrade with one of the research mechanics.
  • A hero can hold more stacks than you have unit types, so you will have to choose which units you will have more than one stack of.
  • Your main hero will also become full – so this makes is less annoying to have to start building secondary heroes!
  • The maximum number of heroes starts out small, and you need more settlements to increase it.

However – some words on the campaign…

If you used to play Heroes for its campaign, you’ll be a bit disappointed here. The campaign is very short, and is more like a long tutorial. I do recommend starting with this, though – as it’s a good way to become acquainted with the new mechanics!

It also only has four factions, with a fifth available as DLC 🖇️, which isn’t the most.

However, I really like the way it looks, the performance is fine on my M1 Pro, and I really like the changes and modernisations. Highly recommended! And it’s from a small indie team, that seems really passionate about games like this.