Heroes of Might and Magic IVReview byApril 2002History 101The HOMM pedigree isn't as glorious as that of, say, Pong—buta game with ancestry spanning twelve years seems pretty august allthe same. Heroes of Might and Magic spawned from King'sBounty, a multiplatform title that I originally played on mySega Genesis in 1991. If there's one lesson to be learned from theHeroes quadruplet, it's that 'more of the same'is no more a bad thing than 'big government.' It all dependson how you implement it. Because the truth is, Heroes 4 ispretty much a direct Punnet Square descendant of King's Bounty,and it's just as great as ever.Heroes of Might and Magic IV is a turn-based strategy gamewith adventurous/roleplaying elements.

You take the role of a commanderof heroes (recruited at local taverns, where all heroes hang out),who in turn command armies of fantastic creatures. In addition tostampeding over death-deserving enemies, you get to capture townsand direct the construction of facilities that improve your chancesof winning the game by providing resources, more creatures for yourarmies, or skill improvement.An ungodly amount of playtime is available here. Six massive campaignsrepresent the bulk of the single-player experience, while more thana dozen individual scenarios are available, not to mention a campaigneditor that allows you to build your own adventures. Multiplay iscurrently available only in a hotseat format, but a true onlinepatch is in the works.The game is effectively divided into three activities: manipulatingtowns, roaming the countryside in search of adventure, and crushingyour enemies in combat. Like its predecessors, HOMM4 elegantlyblends these facets to produce a friendly, turn-based atmosphereso addictive that you may find yourself late for your own weddingif you start playing on the morning of.Sim CityYou choose an alignment to start, and this alignment dictates notonly what creatures you'll be able to work with, and which structuresare available to you, but the disposition of the rest of the worldand your hero roster as well. While you can feel free to recruitheroes of other alignments, rest assured that Tree Sprites are notgoing to enjoy serving under a general who's been a walking corpsefor three thousand years.

I don't know about regular Might & Magic, but the best Heroes game, in my opinion, is Heroes V. III is good, II is good (and I think it aged better than III), IV tries new stuff but is only partly successful and feels a little unfinished, and VI solid but kinda just more of the same. Browse Heroes of Might and Magic IV reviews to see what users think.

If you want heroes of opposing alignments,either make sure they're able to control the morale of their peopleor build them an army that matches their disposition.Dyed-in-the-wool strategists scoff at games like this, just asthey sneer at 'real-time strategy.' As in that vauntedgenre, success in HOMM4 is based largely on numbers and carefulattention to the needs of your armies.

Issues such as morale, luck,and (of course) some amount of strategy certainly play a part, butthe real strategy of the game is mastering the art and science ofmanipulating your corner of the world to produce big numbers ofbig troops.Much of this is dependent on your ability to quickly gather andprotect your resource flow. Gold, mercury, gems, crystals, ore,and wood are all necessary in varying amounts, and if you don'tsnap up the structures that produce them, you're going to find yourselfout of the game. Even the most experienced players will operateat a deficit of something, which is a sign of very good play balancing.You can recruit creatures from structures you build in town (you'dthink they'd build dragon pens outside of town, just becauseof the manure problem, but you'd be wrong) or from neutral structureson the landscape.

Other facilities in town manufacture equipmentor provide valuable training for your heroes. While city managementis nowhere near as demanding as overseeing a base in Starcraft,it's imperative that you always play with one eye on the needsof your cities. Ignore them at their (and your) peril. But whilethere are lots of buildings for each alignment, and few duplicates,town management in general has always seemed somewhat tacked onto me. Eventually towns get everything they need, and the game mayonly be half over.Ready to RumbleGame turns are divided into days, with each day seeing the productionof some resources and creatures.

You move about, fight battles,give build orders, and then end your turn for the day. Players canalways head back to town and beef up their army after a nasty defeat,and the longer you let your creatures breed, the more fresh troopsare available.The majority of gameplay takes place in the world screen, whereyou and enemy heroes roam a colorful landscape chock full of high-fantasyexperiences. You can scarcely move an onscreen inch without runninginto some bizarre encounter or another, all of which serve to improve(or reduce) some aspect of your hero or army. If you're into high-fantasyexploration, HOMM4 is a game for you.Control on the world screen is generally acceptable, though thepathing is occasionally peculiar—I've had heroes do figureeights around a structure before reaching the door—and a less-clutteredtoolbar would have meant more screen real estate for the game. Irealize that iconic buttons are appealing, but poorly made onestake up way too much space. Despite a few minor drawbacks, however,the lion's share of play in this environment is endless fun as youexplore the world and experience strange events.The universe of HOMM4 is so brightly colored and cheerfulthat it's hard to think of it as a gritty strategy game. Imaginethe offspring of an unholy union between Fantasy Zone andThe Ancient Art of War for an idea of HOMM4's worldscreen visuals.

They'd better slide the HOMM graphics enginethrough a 3D accelerator in the next version—not because thesprite based graphics are unappealing (they're among the best I'veseen) but because 3D is not just the future, it's the present—andthe HOMM series has to join it.Earth Versus the MonstersCombat is also turn-based. In a grand departure from its ancestry,heroes in HOMM4 are directly involved in combat and, at highlevels, can make the difference between victory and defeat. It'snot the end of the world if you lose a hero, but I don't recommendit; even if you win the battle, you may face a long trip back totown to resurrect your poor dead champion.For combat, HOMM4 provides a handy poster-sized referencechart with pictures and relevant statistics for each troop typein the game. This is especially helpful to newcomers, who may notrecognize the benefits and drawbacks of choosing Venom Spawns overVampires or may be wondering whether a Peasant has a shot at defeatinga Dragon Skeleton in single combat (don't even try it).Creature animations and graphics in combat are both lovely andenjoyable. The animations range from the whimsical to the fierce.Rich, high-color graphics really bring out a Faerie Dragon's eyes,and the liberal dollops of brilliant color are a welcome departurein a world overused to the brown, brown, brown, brown, and browncolor scheme of Quake 3 or Return to Wolfenstein.You win a battle when your troops have eliminated all the enemyforces (or when the enemy drops their weapons and heads for thehills).

Victory or loss, you're treated to a nice cinematic witha statistical breakdown of how things went for you.Control in combat, too, is generally good—though more thanonce I've accidentally attacked the wrong creature in a clusterof opponents or moved my archers forward when I intended to shootat something. It's hard coming up with serious complaints aboutHOMM4, and control is my only major gripe. Seriously, though,the worst I can say about it is that it could be better.

I suspectsome of the flaws in the control structure are the result of anattempt to make the game as similar, mechanics-wise, to its predecessors;it may be time to abandon that scheme.Game audio flows effortlessly between what sounds to me like adozen or so different musical pieces—orchestral, jazzy, choral—andis so good that I wonder how much of the HOMM4 developmentbudget was blown on hiring music talent. Audio is aggressively presentand very much at the forefront throughout the game, which may irritatesome players; but for those who appreciate good game audio, you'renot likely to get bored by the score in this one any time soon.Hero Takes a BowVictory conditions are different for each campaign and scenario,and the open nature of play encourages gamers to develop their ownstrategy. There is no surefire way to dominate; obviously, havingtons of powerful troops is the key to the game, but getting to thatpoint and then using them correctly is a nonlinear path.Hotseat multiplay will keep gamers occupied until the real multiplayerpatch ships; however, there are too few team-based scenario mapsfor hotseat to be a long-term solution. Working together is as muchfun as working against one another in HOMM4, and it wouldhave been nice if the designers took this into account when doingtheir world-building. Meanwhile, fan-made maps are already appearingonline, and considering the longevity of HOMM3, it's onlya matter of time before we see official expansion packs to whathas already turned out to be one of the best-selling games of theseason.HOMM4 will infect you with what I like to call the 'TurnBased Sickness.' Symptoms include loss of temporal perceptionand inability to perform other functions (including bodily) until'just one more turn' has been completed. It's only a matterof time before someone starves to death playing a computer game,because they're so enthralled that they can't stop for a taco.

Policewill discover a corpse clutching a mouse, staring blindly at the'End Turn?' Screen, an empty can of Coke—the lastsustenance this poor soul ever consumed—balanced on a speaker.HOMM4 is so addictive and so darned cheerful that, when you'replaying it, feeding the cat (or yourself) just doesn't seem likea critical issue. In Maszlow's Hierarchy of Needs, HOMM4 fallsjust above 'shelter.'

The VerdictThe LowdownDeveloper: New World ComputingPublisher:Release Date: March 2002Available for:Four Fat Chicks LinksScreenshotsSystem RequirementsPII 300 (PII 450 recommended)128 MB RAM (256 MB recommended)4 MB video card750 MB free hard disk spaceWhere to Find ItLinks provided for informational purposes only.FFC makes no warranty with regard to any transaction entered intoby any party(ies).

No More HeroesThe Heroes Of Might & Magic series has always been something ofa triumph of gameplay over graphics, with an addictive combinationof role-playing and strategy elements overcoming the antiquatedvisuals. With Heroes IV the franchise has had something of amake-over, sporting updates to both graphics and gameplay, butsadly the changes aren't always for the best.Like previous games in the series, Heroes IV lets you control oneor more hero characters who wander around a map hoovering upresources and artifacts, capturing towns and production centers,and visiting special areas which can permanently or temporarilyboost their abilities. Maps are also dotted with neutral armieswhich you must defeat to access new areas, and most missionsinclude one or more rival factions to see off, complete with theirown towns, resource centers and heroes.Which brings us to the game's biggest and perhaps mostcontroversial change - hero characters and rank-and-file creaturesare now treated equally. In the past your armies had to be led by ahero, but now you can move your troops around without a leader, orhave a party made up entirely of heroes with no troops to escortthem. This means that heroes are now treated as just another uniton the battlefield, instead of standing safely on the sidelineslobbing spells at the enemy and using their special abilities toboost their army's chances.Making Life Easier Heroes are still the heart of any good armyIn practice this is less flexible than it sounds, because heroesstill completely dominate the game. A small army led by a powerfulhero can easily destroy a much bigger force, as their own abilityscores are added to those of their troops.Because of this armies without a leader are ineffective against allbut the weakest of foes. Pro cycling manager season 2016 review. They can't capture towns or buildingseither, which relegates them to mopping up stray resources.

Theonly real advantage of this new system is that you can now easilytransfer fresh troops to your heroes without having to go back tothe nearest city to collect them. This is aided by the addition ofcaravans, which can move units from one city to anotherautomatically, or even allow you to buy troops from remote barracksunder your control and have them delivered to the town of yourchoice without having to mess around visiting the barracks inperson.The creation of new units has been simplified as well, with aslightly less bewildering array of options open to you.

Newbuildings can still be added to cities to give you access to newtypes of unit, with each faction having its own unique citygraphics and selection of troops. But whereas in Heroes III youcould upgrade most types of barracks to unlock a more powerfulversion of the unit generated by that building, Heroes IV does awaywith this. While this reduces the choice of units on offer it doesspeed up the expansion of your towns, and it's not a great loss asthe cheaper versions of units were rarely used once you hadupgraded anyway, unless you were really skint.Mission Impossible This should be a walkover, as long as those cyclopses at the back don't decide to all lob their rocks at one of my heroes at the end of the first roundThis streamlining of the familiar Heroes gameplay makes the laterstages of the game far less tedious and simplifies the managementof your armies and cities.

Combined with a proper in-game tutorial,the changes help to make the game a little less overwhelming fornewcomers to the series.Unfortunately these benefits are soon thrown away, as Heroes IVsuffers from some familiar problems, the biggest of which ismission balance. I found the first campaign almost ridiculouslyeasy, with most of the missions virtually impossible to lose, butthis is just to lull you into a false sense of security. Some ofthe later campaigns proved incredibly hard even on the lowestdifficulty setting, and given that I've played through Heroes IIIand its various expansion packs as well as the more recent HeroesChronicles mini-games, I hate to think what a Heroes neophyte wouldmake of these missions.The relegation of your heroes to standard combat units doesn't helpmatters either. In previous games your heroes could only die iftheir entire army was obliterated in battle. In Heroes IV yourenemy might decide, completely at random, to throw everything it'sgot at one of your heroes, and there's absolutely nothing you cando to stop them.

Battlefields are still too small and cramped toallow any real tactics to come into play, and there's no room foryour hero to run away if he comes under attack. This tends to leadto frustrating reloading as you have to restart a battle that youshould have won, because one of your key heroes was attacked on thefirst round by fast moving flying units or missile fire before youcould move a single unit.Abby Normal Well, that was easyWhat makes this even more annoying is that the AI is fairly feeblemost of the time.

You know that your hero's death is the result ofa random number generator buried somewhere deep inside the coderather than part of some spectacular strategy your opponent hasdreamed up.Your enemy is equally inept on the campaign map, running right upto your towns with a huge army and then turning away at the lastmoment for no obvious good reason, leaving their own citiesundefended, ignoring resource centers, and generally acting likethey don't know what they're doing. Despite this they still seem tolevel up their heroes and gather armies faster than you can, andall too often you will get two or three hours into a mission onlyfor an all-powerful enemy hero to appear without warning from thefog of war with a vast army at his side. Until this happens youhave no real way of knowing whether or not you're managing to keepup with your opponent, and as some of the maps are absolutely huge,winning missions can be a time-consuming business, even if you docome out of the initial levelling race on top.And if you get sick of playing against the AI, I'm afraid I havesome bad news for you.

Heroes IV has no multiplayer support.Apparently it will be added in with a patch at some unspecifiedlater date, but given the drastic job cuts which recently tookplace at New World Computing we might have to wait until the firstinevitable add-on pack arrives. In the meantime you will want todownload the latest patch, which fixes some nasty bugs includingskipping music and memory leaks, as well as adding an optional gridfor the battle map.

This was a standard feature in Heroes III andincredibly useful, so the mind boggles as at how NWC managed toleave it out of the sequel.ConclusionHeroes IV might offer prettier graphics than its predecessors,although the unit animations are still laughable in many cases, butthe gameplay is, if anything, a step backwards. Mission balance isstill a mess, the designers still can't write decent dialogue,multiplayer support has gone AWOL, and battles can be incrediblyfrustrating now that your heroes are just another battlefield unit,wide open to attack. The old Heroes magic is still in there, andit's sure to provide a reasonable challenge for hardcore fans ofthe series, but it's not the leap forwards for the series that wewere hoping for.6/10.