Back in the day, I used to buy those PC gaming magazines that came with a CD full of demos. On one of those CDs, I stumbled across Heroes of Might and Magic II for the very first time. That demo featured a single map and allowed me to play only as the Human faction. And play I did. I don’t remember all the details because it’s been years, but I replayed that same secluded and uninspired map dozens of times in that gorgeous strategy game.
Eventually, I got my hands on a Heroes of Might and Magic III CD, and my world changed. To this day, Heroes III remains my favorite. It’s also the most beloved in the entire series, not only thanks to the excellent support from the competitive community but also the creators of the Horn of the Abyss mod. Then, I played the fourth and fifth games, but something never clicked with me the way it did with the second and third. I barely touched the sixth and seventh titles.
However, even though I had been drifting away from the franchise, when Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era was announced in recent years, I got instantly excited. Something about the trailer just felt right. And now that I’ve had the chance to test a preview of the game, I can say with confidence that my suspicions were correct.
Not only does Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era feels right, it truly is. This is a fantastic entry, crafted with care, respect, and a great deal of creativity by developers who know the series inside and out.
Better And Sharper Than Ever
Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era seems to have built its foundation on Heroes III’s game design. The game retains its familiar gameplay loop while refining its execution. For the unfamiliar, Heroes of Might and Magic isn’t exactly a 4X game, but you’ll still need to explore, hoard resources, build buildings, and defeat enemies. The first three games perfected the series’ formula, while the later ones tried to innovate but fell short.
Olden Era sticks to what works. In this preview version, there were three modes: Arena, Classic, and Single Hero. Arena allowed me to draft a level 8 hero, acquire respective skills, pick some artefacts, spells, armies, and jump directly into battle. It’s great for testing out new strategies or just having some mindless combat fun.
It felt so familiar and nostalgic that I could jump right into a map without guidance and know exactly what to do.
Classic is, as expected, the standard mode. We pick a map, faction, hero, and difficulty level, and then we’re thrown into a randomly generated game. With our hero in tow, we explore the map, fight enemies, collect items, artefacts, resources, and mines, while constructing new buildings in our castle and recruiting units weekly.
In Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era, only our units fight. Our hero can cast spells and use some special skills acquired through leveling up, but doesn’t directly engage in the fray. Each faction has seven units that can all be part of your roster. As for buildings, aside from two unique ones tied to each faction, they all share the same blueprint: City Halls for gold, Walls for castle protection and increased weekly unit growth, Mage Guild for spells, and several unit buildings split by tiers, each with its own upgraded version.
It felt so familiar and nostalgic that I could jump right into a map without guidance and know exactly what to do. However, if you’re new, I suggest completing the robust, well-explained tutorial that Olden Era offers. While it’s not as complex as a true 4X, its systems can still be daunting. The tutorial includes basics, some advanced lessons, and even challenges to test if you’ve really understood the game’s intricate design.
Old Factions Revamped
In my first game, I chose the Temple faction, humans blessed with buffs, and then switched to my main, the Dungeon, filled with mystical creatures and dark elves. I also tried the Necropolis, with its fragile yet tormenting units, and the newcomer Schism, featuring deep-sea-inspired creatures that evoked a Cthulhu vibe.
Right away, it’s clear how each faction bursts with personality and authenticity. The humans are the most straightforward, ideal for those who don’t want to earn a master’s degree while reading building or unit descriptions. Dungeon units, meanwhile, have dual attack modes. The first ranged unit, for example, can either attack a single enemy for full damage or split damage between two.
Necropolis units rely heavily on debuffs, lowering enemy morale, resurrecting their own, and overwhelming the opposition with sheer numbers. Schism is… well, weird. It’s a whole new concept for Heroes, bringing an entirely new and most welcoming dynamic to the game.
One of the biggest surprises in Olden Era is that every unit has two evolutions. Once you construct their respective upgraded building, you can evolve a base unit into two different versions and switch between them at no cost. This adds even more strategic depth since you can, for instance, bring two of the same-but-different units to battle.
Each hero has a unique talent, and as they level up, you can pick new skills or upgrade old ones. At levels 2 and 3, you unlock subskills. Customizing your hero is a joy in itself, but the random nature of skill choices can completely shift your plans, turning an intended warrior into a battlemage of sorts. That’s why being able to swap unit evolutions is perfect for complementing whatever skills the game hands you.
Truth is, with this subskill system, there are so many tiny details in hero level-ups that I often found myself picking skills that helped me promote my hero’s class (yes, that’s new too) rather than going for skill synergies. And yet, I never felt overwhelmed because all skills were practical in some way or another. I beat the Single Hero mode, where each player only controls one hero, simply through brute force and an overwhelming army.
In a traditional scenario, however, I spread my army too thin across three heroes, which the CPU exploited by defeating them and capturing my castles. I almost won by abusing the Berserker spell but ultimately failed. I realized that, as much as I love Heroes, I’m not exactly a great player. Maybe slightly above average. So I stuck with the tried-and-true strategy of exploring, hoarding resources, building units, amassing a gigantic army, and steamrolling every enemy.
More Fast-Paced Than Ever
In this conquest, I noticed how Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era feels much faster-paced compared to previous entries. Collecting resources was never an issue, and I constantly found myself with a surplus of gold, even while building new structures every day across multiple castles.
Additionally, there’s a new currency called Law Points, which functions like a tech tree. You can allocate them into bonuses for your faction, like earning extra gold or resources daily, reducing material costs, improving heroes’ attributes, and similar perks, or into empowering your army, boosting specific units, or increasing their weekly growth.
However, to balance this rapid growth, Olden Era introduced another resource called Alchemical Dust. This dust is used to construct a unit’s secondary buildings, upgrade artefacts, and unlock more spells. It’s the rarest, but not necessarily scarce, resource in the game, obtained by interacting with neutral buildings or dismantling artefacts. In other words, I couldn’t sit comfortably in my initial zone, amassing an army after capturing just a few mines, because sooner or later, I’d be all out of Alchemical Dust.
While exploring, expect a bunch of battles. By default, all conflicts resolve through quick combat. You clash with an enemy on the map, and a result screen pops up, leaving you to decide whether to manually engage or flee. It’s a welcome addition that speeds up encounters, especially against fodder enemies.
Still, I got so spoiled by the auto feature that sometimes I would build new units and not even watch their actions in battle, since everything was handled instantly and effortlessly — even enemy hero battles. If the auto-battle won, why risk losing by playing manually?
I forced myself to engage in battles to test units, spells, and gain a better understanding of the system. Once on the battlefield, your units stand on one side and the enemy’s on the other, acting according to their initiative attribute as shown on a timeline at the top. Each unit behaves differently: melee, ranged, teleporting, area-of-effect, special abilities, and more. These additional layers of strategy further enrich the gameplay.
Even with only three maps and four factions available, I could already tell replayability is sharper than ever, with no two matches feeling identical.
There’s also a Focus system, a battle energy amassed during fights. Some units can spend Focus to cast unique abilities. One Temple unit, for example, can heal allies and remove debuffs, while Dungeon dragons can swoop down to crash into an area, damaging all enemies within it. Yet another resource to micromanage, adding even more tactical variety to matches.
Familiar, Yet Inventive
In essence, Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era’s gameplay design is familiar and somewhat easy to grasp. But as I dove deeper into its nuances — testing units, realizing artefacts had set effects, seeing which skills paired best with my hero — the system kept expanding, showing off fascinating and sometimes intimidating depth. Granted, in casual playthroughs, you’ll barely scratch the surface. I’m living proof that simply focusing on unit-building is enough to beat a CPU on normal and even hard.
But if you’re someone who wants to explore everything Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era has to offer, engage in competitive multiplayer, or just have the knack for strategy games that I clearly lack, you’ll definitely delight in everything this new entry presents.
Even with only three maps and four factions available, I could already tell replayability is sharper than ever, with no two matches feeling identical. There are so many variables that it’s tough to rely on a single strategy and replicate it across all matches — especially in competitive ones, I wager.
Finally, I can’t go without mentioning the game’s fantastic glow-up. As I said, Olden Era feels like it was built on the basis of Heroes III. There are numerous interactive elements on the map that I instantly recognized from the older game, and I knew exactly what their effects were. Everything is beautiful, crisp, and the animations are flawless. Even with my modest laptop sporting a GeForce RTX 3050, I managed to run everything on high settings without a single FPS drop.
The interface is packed with elements, but everything is self-explanatory, making navigation between them comfortable. The castle management menu is well-organized, clearly displaying all necessary information. One minor caveat I had early on was the Mage Guild. Opening it reveals a beautiful constellation display showing all unlocked spells and more to unlock. At first, I had a hard time translating what was on the screen, but once I did, Town Portal was mine to master.
As expected from a strategy game, if you want to master all its systems, you’ll have to do a lot of reading. Percentages, formulas, calculations, and other details you’ll only learn over time. Once again, casual players likely won’t need to worry too much, while veterans will most likely speedrun to victory even before building a secondary unit structure with their newfound bullshit strategy. No offense.
Closing Comments:
Even though my affair with Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era was brief, it was more than enough to fall in love. It felt like revisiting a long-lost summer romance, only now it’s prettier, funnier, and sharper. This new entry doesn’t attempt to innovate with unusual systems. Quite the opposite. Olden Era knows exactly what fans of Heroes of Might and Magic want and honors that desire, elevating everything that was already great to new heights without losing the essence that makes the series so beloved.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
