Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era coming to Steam early access Q2 2025

OH MY GOD. Please be good. Please... holy shit.

Edit: And Early Access might actually be a wise decision in this case since the last two HoMM games were just... shit.

Edit 2: Also interesting: They call it "Heroes of Might & Magic" and not under their "new" moniker: "Might & Magic: Heroes". Maybe the people at Ubisoft responsible for Might & Magic are flying so low under the radar that Yves doesn't give a shit. For the better, ironically.
 
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Hudo said:
OH MY GOD. Please be good. Please... holy shit.

Edit: And Early Access might actually be a wise decision in this case since the last two HoMM games were just... shit.
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I'm praying this turns out good. The trailer looks promising and looks like it's pretty far along too.

This is the devs only other game. Never heard of it but it has good reviews.

 
BennyBlanco said:
I'm praying this turns out good. The trailer looks promising and looks like it's pretty far along too.

This is the devs only other game. Never heard of it but it has good reviews.

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Iratus was pretty solid, actually.

Would be very surprised to see a competent game from Ubi, but if that's who's helming it... there's a chance.
 
BennyBlanco said:
I'm praying this turns out good. The trailer looks promising and looks like it's pretty far along too.

This is the devs only other game. Never heard of it but it has good reviews.

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Danny Dudekisser said:
Iratus was pretty solid, actually.

Would be very surprised to see a competent game from Ubi, but if that's who's helming it... there's a chance.
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I just saw that it's not an internal Ubisoft team that's doing this. I am starting to get excited for real.


FeralEcho said:
I wish someone would make a remake of HOMM3 in the style of Diablo 2 Ressurected.
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That's Heroes of Might & Magic 5, kinda.
 
Hudo said:
That's Heroes of Might & Magic 5, kinda.
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Well throw Might & Magic: Heroes 5.5 mod on top of it and it beats any HOMM game ever!!
And this is me saying with one of my first love being HOMM 2 on my first ever PC and I've always kinda loved it at least as much as HOMM3 later on.

Anyway I dunno what to think of this, we'll see.. I don't trust them at all, after the fantastic HOMM5 how was is possible to ruin the franchise so badly is beyond me.
 
I used to religiously play these games back in the day. This looks very unappealing visually but I hope the game itself is good.
 
HoMM3 camp too, I still play it using wine from time to time (full time developer, full time Linux user), hopefully this will be good.
 
Play solo with a new campaign, multiple single maps and limitless randomly generated scenarios, or engage in battle of wits and magic with other players — rivals or allies — in multiplayer mode. There is also an option to build your own story with the map editor tool, which you may make available to all the players around the world or keep to yourself.

Random maps. Thank god. When I played HOMM3 I only played random maps. Never touched the SP campaign once. lol
 
Can't believe how good this looks, holy fuck.

Just sent the trailer to my old HoM&M3 crew from back when college and we are all drooling over this. :goog_relieved:
 
This is (hopefully) exactly what i wanted,HOMM 3 style art graphics with modern remake,better AI etc..

HOMM3 was one of my favourite games 20 years ago
 
Happy you all are happy but this didn't do it for me. The art style is just too "modern" and safe for my tastes. It does look closer to the classics gameplay wise thankfully, but I still have those.
 
xVodevil said:
Well throw Might & Magic: Heroes 5.5 mod on top of it and it beats any HOMM game ever!!
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Not with that artstyle it doesn't.
Anyway this looks much closer to HOMM3 visual direction - which is interesting to see after... 22 years of meandering in other ways.
 


Is in German. But if there is any interest, I can TL;DR the things said in the video, if there is anything new that is not in the official press release.
 
Looks pretty low budget, but hell, better this than nothing! Guess we can't expect more for the HoMM franchise in 2024. Ubisoft targets this as a super niche product, for sure haha.
 
Hudo said:


Is in German. But if there is any interest, I can TL;DR the things said in the video, if there is anything new that is not in the official press release.
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This looks quite far along. Devs obviously fans of the source material. Animations look nice. I am cautiously optimistic but I will be there day 1.
 
Happy Lets Go GIF by NHL
 
StreetsofBeige said:
Play solo with a new campaign, multiple single maps and limitless randomly generated scenarios, or engage in battle of wits and magic with other players — rivals or allies — in multiplayer mode. There is also an option to build your own story with the map editor tool, which you may make available to all the players around the world or keep to yourself.

Random maps. Thank god. When I played HOMM3 I only played random maps. Never touched the SP campaign once. lol
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Hear hear! I exclusively play random maps in HoMM3. :)
 
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My memories of Might and Magic are of the blobber rpg games. 2, 3, and World of Xeen in particular.
I somehow missed Heroes, and I don't really know why, but I've never played any of them.
 
Isa said:
Happy you all are happy but this didn't do it for me. The art style is just too "modern" and safe for my tastes. It does look closer to the classics gameplay wise thankfully, but I still have those.
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I think it's great, what sells it for me is the small details like the lovingly rendered resources on the world map, it triggers so much nostalgia my brain is marinating in dopamine after watching the video Hudo linked. Oh yeah! You pick all that Mercury & Crystal baby!
I think I get what you don't like, but if they replicated the iconic early 3D Studio render style and SVGA palette, it would have looked weird.

Now, if Unfrozen nails the game, hand them the license to remake Master of Magic. The 2022 remake did not happen, developers did not even try to evoke the original visually.
 
I still play HOMM 3 Horn of The Abyss (the unofficial expansion) + HD mod here and there. A timeless classic.

The developer could be the guys from Songs of Conquest but i'm in
(before UBI mess this up again).
 
Watching the vid on a bigger view, the graphics arent as good as I thought. It animates well but has a more cartoonish look to it vs HOMM3. But that's ok. I get it. Modern day gaming tries hard to appease the masses and doing grittier art is a turnoff for many.
 
StreetsofBeige said:
Watching the vid on a bigger view, the graphics arent as good as I thought. It animates well but has a more cartoonish look to it vs HOMM3. But that's ok. I get it. Modern day gaming tries hard to appease the masses and doing grittier art is a turnoff for many.
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Yeah, some of those designs are a bit too Warcraft for my taste. Definetly closer to Heroes V than Heroes III.

Still super excited tho, the overworld at least looks great and if it plays like III then we are in for a treat for sure.
 
I really want what this game is promising. I don't know if it delivers but getting that homm3 feeling back would be awesome. I tried playing this game "songs of conquest" earlier this year and it just didn't do it for me.
 
I was in the mood to bitch that no one on this forum even opened a thread about this, only to do a quick search and learn that I just missed it, somehow.

Oh, and I don't want to celebrate before time, but this actually looks... half decent at very least? It may even turn out to be actually good.

Apparently the developers are russians (people who take HOMM3 very seriously, as Ssseth will testify) and I've heard the studio has a lot of former Nival people (who were the ones who made HOMM5, the SECOND best game in the series).
 
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Touch fuzZy. get BizZay said:
I really want what this game is promising. I don't know if it delivers but getting that homm3 feeling back would be awesome. I tried playing this game "songs of conquest" earlier this year and it just didn't do it for me.
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Care to expand on Songs? I was thinking of getting it when it's on deal. I'm not a fan of that retro pixel art, but the gameplay videos look HOMM3-ish.

But if you got tips why Songs isn't good, please tell. For me, I loved HOMM3 graphics, gameplay, and random map generator.
 
Sentenza said:
I was in the mood to bitch that no one on this forum even opened a thread about this, only to do a quick search and learn that I just missed it, somehow.

Oh, and I don't want to celebrate before time, but this actually looks... half decent at very least? It may even turn out to be actually good.

Apparently the developers are russians (people who take HOMM3 very seriously, as Ssseth will testify) and I've heard the studio has a lot of former Nival people (who were the ones who made HOMM5, the SECOND best game in the series).
Click to expand...

The game they made previously is actually really good. I'm cautiously optimistic that they'll pull this off. At least it's not Ubisoft themselves.
 
I want this to be good so bad. Early Access is a good idea for this kind if game - it's done wonders for Songs of Conquest.
 
StreetsofBeige said:
Care to expand on Songs? I was thinking of getting it when it's on deal. I'm not a fan of that retro pixel art, but the gameplay videos look HOMM3-ish.

But if you got tips why Songs isn't good, please tell. For me, I loved HOMM3 graphics, gameplay, and random map generator.
Click to expand...

Yeah I'll share my take. Just info on me, I really liked heroes2 and loved heroes3, but even though I played all subsequent heroes games I never really liked any of them that much, it was like 3 had this perfect feeling and style. I can point out many legitimate flaws and terrible experiences in these games but sometimes them just doing things in a different way from heroes3 puts me off which may also be the case here. Also I only got as far as partway through the 3rd campaign out of 4 in songs of conquest before dropping it so I'm not an expert on this game.

Regarding the pixel art, I like pixel art, but this pixel art is just okay. It's at its best when exploring the overworld which I think does give a kind of heroes feel. In fact, the exploring and finding mines and treasures part is probably the part of the game that most successfully satisfies heroes3 nostalgia. It doesn't look as good in combat and there is no "building your cool base" screen. You do build a base but you do it with little pixel buildings on the overworld map. So one of the things I love about heroes3, that screen where you start with a tiny hut and gradually build this huge awesome base that is so satisfying to sit back and look at, is gone. Kinda derailing a bit here but someone made this awesome modern interpretation of the castle base from heroes3, check it out:



Anyway regarding gameplay, units can get promoted and then get some kind of ability they can use like in heroes3, so that's good. But in general there's a lot of nerfs and limitations to keep things "balanced" in combat. Like you have a limit cap to how many of each unit can be in your army and it's not crazy high. So fun situations from heroes3 where you have zounds of a weak unit like skeletons and they actually become a threat don't happen. This is really noticeable with spells, there were a lot of really fun really powerful spells in Heroes3, and I guess they were too OP so later games nerfed spells to make things more balanced and that's certainly the case here. In my somewhat limited playtime, spells don't feel impactful or satisfying to use. As an example, around the time I dropped the game I was on a map where I beat an opponent and then he just keeps respawning at his base with a small army and runs around tagging my mines. With cool heroes3 spells like flight and dimension door I would have easily trapped them but in this game I had to slowly bring all my heroes that were out exploring to his region to surround and smother him.

Storywise, I also noticed some very "modern audience" things like the hero of the first campaign is a woman who thinks, talks and acts exactly like a man with no feminine traits whatsoever, and everytime you meet a blacksmith they are always a woman, that notoriously female profession. It's not like the game has sweetbaby game levels of politics or anything, the subversive silliness is relatively minor, but if you are over modern audience cringe you should approach with caution. When you beat a campaign there's a cutscene where they sing a song about what you did, hence the name of the game. That might sound appealing to some people but I personally didn't care about the story or world.

So yeah, that's my take. I'm not even saying it's a bad game for people who like the genre, but as someone who looked at songs of conquest and thought "wow looks like heroes3" it's a pale imitation.
 
Touch fuzZy. get BizZay said:
Yeah I'll share my take. Just info on me, I really liked heroes2 and loved heroes3, but even though I played all subsequent heroes games I never really liked any of them that much, it was like 3 had this perfect feeling and style. I can point out many legitimate flaws and terrible experiences in these games but sometimes them just doing things in a different way from heroes3 puts me off which may also be the case here. Also I only got as far as partway through the 3rd campaign out of 4 in songs of conquest before dropping it so I'm not an expert on this game.

Regarding the pixel art, I like pixel art, but this pixel art is just okay. It's at its best when exploring the overworld which I think does give a kind of heroes feel. In fact, the exploring and finding mines and treasures part is probably the part of the game that most successfully satisfies heroes3 nostalgia. It doesn't look as good in combat and there is no "building your cool base" screen. You do build a base but you do it with little pixel buildings on the overworld map. So one of the things I love about heroes3, that screen where you start with a tiny hut and gradually build this huge awesome base that is so satisfying to sit back and look at, is gone. Kinda derailing a bit here but someone made this awesome modern interpretation of the castle base from heroes3, check it out:



Anyway regarding gameplay, units can get promoted and then get some kind of ability they can use like in heroes3, so that's good. But in general there's a lot of nerfs and limitations to keep things "balanced" in combat. Like you have a limit cap to how many of each unit can be in your army and it's not crazy high. So fun situations from heroes3 where you have zounds of a weak unit like skeletons and they actually become a threat don't happen. This is really noticeable with spells, there were a lot of really fun really powerful spells in Heroes3, and I guess they were too OP so later games nerfed spells to make things more balanced and that's certainly the case here. In my somewhat limited playtime, spells don't feel impactful or satisfying to use. As an example, around the time I dropped the game I was on a map where I beat an opponent and then he just keeps respawning at his base with a small army and runs around tagging my mines. With cool heroes3 spells like flight and dimension door I would have easily trapped them but in this game I had to slowly bring all my heroes that were out exploring to his region to surround and smother him.

Storywise, I also noticed some very "modern audience" things like the hero of the first campaign is a woman who thinks, talks and acts exactly like a man with no feminine traits whatsoever, and everytime you meet a blacksmith they are always a woman, that notoriously female profession. It's not like the game has sweetbaby game levels of politics or anything, the subversive silliness is relatively minor, but if you are over modern audience cringe you should approach with caution. When you beat a campaign there's a cutscene where they sing a song about what you did, hence the name of the game. That might sound appealing to some people but I personally didn't care about the story or world.

So yeah, that's my take. I'm not even saying it's a bad game for people who like the genre, but as someone who looked at songs of conquest and thought "wow looks like heroes3" it's a pale imitation.
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Great. Thanks for the write up. I'll pass on it. It's at $41 CDN game that goes on sale at 50% maxed out. So $20 or so. GOG has it now at $27. Forget it. Maybe if it gets bombed down -75% at $10 or less I'll look into it.
 
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