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First Impressions: Heroes of Might and Magic: The Olden Era is an excellent franchise revival, with an unfortunate art style that belies its quality. (lemmy.world)
submitted 6 days ago by redhorsejacket@lemmy.world to c/turnbasedstrategy@piefed.world
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/40438210 upon request.

BLUF: Art bad, game good, demo available.

~~With the Winter Sale now live~~, I'm sure many folks are looking at their wishlists and browsing for new games to pick up. I was doing the same last night, when I came across the store page for the forthcoming HoMM title. I must admit, my first impressions were hugely negative. HoMM2 is in contention for my favorite game of all time, and fans of the series will know that the early games had a rather, distinct, art style. The character portraits in particular are of a piece with the painterly, roccoco stylings of fantasy book jackets, such as those that decorated the initial printings of the Wheel of Time series. The style of The Olden Era is, well, decidedly, not, that. Charitably speaking, the style seems to be aping the post-Ubisoft acquisition, 3D entries moreso than the early games (odd, for a title which is openly courting nostalgia in its name). Less charitably, it looks like a mobile game. I don't quite know how to articulate the qualities which give that impression, but I'm sure that anyone looking at those screenshots will understand my intent.

Despite my trepidation regarding the game's presentation, I noted that there is a demo available and figured it was worth checking out. That was at 7:30 PM. Around 1:30 AM, I finally tore myself away from the "just one more turn" loop in which I had been locked all evening. The gameplay proved completely compelling in all the ways that made me fall in love with HoMM2, while adding loads of wrinkles and minor variations that could result in lots of replay value.

To be clear, I'm not an expert on the series or other SRPGs. For example, I am aware that HoMM3 is typically viewed as the apex of the series, but I can't speak on that, as I've never played it. With that in mind, veterans of the genre may be less enthused about the offerings in the demo than I, as I'm sure some of the new-to-me stuff was pillaged from other entries (like the law system, or the varying upgrade paths for units). All I can say is, wherever the ingredients were sourced from, I found they made quite the tasty soup.

Admittedly, the generic artwork never stopped annoying me. Quality-wise, I think it's mostly fine, and there are elements that I quite like, such as the upgraded versions of troops being totally different models, not just pallette swaps. Additionally, I actually think the game map looks quite nice, if, again, a touch generic. Sort of like if you let a DM who is proficient with Inkarnate go hog wild while building a map. At least it hearkens to the colorful, dense maps of the early games.

At any rate, I can thoroughly recommend the demo. They've got, I think, 4 factions ready to go, with another to be introduced when the game officially hits Early Access. Additionally, there are 5 different map templates of various sizes and play styles. For those that aren't familiar with the series' schtick, there is also a tutorial, but I decided to just dive in, so I can't speak to its quality.

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[-] Agent_Karyo@piefed.world 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

It's funny with respect to the HoMM series, I strongly prefer HoMM2, I've played both HoMM1 (way after it came out, HoMM2 was the thing at that time with I started playing PC games) and HoMM3 and I actually like HoMM2 more.

HoMM2 works great with the Heroes 2 Resurrection / Fheroes2 open source engine (high resolution support and a bunch more).

I've never thought about it, but I think one of the reasons that I prefer HoMM2 is the combination of the distinctly mid 90s high end (for that time) pixelart and the 80s motifs. HoMM3 was honestly somewhat similar in terms of visual aesthetic, but also leaning a little more to the "Y2K" era "3D multimedia" feel and with less of an 80s vibe. As strange as it sounds, I feel that in 1996 the 80s were still part of the common milieu, while by 1999/2000 the 80s were already considered definitely outmoded.

I am going by memory (I only became a teenager in the early 2000s), but I think I am not too far off.

The map visuals are definitely a lot nicer than the splash screen and city visuals. That being said, I think this looks prettier:

Perhaps it's just nostalgia, but I would argue there are both visual and gameplay elements that benefit this style. It's a lot more distinctive; you can immediately pick up what's going on, but also it's a unique and vivid style that defines the series.

[-] redhorsejacket@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago

Yes! Getting fheroes2 set up last year was a blast and a half. I think I went a week straight playing nothing but that, which is unusual for me.

I agree that I would prefer something which more closely matches the HoMM2 look, but I can understand why they've shied away from that. In their defense, at-a-glance readability wasn't always the team's priority. For instance, if you told me that Halon was A) a good guy and B) a wizard, I'd doubt you (to crib a critique from an old Sseth review).

However, man, I felt like those character designs lent so much personality to the game. Maybe this is patronizing, but it really felt like the artists were the same kids who spent hours on end playing DnD through the 80s and 90s, and they just upended their old TrapperKeepers full of sketches into the character pool.

I can understand folks that say the mechanics really came into their own in the following game, but I'll always have a soft spot for the technicolor cartoon nature of HoMM2. For what it's worth, in the other thread, someone said that they felt like the map in particular was inspired by HoMM3's map, which they appreciated.

I wish I had a better head for the mechanics of this sort of game so I could make some concrete observations for folks that are less interested in the aesthetics of this entry and more concerned with how it plays, but I just keep coming back to, "idk, this is all just kind of working for me".

this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2026
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