Might and Magic Clash of Heroes Review

It’s 3:12:07am in the morning.  After 26 hours, 54 minutes and 32 seconds in 3 days I have now finished 

Might and Magic Clash of Heroes.

I wasn’t expecting much from this Steam bought game.  I didn’t see it as anything but a cheap spin off from the Might and Magic series, specifically Heroes V.  However, the second the main menu faded in and started to play the main theme from Heroes V, I was stunned and my jaw literally dropped.  I stared at the screen for about nine seconds, just listening to the music.  From that point and throughout most of my play through, three words kept circling through my head:  

“I am home.”

I was seeing characters I essentially grew up with, Markal, Godric, Fiona, Cyrus.  The Might and Magic series is a universe that I am falling in love with the more I experience it.

The innovative combat is what pulled me back to Clash of Heroes.  It follows me in my thoughts.  When I close my eyes I see the stacks, the rows, the chains, the colours, the charging units.  When I’m looking at my desktop I have to remind myself that I can adjust the icons wherever I want.  I don’t have to move the lower folders away before grabbing the one above, or delete Microsoft Word so that it will connect three folders together to form a SUPER FOLDER, or something.  I guess that’s what I get for playing over seven hours of this addictive adventure a day.

The combat is the only interactive element, excluding walking to nodes on a beautifully artistic path.  These battle situations play out like a bombastic and tactical puzzle game, like Bejeweled or upside down Tetris.  The idea of making stacks and combining creatures together is a concept that took me a while to get used to, until I reminded myself that it’s essentially the core concept of all Heroes of Might and Magic games.  Combat involves tactically moving units of varying colours and tiers into rows and columns to perform certain actions.  I’m not too happy about the childish looking creatures, some of which almost look like babies, but the relative diversity of many units keeps every battle satisfying and engaging.  Yet, every creature is treated more like lifeless weapons than actual people which gives Clash of Heroes an unintentionally depressing sense of severity and it doesn’t help when an idle Bone Dragon, Pit Fiend or Griffin can get destroyed by virtually anything in one hit.  The combat is intuitive and very rewarding, but nothing in any battle feels alive.   In preparation for the updated combat mechanics of Might and Magic: Heroes VI, the units are separated into Core, Elite and Champion creatures.  

• Core units are building blocks, forming walls…somehow, buffing higher tier units and even forming their own stacks to dish out small amounts of damage. 
• Elite units have specific abilities that echo the theme of the faction that controls them.  Elite and Champion creatures can be permanently destroyed in battle which adds a tense level of strategy and risk to every battle they’re in.
• Champion’s require four core units to be placed behind them to attack.  They can obliterate you in one hit if you don’t create walls and even move idle units to block they’re line of earth shattering destruction.

Aside from the juvenile design for every single creature, I did have one major problem that could have been easily fixed.  There are a shockingly few amount of creatures that attack in any physical way.  Bears, imps, zombies and golems run at the enemy and strike them physically which makes the combat feel more tangible, but it’s odd that many creatures execute their attacks from a distance with stupidly obnoxious displays.  The battles don’t feel visceral enough when a giant four armed cat launches its swords at you rather than ferociously slashing your defenses apart.

There are some tedious situations that force you into a battle that the story doesn’t even call for.  Easily, the most frustrating moment of my experience involved fighting my way through guards that were summoned by the main villain.  The fact that the game resorted to something so needlessly lazy is tiresome and depressing, but that’s not the worst part.  The second set of guards you face are three titans.  Overall, 5-10% of battles you face are constructed in a way to force you to hit a certain target in a certain way, like; gates, buttons and even vomit.  Attempting to meticulously take out the three linked, charging and powerful targets caused me some much un-wanted annoyance.

The titans are so powerful that they can stampede right through you if you haven’t made excruciatingly precise maneuvers with mandatory creatures that you’re not told are mandatory.  Your units are randomly slotted into position at the start of every battle which can result in this particular fight being literally impossible to win.  Moments like that can completely obliterate my fondness of a game, like Prototype’s overpowered end boss. Actually, Clash of Heroes does have a tricky boss but I was lucky enough to defeat it on my first go, and the music and mechanics of that particular fight were so magnificent that I enjoyed it more than I ever thought.  Battles are definitely overused here, including a situation where you have to fight in an arena to get an audience with a king.  That’s such a conspicuous way of shoving the player into contrived fights, and there a several battles that could have been more effective if the story created a more potent scenario.  You face Guards so often that the  story starts to feel less important yet the most appealing battles are when the main heroes are facing each other because both characters have a stake in the result.

It took me quite a while to finally appreciate the fact that the playable characters are essentially children.  I saw it as a clear marketing strategy to appeal more friendly to kids.  The heroes are surprisingly relatable and well characterized, for a Nintendo DS and Steam game.  They often fall into generic fantasy speak, with lines that could have been said by virtually every single living thing you meet in the game, but many characters have arcs, motives, goals, tragedies and obstacles.  The two most engaging are Fiona and Aidan.  

Fiona falls into the land of Heresh, the dead homeland of the Necropolis faction (My personal favourite in Heroes III and V).  Alone, scared and…wait for it…….dead, she floats her way through the cursed landscape which eventually leads her to losing the one hope of becoming alive again and vowing to slice off the head of whoever is responsible.  A reaction like that is actually rather jarring but it’s refreshing to have some emotional feedback in a gaming character where they could have very easily been bland and lifeless, pardon the pun….because she’s dead…

Aidan ends up in Sheogh, the demon underworld.  It is quickly established that Aidan is very hot-tempered and brooding, like the fact he has red hair.  After realizing that he has control over Inferno creatures, which is surprisingly never explained in any way, he violently challenges and slaughters all who stand before him.  He also has, arguably, the most interesting moment in the entire game when the powerful artifact known as The Blade of Binding fuses with his own arm.  With this one effective moment; Aidan himself is now the objective the villains are after and every other hero is now connected with the story.  With friends, family and personal desires binding the characters together; they arrive at the climax in a completely natural and believable way.

Might and Magic Clash of Heroes is one of the most addictive games I have ever played.  It is absolutely perfect for a child, or child at heart, on a long plane flight.  Work and food were the only things that drew me away from this gem.  It certainly does have its faults, but I am exceedingly impressed at this addictive and magical adventure.  I recommend it to anyone.