Don't underestimate Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era's arena mode – it taught me how to win a campaign after 5 failed attempts

It's no secret at this point that I'm all-in on Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era. As a nostalgic prequel drawing mainly from the series' most successful instalments, the high fantasy strategizing has never been more enjoyable. As a consequence, I've logged more hours with Olden Era's demo than I have many fully released games.

There's one problem though: my inability to win. Beating hordes of random enemies in the gloriously busy overworld is a piece of cake, but as soon as a rival hero comes into play, things quickly fall apart. It's a problem that's plagued me throughout the 11-hours-plus I've spent with the demo. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. But when I turned my attention away from classic mode in a fit of exhaustion and hovered my cursor over quick-play arena mode instead, it suddenly clicked. I've come away with some top tips gleaned from my one-on-one battles, starting with the most important: never trust a vampire.

Fangs for nothing

Or rather, don't rely too much on a stack of four or five vampires (or vampire lords and scholars either, for that matter). I was fooled into thinking that, as the most expensive creature in the Necropolis faction's roster, a handful of bloodsucking buddies would have me on a winning streak. Turns out that's not quite true when a stack of 400 troglodytes pack an eyewatering punch I never see coming.

That's perhaps my biggest takeaway from arena mode. These quick battles allow you to skip the overworld exploration and go right into a 1v1 match, selecting a hero, creatures, skills, and equipment to craft a speedy build and jump right into the thick of it against an AI enemy.

When given the choice between smaller stacks of more powerful creatures versus high stacks of lower damage ones, I choose four vampire lords over 115 skeletons in what I consider a no-brainer selection, relying on their higher damage output and necromantic health-leeching to essentially strongarm myself a victory.

But Olden Era is a game of problem solving. I was soon to learn that while a troglodyte, onyx dancer, or foot soldier might deal relatively little damage on its own, safety and strength lie in numbers.

Arena mode also lets me interact more deeply with each creature's unique abilities. The health-replenishing power of a lich is an asset, for example, while I watched in horror as a red dragon's fire shields inflicted damage upon my troops with each melee attack landed upon it. That's how I learned to add more ranged creatures to a given lineup, as well as an adequate amount of healers.

Healing is something I'd only occasionally attempted with the Healing Water spell in my hero's spell book, but I gotta be honest: I rarely opt for magical heroes and always pick the ones with the highest attack score. It's a rookie error, especially as a fan of Dungeons & Dragons who should know better by now.

Mixing up the magic and melee-damage dealers is paramount to avoiding situations like the one with the red dragons, though I wouldn't have known about that special ability if not for the battle log.

In fact, scrap what I said about stacking low-level enemies – the battle log is perhaps the most useful thing about arena mode. It's my bible, something I can work backwards from to cross-reference when my enemy throws out a mystery spell I've never seen before or pulls off some speedy multi-target attack.

It also shows off the benefit of choosing your hero correctly; I ceded defeat multiple times to low-attack magic heroes, all because the computer knows how to play to their strengths versus my fairly brash and clumsy approach.

I'm proud to say that all this studying and analysis paid off. I've just completed my first ever victory run in a classic campaign, and I couldn't be more thrilled. Who knew you had to actually strategize to win in a turn-based strategy RPG?

In my defense, I was barely 10 years old the last time I was properly into Heroes 3, so maybe all I needed was a little helping hand to get myself up to speed once more. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to sock it to my computer and see if an all-dragon army is possible

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