Heroes of Might and Magic Olden Era early access review: "The legendary strategy RPG series finally makes a comeback to reclaim its throne"

Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era feels like playing in a strategy sandbox filled with sparkling treasures you can't help but turn over in your hands, with marvelous dollhouse towns packed with epic fantasy action figures to play with. Then, a huge black dragon grabs that sandbox and flips it over. Get with the program and learn that not all that glitters is gold, or get turned to ash. This is the legendary strategy back in top form – Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era is developer Unfrozen's revival of the classic series, and its best since 1999's seminal Heroes of Might and Magic 3.

That particular entry is a fan favorite for good reason, and Olden Era uses it as a mechanical base for its prequel, really understanding why the turn-based, tactical, top-down gameplay worked in the first place, but also knowing where the formula would benefit from a slick, modernized revamp. Unfrozen even retains some of the best ideas from later in the series, retrofitting them into this classic-styled approach, and introducing more than a few of its own. For the first time in the series, going back to Heroes of Might and Magic 3 makes me yearn for the new features. Currently in Early Access, Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era is already packed with an essentially endless amount of content, from randomized scenarios, to a map-builder beta, multiplayer, and a meaty first act of a campaign.

The old ways

Merging RPG mechanics with real-time strategy pillars, the fundamentals of Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era will be familiar to anyone who has poured blush-inducing hours into the likes of Warcraft or Command & Conquer. Each match is essentially a war of attrition, where resource-generating structures must be captured to feed back into building army units, and, yes, missing the first week's worth of crystal mining or constructing your faction's mightiest unit generator may cost you the entire game several hours later if you're not careful. Also, it's a turn-based RPG.

Yes, layered on top of RTS-inspired loop is the fact that every match also feels like its own open-world RPG, complete with party member heroes, color-coded special gear to find and equip, spells to hone, and stats to train. Not being real-time isn't a gimmick, but something that Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era wrings a lot of juice out of, whether that's an intense multiplayer hotseat game feeling like a chess match of player decisions, or special single-player scenario challenges that dare you to master maps filled with possibilities under tense turn-limit pressure.

Each match plays out on the overworld map from a top-down perspective. Though – either in battle or on the map – Olden Era allows you to zoom in really far to bask in how beautiful the vibrant fantasy world of Jadame really is. Each map is absolutely littered with things to grab your attention. Resources from piles of gold to heaped ore lie around. Outposts that generate resources when captured. Static groups of monsters wait for a scrap, blocking vital routes, pick-ups, and artifacts.

Hovering over anything instantly tells you what it does (and, for limited interactions, handily marks if you've visited it already), but it can't help you with analysis paralysis. With heroes only able to horse ride so far each day, decisions must be made, and getting distracted by shiny objects you don't actually need will only let opponents – computer or human controlled – get the upper hand.

Different factions have different resource requirements to recruit its town's biggest beasties or build its best structures, so while it's tempting to hoover up everything you see, is it really worth throwing away a turn of movement zig-zagging a small zone, or are you better off pushing outward to get the drop on potentially equally hypnotized enemies?

Hunkering down can be tempting, staying protected and hoarding resources to fully build up your towns and generate as many army units as possible. But, like in all the best strategy games, even fantastical conflict is all about momentum. Nab additional towns earlier than your enemies, and you can get ahead on generating more money, law, or even spell points than an opponent to give you an edge. Dash behind enemy lines, and you may even catch an over-eager, over-stretched opponent off-guard and you may even be able to saunter into their own, poorly defended bases to turn them to your own ends, cutting off enemy heroes.

The sheer sense of possibility is what makes jumping into a fresh match of Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era always compelling, whether that's trying to tackle a particularly tough and challenging scenario map, or generating a fresh, random map based on Unfrozen's already huge library of templates – which can define everything from rough lane shapes, to how many resources players might come across, and are wonderfully well-explained and presented in the match set-up menu.

It's learning how to juggle those possibilities that makes getting better at Heroes rewarding. When do you play it safe to mitigate risk? How do you burn every resource available to surge forward with a fresh army and deliver it to a gap in an opponent's strategy at just the right time? Or, indeed, building the instinct that'll tell you when to rush back to your own castle in time to defend a good, old-fashioned siege (forest bless the Grove's unique mushroom teleporter structure for that one).

Campaign trip

So far, Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era also features act one of an RPG campaign that takes you through some well-crafted match scenarios, itself serving as a sort of extended tutorial for regular play, but offering challenge in its own right. Starting off with a lenient, Single Hero play structure, you eventually recruit new allies as you try to unravel a conspiracy that's blighting the continent of Jadame with magical fires and odd insect creatures. At points, who you ally with is up to you, shifting things like your starting location for certain missions. At times, the campaign's rule limitations, such as what structures can be built when, can be a bit annoying – but it works well enough, even if it risks encouraging me to play with bad habits I wouldn't want to take across into Classic play.

Yes, surprising nobody, so far I like my Classic-style, multi-hero scenarios the best – and Heroes of Might and Magic caters well to this traditional mode of play. This allows you to, for instance, have chains of heroes presiding over different regions of a map, able to pass forward artifacts and units to quickly deliver big monsters into your strongest character's pockets, or to act as speedy, disposable scouts into enemy territory.

More movement options can often be worth the cost of hiring an extra couple of heroes, especially to help defend your network of towns that generate even more units and resources. But, more heroes also means more temptation. You know that your beefiest hero might be better off battling and avoiding breadcrumbs of shiny crystals, or that your second-tier heroes might not really need all those experience points – but can you really resist the alluring, victorious sound design in order to stay on task?

Gallop into tough enough foes (weaker groups will run away, leaving you the choice to mow them down or leave them), and battle will commence. Olden Era's skirmishes take place on hex-grids, just like the classic Heroes titles. Combat is simple on the surface, but meaty and appropriately tactical. Units take it in turns to move and attack, while your hero commander can chip in whenever you have control to cast spells from buffs, debuffs, or flinging a handy fireball. Heroic attacks can also supplement your army's damage as focus builds up over the fight that you can spend. While all units have basic attacks, they can also deploy spell-like specials of their own that can turn the tide of battle in the right situation.

Your army themselves are abstracted 'stacks'. Your 20 minotaur lords are one character on-screen you command, but it's also up to you how you assemble your units across your hero's seven unit slots. Just because each faction has seven tiers of units doesn't mean you need to fill them up a slot at a time. 200 faun archers, for instance, might be better off split into two lots of 100 to double their turns and split themselves as an enemy target, at the cost of lower cumulative stats.

Likewise, control different faction towns or unit outposts, and there's nothing stopping you from fronting a diverse army at the cost of lower morale – angels fighting alongside vampires, mixing black dragons with a legion of insects, or going all-in on ranged attackers from across the region.

Each unit can also be upgraded between two different paths with differing skills and stats, meaning that even within a single faction there are strategic choices to be made with how you customize your army. That can be as simple as deciding whether to evolve your skeletons into melee-centric skeleton warriors, or the ranged skeleton archers, to deciding whether herbomancers should become the bee-summoning sporemancers, or mana-boosting murmurmancers.

How much you want to worry about that depth is up to you. The richness of classic play is simplified across Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era's other modes, but in ways that allow for a shift in focus that can feel just as rewarding to explore rather than detracting from the experience. Single Hero play, for example, isn't just a campaign consideration, but a full play mode in its own right. The core rules are essentially the same as Classic, but only allows players one hero each to do everything, less character management making for streamlined play.

This is the mode I chafe against the most, because I've become used to having all my minions – but it's still a great way to play as I appreciate the snappier pace, and I'd definitely encourage those overwhelmed at the prospect of multiple heroes to check it out. The more time I spend with it, the more I appreciate its own nuances compared to Classic. I also appreciate that Unfrozen has provided even Single Hero mode with its own large amount of random-generation map templates specifically geared around getting the most out of Single Hero – 19 here compared to 35 in Classic is still hefty.

Even in early access, there is already so much to do in Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era. While the map builder is still clearly in beta, I'm sure players will quickly start adding to the great maps and map templates already included in this launch. Whether single-player or multiplayer, there's always so much more Olden Era to play. With turn-based strategy RPG mechanics this tight, that respectfully build on the classic that came before while simultaneously feeling fresh and modern in how Unfrozen have evolved them, simply playing more Heroes is always a delight. Now, time to watch that hour count rise.

Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era is leveraging player feedback to deliver the strategy RPG I've longed for since 2005