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Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era is proof that you can usually tell if a strategy game has the goods within an hour. In this specific instance, my biggest criticism of developer Unfrozen's prequel is that I had to stop playing it after an hour. Gazing at distant building upgrades, powerful spells I was unlikely to unlock within my demo, a snowballing army of mythological monsters, Olden Era was laid bare.
Now, a caveat. I've spent so many hours in the likes of Civilization, XCOM, and Total War that I could have used the same amount of time raising a small homunculus to play my strategy games for me. But when it comes to Heroes of Might and Magic, I've only dabbled – blasphemy, I know – and so during my hands-on for Olden Era, I approached it as a devotee of the broader genre rather than a dedicated fan of the series itself.
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For the first part of my hands-on, I'm dropped into a match as Dungeon. An umbrella faction for all of the universe's underground creepy-crawlies, my armies consist of medusa, dark elves, and minotaurs – and given I have a limited amount of time to play, my goal is to get my hands on as many cool units and shiny trinkets as possible.
In the overworld, Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era has more than a fair share of RPG elements. Quick pacing at the beginning means that you can usually snag at least one interactable piece of loot per turn, be they equippable items for your hero or resources to funnel back into upgrading your city. Speaking of which, it's hard to decide which buildings to prioritize when each feels genuinely powerful – I opted to prioritize a stronger variant of minotaur, for example, but even that took a minute to weigh against setting up a Mage's Guild for flashier spells.
That bigger-picture metagame is a lot faster-paced than the games I mentioned earlier, and in turn feels much easier to drop into casually. A gently-encouraging narrative nudges me to head west to meet a friendly agent, giving the game's sandbox-y nature a little more structure. Combat is similarly straightforward, taking place on a 2D tile-based with your army's forces on one side and your opponent's on the other.
I take a very ham-fisted approach to battles, haphazardly throwing my minotaurs and dark elves into the fray, but I love how much the game forces you to consider positioning – keep your ranged units back and they'll whittle away anything on the screen from afar, but who's going to keep them safe when your minotaurs are away pulping their ranged units?
But Heroes of Might and Magic's best bit remains getting to press your thumb on the scales with magic. You can tip the odds by smiting down your opponent's damage-dealers, or tangle their frontline up in slowing effects to have free reign over the map. This feels even better when I get to play Arena, a quick battle mode where you get to build a team of cobbled-together units and spells – including end-game stuff – and jump straight into combat. Arena is snappy and chaotic in the best way possible, meaning I got to throw a vampire lord against a phoenix without having to spend hours building up to that level of encounter.
Perhaps, if you're reading this as a long-time Heroes of Might and Magic fan, you'd have preferred I tackle the more nitty-gritty changes and improvements that developer Unfrozen has opted for (one thing I will say – everything looks gorgeous, and I could have gazed at the overworld forever). But as someone who missed the boat on Heroes of Might and Magic at the height of its popularity, the most exciting thing about Olden Era is that it cracks the door back open for strategy fans who have come to the genre since. As I leave my demo, I'm told Unfrozen sees this as a game that players will stick with for hundreds of hours – and, gods help me, I believe it.
