Heroes of Might and Magic

                  Reviewed by Bill Commons

I have just started playing this game which I bought in error. I
thought it was part of the Might and Magic role playing series but
it is a strategy game which previously I have hated. It has a lot
of RPG qualities though as part of the action involves scouring
the countryside looking for treasure chests and artifacts and
mines, also fighting various monsters.

You start the game with one castle and the computer controls three
others. You are allowed to buy some troops to build up your forces
and a Mages guild and spell-book if you are not a sorcerer or
warlock, these two already have one. I found that the first
battles were too tough for me so I concentrated on finding the
unguarded loot and weapons. This enabled me to build up my army
and gain experience points a little before engaging the enemy.

I could only tackle the very easy mode and made the opponents
dumb. Even so it took me four days to conquer the enemy. The
computer is very fast and soon builds up the other armies and does
not seem to have any trouble defeating the monsters in the other
camps. One consolation, I think, is that they fight each other and
by the time I was ready to tackle another castle there was only
one colour left. Unfortunately this one controlled most of the
Island and castles on which the game takes place in the easy mode.

There are four armies and each is identified by its flag which is
either red, yellow, green or blue. The troops range from peasants,
goblins, orcs, right up to cyclops, dragons and mounted cavalry.
There are also genies who will offer to join your party if you
find the magic lamps and of course rub them.

I tried the next level, this is classed as normal and I lasted
about two hours. The opponents whipped around collecting all the
treasure and built loads of ships which soon started landing
around my castle and wiping out all my heroes, you are allowed up
to eight at one time and if you have enough funds you can replace
any that get killed. I thought that a dragon was unstoppable so I
concentrated on building up my resources until I was able to buy
one. This was great for most of the local monsters, it just
breathed on them and they were gone, the first invading army had a
couple of stone throwing trolls in it and as the invader they had
the first go, a couple of rocks were lobbed at my dragon and it
was dead. I went back to the easy mode but on the second location
and built up to twenty seven dragons and thought "try me now"

It worked great for some time but then along comes an army with
fifty cyclops and they fight by using their eye to paralyse and
destroy, bang went my dragons.

I was ready to put the game away as it was very demoralising but
then I tried a multiple player game and I controlled all four
colours. This suited me down to the ground as I no longer had to
rush around trying to beat the computer, I tried to win each
battle even though I knew the opponent's weakness, or so I
thought, I avoided putting the strong heroes against the weaker
ones unless it was really necessary but even then I got a few
surprises, there are random events that give the forces good or
bad luck or high and low morale. These allow double attacks on one
go for the good and to miss a turn on the bad.  This is on the
battle field, also a weaker force can cast a good spell and win
the battle, one is Armageddon which kills all sometimes, including
the caster, but the latter wins that battle.

Of course I tried to win for each party when it was their turn to
fight, but I had made some favourites and tried to avoid pitting
these against each other until the final battles, the whole game
in this mode can take a long week of many hours playing time and I
am still on the easy mode with lots of different locations and
levels yet to play.

There are eighteen different scenarios or large islands to play,
with levels of difficulty as easy, normal, hard and expert. You
can customise opponents from dumb, average, smart and hard. The
game can be played as 1, 2, 3 or 4 player, also over network,
modem or direct connection.

One curious happening is with the saved games, whenever I saved
after vanquishing one or more heroes the save was ignored and on
re-loading it would go back to a game where all four colours are
present. This meant that if I had only two colours left, then I
had to play the game through to the end and sometimes it took
several hours.













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