If you are a child of the past, and owned a PC, and played games on that PC - you probably remember the Heroes of Might and Magic series of games. They were turn based strategy, were you started off with a hero, an outpost (sometimes, it was even a castle!) - and you were given an objective - defend your territory, build up an army of a sufficient size, siege the enemy, or something interesting to do with carefully managing resources and exploring.
Set in a mostly generic fantasy world, my fondest memories are of playing as a Necromancer type hero, and harvesting the souls of enemies, and building up a snowballing, unstoppable army. The game did a very good job of making you feel very powerful.
Fast forward to today, and there are a number of ways to play the original titles. You can grab them on GOG, and play them to your heart's content on a variety of operating systems. The old formula though, and the old engines, do have limitations in terms of things like visual fidelity, stability, and quality of life features found in modern games, like auto-save, 4K support, and other bits and pieces.
So when I found out about Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era, I was intruiged. This spirtiual successor to those titles which I loved, and played so much is out early next year. This year, however, there is a full featured demo that seems to have very little limitations, and might just be what you need to scratch that Heroes of Might and Magic itch. I know it did for me!
What is unclear, however is if there will be any grand campaigns and overarching stories, or whether the full version will just consist of skirmish, like the demo. The store page for the game is vague, and I suspect that it will not have a campaign owing to the omission of any mention of how many stories there will be.
I think instead, what will eventuate is a pure skirmish mode, multiplayer support, and maybe support for custom maps. But how does it play? Because ultimately, that is all that matters. Not everyone has the time to dig their heels into a deep single player experience. That makes me sad, (and I'm guilty of having that same issue at the moment...) - but the world is an ever changing place.
Gameplay is clean, and exactly as I remember it. Get your hero, get your town. Build a something in your town each day. Recruit new monsters from the buildings you build each week. Explore the world. Fight things. Encounter mines and production buildings. Capture them. Encounter opposing towns, conquer them. The core gameplay loop is all present, and combat is simplified a little over what I remember in HoMM2 / 3 - but it still has all the elements of a spiritual successor that you'd expect.
It also runs flawlessly on Linux, which is a welcome addition to any game being released at the moment - what with Windows 10 support ending, and me (and you) - hopefully not sticking around in that environment.
Visuals are nice - with the art direction lending itself to timeless fantasy, as opposed to realism. It is a style that will age well. Crisp, high contrast, and clear. Music and audio are great, with no concerns in my time with the demo.
Will it be a new age classic? Probably not. Will it sell a bunch of copies and enable a vast, story-driven Heroes of Might and Magic reboot? I hope so, but my hopes aren't that high.