While I have never played the original Nintendo DS version of Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes from 2009, I have played and greatly enjoyed the “HD” version of the game released in 2011 on PC, PSN and XBLA. It was a unique and highly enjoyable attempt to mix the turn-based strategy of the Heroes of Might & Magic games with very simple match 3 gameplay reminiscent of Puzzle Quest. It had frustrating aspects to it, of course, but I remember liking it a lot 12 years ago. And I have been considering revisiting the title for a while, but those plans had to be put on hold because I didn’t want to deal with the technical issues. Sadly, the original PC release became quite problematic to run in recent years and on top of that fans of the multiplayer aspect of the game (which I have never been interested in and have not played) were disappointed when a few years ago Ubisoft disabled the online functionality entirely.
The announcement of Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes – Definitive Edition was a very pleasant surprise and I dove into it as soon as I had time. Unfortunately, I have to say that the game hasn’t aged as well as I have remembered and this new release does nothing to the biggest frustrations the original game had as well.
But to quickly recap – Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes is a match 3 turn-based strategy that serves as a prequel to Heroes of Might & Magic V. It was one of the first entries in the series under the ownership of Ubisoft and, just like the preceding Heroes V and Dark Messiah of Might & Magic they were set in the new world setting that was completely separate from the previous Heroes games by New World Computing. As in a proper Heroes game, you have several separate campaigns, each of which has its Hero character and a unique army. Although, unlike Heroes, you do not get a Castle to revisit and upgrade and you get or buy your troops from other parts of the map (more similarly to King’s Bounty, in a way).
Each Hero gets three infinite common troop types and five limited and more powerful special troop types. And the way the match 3 comes into play during the battle is in the fact that all of the troops are colour coded. Matching 3 horizontally will create a wall that will absorb damage. Matching 3 vertically will set the troops into a charging state where after a set amount of turns they will launch an attack. While special troop types require 2 or 4 common troops to be matched to it vertically to start charging. Each Hero also gets one spell to use to their advantage and both the Hero and the troops get experience after combat and can level up. You get a limited amount of moves per each turn but doing chains of matches can give you a move back or even add more than you had, while matching via deletion does not use a move. It’s all very simple to grasp and nicely combines the tactical nature of Heroes with casual fun of match 3.
At least, for the most part it’s a good mix. One thing that has been annoying in the original release and remains exactly as such in the new edition is the fact, that when completing the story campaign you will occasionally stumble upon story battles, success of which will far greatly depend on the random nature of match 3 than any kind of tactical skill. For 80% of the game it doesn’t matter much, but when it does (and most of the final campaign is exactly this) it becomes infuriating.
Especially since while there is usually no punishment for loosing, your actual punishment is sitting through several loading screens. The overabundance of “Loading” after each tiny little thing was unpleasant in 2011 but in 2023 it feels especially not fun, especially when the game looks this simple. There’s also no autosave either and manual saves take about as long as said loading screens. This, along with minor bugs, dumb lack of quality of life for some aspects of the game and later campaign designs slowly erodes any fun you might be having with the game. So by the time you notice that some smaller bugs that you remember seeing 12 years ago are still here, any kind of goodwill evaporates.
Fans of the original DS version might also be sad to hear that there is still no way to switch to the original visual style or the soundtrack of that version. And while the “HD” sound and visuals are very good (and seem to have been further retouched for the Definitive Edition), the original release had a certain charm to it that will now be lost unless you have a DS/3DS and the original version. The story in the game is very bland and the fact that it occasionally tries to be funny and cute feels odd. Not that it needed to be serious, but something about the Saturday-morning cartoon aesthetic feels at odds with the setting of Might & Magic and the plot this game in particular tries to tell. Oh and also it seems that the cutscenes of the game were not reencoded or upscaled since the older release so by today’s standards they look especially blocky.
I still had fun with most of my Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes – Definitive Edition playthrough, for how horrible the final campaign is, and it still is a very unique and entertaining experience. And I am glad that the game, with this new edition, is properly playable again instead of becoming lost to time. But at the same time, it’s hard to be excited about this “Definitive Edition” when it does not address any of the biggest issues of the original release and feels more like a “It’s working again Edition” of the exact same game but now sold as a new title. It’s quite likely that the budget for this release was extremely low and the way it was published has more to do with the legal aspects of the game. But as a player I cannot help but be disappointed. Still, this is the way to play the game, which is still quite nice, even if not as fun as it was for 2011. And there’s still nothing quite like this.