The Turn-Based Strategy genre is probably at the top of its form right now, with the recent release of the latest iteration of what many consider the genre’s cornerstone, Civilization III. In the wake of such a release, while players are still sacrificing their social lives to finish off those pesky Romans, what would it take to allow a publisher to even consider releasing a new TBS game? Nothing, right? No one could be that dumb… unless they had the power of a franchise behind them.

And Might and Magic is about as established a franchise as you can get. Sure, when its first game came out, back in the day, it was discarded as a Dungeons & Dragons ripoff; sure, it has always been compared unfavourably to the more detailed storylines of Ultima; but MM has tenacity. D&D is an unreliable license and Ultima went Online; while the RPG genre faltered and started panting for its last breath, along came Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven, easily one of the best games of 98. MM has always been there for the fans; what the series has lacked in originality it has always made up for by being available, and, more importantly, fun.

The success of the original MM series has led to its expanding into other genres and platforms with names like Legends of Might & Magic, Crusaders of-, Warriors of- and, of course, Heroes of-. While most of those games have been dismal failures, Heroes, the first spin-off, has always been successful, gathering more fans with each iteration and add-on, beginning with the series’ ‘prequel’, King’s Bounty in 1990 and ending with the add-on for HoMM3, Shadow of Death in 2k.

Which brings us to Heroes of Might and Magic IV: No Subtitle, released 280302, simultaneously with MM9. In spite of Civilization, I understand it did fairly well.

The story goes that the old world has been destroyed in the fantastic equivalent of a thermonuclear disaster, caused when two powerful artifacts clashed, destroying each other and everything else in the bargain. Portals to the new world appeared during this “Reckoning”, and whoever could flee, did.

The allegory of people starting life in a new homeland has echoes in the way New World Computing, the development studio owned by Publisher 3DO, has tried its best to please the hardcore fans of the series while also attempting to create something new and exciting. NWC has done so beautifully, keeping to the comfortable formula of the previous games while adding in a new layer of complexity.

If you happen to be new to the series, or to TBS games generally, the basic gameplay is fairly simple; you begin with one hero and usually an undeveloped town under your command. From here you attempt to complete your objective, be it conquering the other players or finding a certain artifact. You do this by exploring the map, raising armies and developing your heroes.

Unlike the myriad complexities of Civilization, town management in Heroes is dreadfully simple. There are six types of towns, each with up to sixteen different building types, all of them with simple and direct advantages like giving a certain benefit to your heroes or allowing you to purchase a certain type of unit for your army. A notable change from previous games in the series is an either/or option for each of the four levels of units, you can either build a Dragon Factory or a Cloud Castle, allowing that city to provide either Dragon Golems or Titans, but you can never have both in that city.

The six types of towns, and all creatures and heroes, each correspond to a different ‘alignment’; either one of the five types of magic or the single alignment of Might, meaning pure physical strength, as epitomised by the Barbarian race. Reminiscent of Magic: The Gathering, the five ‘colours’ of magic – Life, Death, Order, Chaos and Nature – each has two aligned types and two opposing types, though the opposition effect is rarely seen. Creatures of opposing alignment, when put together in an army, suffer a penalty to their morale.

The creatures themselves all, even the smallest cannon-fodder, have at least one special, distinctive ability, and usually more than one; Devils can teleport anywhere on the battlefield, for example, while Efreeti have a permanent fire-shield that deals damage to anyone engaging them in melee combat. Knowing these abilities allow you to strategize your combats to a certain degree, and factor into how you choose to build your armies; an army entirely composed of flying units may move faster on the overland map, but flying creatures are usually weaker in combat.

The real strength of an army, however, lies in the heroes that lead it. Like any RPG, a level 1 hero will fall to a single spell or arrow, but a level 30 hero will be able to single-handedly walk up to that Dragon City and wrest its horde from the Black Dragons who rightfully own stand guard over it. Character development is also fairly simple, with nine groups of skills, five of them magical, each consisting of five skills, making for a total of 45 different skills to choose from.

A really nice touch is classes; when a hero specialises in two skills, three in the case of the Archmage, he gains a special ability. With 11 primary classes – a mage and a warrior each for the magical alignments and a warrior for Might – 37 advanced classes for each combination of any two of the nine skills, and the Archmage class, your hero can be any one of 48 different classes. Learn Tactics and Death Magic and your hero would be a Reaver, who is automatically under the effect of the Bloodlust spell, Death and Life Magics and you would be a Dark Priest, who’s attack drains the life from his opponent and heals himself. The only downside to the skill system is that you only get to choose one of three possible skills each time you gain a level, making character development a random and haphazard journey. If your hero has learned a magical skill, he would be able to cast spells of the appropriate alignment. The spells themselves provide for a versatile system of combat, the right mix of spells against an opponent often meaning the difference between victory and defeat.

Other welcome additions are the Caravan, which allows you to transport armies between cities at a fixed movement rate, instead of having to walk them one by one; and the ability to create armies without having a hero in the lead, you can, for example, split off an imp from your army to pick up those loose resources while the bulk of your army ventures onward. Old staples, like artifacts for your heroes and resource gathering, are, of course, still to be found.

Another carryover is the simple combat system. Heroes still uses tactical combat, where you get to decide how your units fight on a separate interface, though it now allows a “quick combat” option that resolves combat automatically (not recommended, since the system has a kamikaze playstyle; you’ll lose half your units through quick combat when you can win without a single casualty playing it through). Unfortunately, there is no longer a grid to help you decide where your units are going to end up when you move them, and there is no way to scroll through the combat messages, so you are never quite sure what is going on.

The chief draw of Heroes, however, lie in the six campaigns; one for each alignment. Each campaign being made up of about five scenarios, each scenario alone taking hours to complete, it is possible to play the game for months without touching the stand-alone scenarios or having to download player-made maps off the net. The campaigns all follow an epic storyline, each detailing the rise of a leader in this new world – how Emilia Nighthaven rises from a glassblower’s apprentice to become Queen of Great Arcan, or how the forbidden love of Elwin and Shaera leads the new elven kingdom into civil war. Long messages pop up over time, or when a hero visits a certain place, giving you the story as it unfolds. While the writing is rather weak, with grammatical and stylistic errors, the grand scope of the storyline more than makes up for it – this is the stuff of legend! And if that’s not enough, the game also comes with a scenario editor, and surely there will be player-maps for download long before you are reading this.

Okay, you say, epic stories, cool new rules, but what about the bells and whistles? Well, therein lies the rub – the graphics are mediocre and so is the music. Rather disappointing, considering the standards of other TBS games currently available; it is likely that Heroes has the worse graphics among them all.

If you can overlook the weakness of the engine, Heroes does promise hours of the “I just need to play one more turn” variety so insidiously addictive about good TBS games. The campaign stories sweep you up, the game is quick and easy to get into, and it serves as a worthy addition to a well-loved series with a decade of history to live up to.