Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes HD Full Review

Last month I briefly talked about Ubisoft’s HD port of Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes and figured I’d put up a full review now that I’ve had more time to thoroughly play the game. My first impressions remain mostly intact in that the gameplay is fun and addictive if a little unbalanced at times.

The gameplay is a strange mix of turn-based strategy and puzzle based combat. You essentially control one side of a battlefield that is populated by a random combination of your available units arranged in neat little rows. You get three moves each turn and can use them to either shift one unit to a different row, remove a unit or call for more from your reserves. You want to stack your units so that they match by type and color to create attack formations and defensive walls. The objective is to penetrate your opponent’s defenses and reduce their HP to zero while keeping them from doing the same. In this regard it feels a little like Magic: The Gathering at times.

Clash of Heroes has three game modes but each one revolves around the same basic style of gameplay. There’s Campaign mode, Quick Match and Multiplayer. The Campaign is pretty self-explanatory in that you play through one unique campaign for each hero: Anwen, the Ranger; Godric, the Knight; Fiona, the Necromancer; Aidan, the demon tamer; and Nadia, the mage. Each hero belongs to a different faction: Sylvan (Elves), Haven (Knights), Necropolis (Undead), Inferno (Demons) and Academy (Mages). Your faction determines your units and their abilities with each faction having a unique set of basic, elite and champion units.

PROTIP: Use the Necropolis faction and everyone will hate you!

Quick Match mode is essentially a way of setting up single or team matches that you can play against a friend or an AI. They don’t really count towards anything and it’s just a way of playing the game without getting bogged down in any story or waiting for rooms to open online.

The Multiplayer mode is definitely the most addictive by far and is pretty solid barring a few minor annoyances. Generally you can enter a lobby or host a game with custom settings such as being able to use artifacts (which must be unlocked in Campaign mode) or setting a time limit for each player’s turn. I would highly recommend the latter setting in case your online opponent decides they have something better to do and walks away from the game leaving you to quit and cede the match.

Once you join a game, things are pretty straightforward; you and your opponent take turns until someone is defeated or someone surrenders (read disconnects). Thankfully, if your opponent rage quits, it still counts as a win for you and you still gain EXP. The EXP you gain in Multiplayer levels up your profile, which allows you to unlock special multiplayer artifacts but really just serves as a way to give other players an idea of your general skill level and experience.

The most unique aspect of the multiplayer is the ability to have four player matches. In a 2v2 match you and another player will share one side of the battlefield while two opponents share another. You and your teammate each have three moves on your turn, but you can only affect units that are designated for you. This adds a new level of challenge to the game and forces you be incredibly creative and cooperative. Of course, this type of match really works best if you have a mic so you can talk things over with your teammate. If you don’t have a mic, you can give your teammate special commands such as “remove this unit” or “move this unit”, but it’s still up to them whether or not they want to listen to you.

There are a lot of balancing issues but these are mostly brought on by the unlockable artifacts, and you can opt to not play in a lobby that uses them. Aside from the occasional broken artifact, the only real hindrance to the gameplay is the randomness of battle. The fights are often purely luck based, which means that the difference between victory and defeat often boils down to rolling up the right units at the right time.

Screw you and your two Death Knights, Fiona.

There really isn’t much else to say about the gameplay, but there are a lot of little things about this game that are kind of annoying and make it seem unfinished. For example, in campaign mode you can find gold, ore and gems, which you use to buy more units. Or at least that’s how it should work if not for the fact that I never once found out what the ore or gems were used for. Gold was the only thing used to buy new units and no store accepts ore or gems; it almost feels like the purpose of the other resources was cut from the game at the last second and they couldn’t remove them.

WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE BOX OF ROCKS !?! TELL ME !

While the overall art design is nice, a lot of the character portraits are a bit inconsistent and can come off as very generic looking and goofy. It might just be the HD because this game was originally made for the DS and looks like it could have been programmed in flash. Granted, it was done by an indie developer and it does looks great for a puzzle game. It still seems odd to me that there was a demand to port this game from the DS. Still, despite its flaws, Clash of Heroes is a very fun and often challenging strategy game. The depth of gameplay more than makes up for any shortcomings in the design, and if you like puzzle games I’d highly recommend it even for the multiplayer alone.

As an aside, none of these animated cutscenes are in the actual game.

Clash of Heroes – PSN Launch Trailer from Capy! on Vimeo.