[Music] so [Music] it was the year 1995 for all we knew or at least the people who played video games back then computer video games i mean not whatever passed for video games on that old atari knockoff that i had back then for all those people knew the might and magic franchise was at an end but an epic story that concluded in world of scene one of the stiltonistic greatest ideas for an expansion ever made one that encouraged you to play both clouds of zine and dark setup scene because if you had them both installed they combined into basically free content more game something you'd be paying for today and that was it that seemed like that was it for the mighty magic franchise for now but then lo and behold there did come in september of 1995 a new might and magic game but it wasn't a typical mighty magic game this was not another standard first person role playing a game this was not a dungeon crawler this was not a game we would go around talk to people get skills from them and drink stuff out of barrels this technically had more in common with a much older game called king's bounty which we have covered in a previous show oh so many years ago this was heroes of might and magic this was a continuation of the franchise in a brand new form and technically what is its most successful most beloved form that of a turn-based strategy role-playing game its name may seem a bit strange i mean heroes of might and magic were you not always playing a hero in might and magic you made six of them usually and yes it does seem a bit strange but warlords was already taken so they had to make do with what they could you are not really playing a simple hero a simple adventurer in the mighty magic universe you you're playing as well a lord if you will who hired heroes or you could consider that you're playing as the heroes that you were hiring it was your job to keep up the economy to take care of your castles to recruit troops to equip your heroes with sick troops and send them out to gather resources and fight enemies and gain experience and find items and conquer your foes and become eventually the lord of this new land lords of mighty magic would have also been a good idea of a title i guess but i think there actually is a lords of mighty magic at some point they made basically every kind of other surname to the franchise possible champions crusaders probably lords came up at some point there was a counter-strike game based on might and magic in the early 2000s what i'm saying is 3do loved to slap that name on to anything it could though now that i think about it maybe they couldn't call it lords of might and magic because of lords of magic which well it came out a bit later but there may have also been some confusion with warlords as well analyzing this game from the perspective of somebody that's existed in a world where heroes of mighty magic 2 and 3 exist is positively pointless the first heroes of mighty magic game as simplistic i would dare say that it is in some ways more simplistic than king's bounty was because at least king's bounty had more of a i wouldn't say a point to it but it had a more of a cohesive world it had you doing something whereas here is a mighty magic although it does have a campaign four of them actually is more focused on the actual maps it's also a sprawling narrative a sprawling world sprawling campaign which is something that might and magic and king's bounty had accustomed this to and it's more of a skirmish affair where you would battle either some ais or some people you knew on maps that were not all that gigantic they weren't small either some of them were generous you could say from the point of view of the year 1995 but it still pales in comparison in every aspect to what came after it though that is not to say that this game has no merit when it came out and it absolutely had merit it was wasn't super complicated but it was enjoyable it was fun people appreciated it and in its time even though you may look at it now and think oh my god that looks hideous the graphics you're seeing the art style was a lot closer to that of the might and magic games you could really feel that this was a world of might and magic not maybe xin or kron or varn4 but you kinda know where these creatures come from even some of the names should be familiar there is a lord allamar there a queen lamanda probably not the same ones i guess who knows but they're there reference to older works are quite often in this franchise and if you actually read the manual let me rephrase that if you had the manual which thankfully you do now in the gog version you would realize that there is a strong link to the might and magic franchise even though there are no sci-fi elements within the game itself they are absolutely mentioned in the manual one pivotal element is mentioned a gate one that transported the canonical hero of the campaign lord iron fist from i think it was varn4 to a new land called enroth one where initially he does not see much of any competition in his attempt to uh claim this land in the name of his lord who uh he he i wouldn't say ran away from but you know went on an extended vacation farther from conveniently while the court sorcerer tried to kill his lord and failed there are many letters written by iron fist to his lord ragnar and they start you know kind of not apologetic but saying oh yes this is all a misunderstanding by the way send my regards to your new beloved queen eway know that you are both my treasured friends and will forever treasure the time we spent together and all that stuff in it slowly over the course of several years descends into something else these letters were posted on a pillar next to the gate and from time to time the letters disappear either somebody from the old world comes to get them or they vanish iron fist never learned that but as the cause of actually conquering this world increased and he asked for money from ragnar and nothing came he he gets uh constantly more salty to the point where he eventually admits that yes you got them bastard i did try to kill you the progression though is well it's overt it's not really covert it doesn't take a lot to read between the lines they're very beautifully crafted letters they are very hilarious and the way that he just there's the pieces the queen with which he had an affair and constantly rubs it in ragnar's face and then proceeds to say that the queen actually stinks and only takes a bath once a year and she's horrible and now he has a new wife a better wife it's just so fun nothing of that is actually in the game i mean this was well it was 95 yes you could fit the text of that length in a video game this isn't 1984 anymore but that would have detracted from the core focus of the game which was just the skirmishes the minute-to-minute gameplay the what you would call the purest form of heroes of might and magic and as the series went on and it added cinematics and all sorts of other stuff you do kind of feel that it kind of drifted away from that i mean not that the cinematics that you would see in here is the mighty magic 3 in the intro or here's the mighty magic iv you know between the campaigns or maybe not the last one not that those detracted from anything but when they became part of the campaigns themselves you know in game those were a bit uh you know not really what the series was about at its core in its simplest form heroes one established what it is about and this is what it's always been about sure it became more complicated more complex more fleshed out as time went on heroes got skills which they did not have in this game spells got an additional level the number of castles was expanded but what heroes one gave us is what heroes always has been and let's not forget another very important aspect of what heroes of mighty magic means the music this is where it all started paul romero and robert king's first collaboration say did you know that robert king actually was a recording engineer on back for blood the new game from the creators of left 4 dead while he was and i think it actually has to be appreciated in some way that here is a mighty magic one had a castle which has been consistently well not present in a series for a long time the sorceress yeah it kind of got replaced by the druids the sullivan but the sorceress had a different feel it was magical but a magic in tune with nature that isn't simply silva and it's not ruidic it's something else it's its own different feel its own identity if you will which is why in the flashback if you will campaign with jim in uh heroes 3's expansion shadow of death she's still a sorceress even though there is no such class in heroes 3. that was a nice touch but this is how it started with a knight a barbarian a warlock and the sorceress might and the magic on equal footing two versus two necromancers and wizards would come the second one not another might-focused faction though i mean yes necromancers you could say are might-focused but necromancy in itself is magical in nature and the wizard well it's a wizard i think an imbalanced appeared at some point and they tried to correct by making the might focus faction the mightiest might focus faction the barbarians just be completely you know the removed from any sort of magical component as the series went on but here things were balanced in their way they were simple they were simplistic as hell they were based on the idea that yeah a dragon will kill anything on the map by itself sometimes but by the time you get the resources to make one dragon you will already have two phoenix's or five or six paladins knocking at your door and you have nothing but if you do have dragons it's well it's kind of hard to argue with dragons or ghosts ghosts showed up in this game as well but they were the only creature that you could not recruit so that mistake happened in heroes too because even in heroes one ghosts still did their thing of i kill a peasant i become a ghost i kill a million peasants i become a million ghosts and we all know how that ended heroes of mighty magic one was successful in its own right i believe according to legends that it sold around a hundred thousand units which may not sound like a lot today but those were different times when budgets were not numbered and well actually uh i think win commander 3 which cost 10 million vid come out around this time but the budget for something like heroes of mighty magic was nowhere near that it had enough success to warrant a sequel one that was even more popular and that one got an expansion and then a sequel and might and magic came back what might and magic 6 and 7 and 8 and heroes 3 went on to basically conquer the entire planet as one of the most beloved games ever made and then we got four and four head issues five was good in its own right six is a mistake and i haven't bought seven yet so i can't really tell you anything about it i hope to get it to have an actual conversation with myself and passively with you as well at some point and this is where it all started from such humble a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wondrous have been and maybe one day will be evolved but there is one thing that heroes one did better than every other title in this series look at this rose bush look at how beautiful how simple how pretty it looks it does not show up in any other game in the series much like the berry bushes in the age of empires 1 looked so much better than those in 2. this is a unique feature that no other heroes game head it's honestly the thing i remember most about the first heroes game it is up until now the one that i have played the least not counting the seventh which i have not played but that rose bush that will always stay with me should i get the chance to actually get my hands on heroes of mighty magic 7 or mighty magic hero 7 stay tuned for that final video and of course hoping that there's still an internet connection when the time comes due to recent military events at the end of this month there will also be the traditional heroes of mighty magic 2 anniversary live stream celebrating and it's been 20 years 20 years since i first played heroes of might and magic 2. yes it's a bit of a stupid thing to celebrate but then again it's yours a mighty magic too how can you not celebrate the first time you laid eyes upon it 20 years of playing those maps again and again and again and i still often get creamed by the ai let's see if it will happen again this year take care everyone and goodbye [Music] you