Heroes of Might and Magic IV
other text #1
The still a little nostalgic Adolescence
Type of game
The swan song of a studio with legendary ideas, brought to fruition in a messy last stand.
Release date on our machines
April 2002, a few months after Disciples II, but a few months before Age of Mythology. Why not, eh?
Developer
New World Computing, Inc. which will never be heard of again, after its demise along with 3DO, its publisher and owner.
Publisher
The 3DO Company, about a year before its demise. Ubisoft bought the HoMM brand, Take-Two Interactive took over Army Men.
Heroes of Might and Magic IV : available on GOG.com as a complete edition, with is two DLC. Note that this is the only game in the license not to be found on the Ubisoft website!
Yeepee! The third millennium has begun! The fantasized future has replaced the present! With it have come the high-school years, nights out, the fear of missing out, romantic discoveries and disappointments... And what about gaming? Well, nothing changed. We weren't going to stop playing just because a new geological era was beginning. As much as I'd missed a lot of sequels to a lot of wonderful stuff, like C&C Tiberian Sun, Sonic 3 or uh... War Wind 2? As for the successor to my great love Heroes III, there was no way I was going to let it slip away! With my two buddies Randall Geyser and Leyland Lampion, we just had to try it out. And so... we had a great love affair with this game, both alone and in Hot Seat (taking turns on the same computer, that is). For a while, we even thought that this opus surpassed the previous one. But we soon came to our senses. I can't remember who bought it first. In any case, I kept the box and its CD-ROM for a whole bunch of years, until 2024 I'd say. Which goes to show that I still have a special affection for this strange virtual artefact.
Yes But no
The good ideas
Unlike Heroes III, which totally paraphrases the concept of Heroes II, the fourth installment evolves the gameplay in a number of ways. And for a good many of them, it's a real pleasure! First big change: the heroes directly take part in combat! Previously, they'd stayed well back, merely casting spells, raising their arms when enemy troops gave up the ghost, or wallowing in distressed facepalms when the battle turned ugly. If you're feeling a little reckless, you can even take it to the extreme, and build yourself an army of heroes. Yeah, with no creatures at all. And if at the beginning, these characters get slapped by the smallest goblin in sight, by the end of the game, they'll be slaughtering just about anything by the containerload. What's more, their redesigned evolution system allows them to specialize in advanced classes based on the skills they choose!
A sort of classy extra layer to the III's progression. Come on, me and my passion for convoluted progression systems, you've won us over. Just as heroes are integrated into battles, creatures too wanted to gain independence. And now we come across them in a grove, wandering around the world with no one to lead them. The adventure map thus becomes saturated with roaming trolls, vampires and cyclops. This map, by the way. Seriously, it almost makes me forget the timeless pixel art of Heroes III. And Heroes II too, in fact. The style, however, has nothing to do with it. More realistic, more 3D, but still in 2D in the isometric view. And well, against all odds, it gave me little butterflies in the stomach, some of which are still attached to my heart today.
The ground, lakes and rivers are full of little details to admire. Not to mention the fact that the terrain now undulates and deepens. I don't know why, but I thought it was brilliant. It makes the immersion even stronger, even if it serves no other purpose than to slow down our movements (I say this from memory, with a bullshit potential of 83%). One thing that annoyed me to no end in previous games was having to return to every windmill and creature dwelling every week to collect usufruct. Now, buildings you visit once will give you gold or resources every Monday, as long as you keep ownership of them.
As for the critters, an immaterial caravan system is used to transport them to the cities. There's no longer any need to recruit a hero whose sole mission is to tour the kingdom's buildings. From now on, the focus is on territory expansion and fighting. TF1 (the first french television channel) popularized the concept of available brain time for TV. New World Computing has done the same for video games. Thank you. A final word on magic, which is no longer classified in the classic four elements of water, fire, earth and air, but by schools, each linked to a type of city. I find this both cool and not necessarily all that relevant. It mostly depends on my mood when I fall down the stairs in the morning.
Multiple Red Flags
If the developers had stopped there, leaving the rest of the gameplay intact, I might well have adored this game for several decades. Unfortunately, despite the short time they had to code their mechanics, they overdid it. In this case, the treatment of cities. The thing that ruined it for me. For a start, there are now only six of them (instead of nine in its younger sibling). What's more, the creatures are divided into four thirds (instead of seven for his ancestor's, what the hell), for a total of eight per city. But the worst is yet to come! Because when you build the structure that allows you to recruit a monster, it eliminates the possibility of building another dwelling, and thus owning the other creature of similar level. Who could have thought this was a good idea? What's more, many creatures clash completely with the decor of their associated town, as well as with the rest of the army.
In Necropolis, for example, we're basically given a choice between undead and demons. As a result, if you're dealing with skeletons and spectres, that's fine. But if you choose to go along with imps and poison-spitting blobs, things just don't add up! What happened to the lovely graphic harmony created by our well-organized troops? Finally, the final straw: forget about upgrading your beloved units. We recruit unicorns, period. No more turning them into war unicorns or anything. Argh, lame! What kind of heretic would choose the Academy Castle, only to find himself with mechanical dragons in his ranks? Without being able to upgrade them on top of that? And I'm not even talking about the infernal dilemma, forcing you to sacrifice genies to recruit nagas, or vice versa.
A real stab in the back to the Tower, the similar castle in Heroes III, where of course you could recruit both geniuses AND nagas. Another subject that has raised my eyebrows many times: the entirely remodeled battlefield, but no doubt by the same moron who came up with the exclusive buildings there. We move our legions around on a crooked screen that's not at all ergonomic, the sloppy animations hurt the eyes and, to put it bluntly, it's much less pretty than on the adventure map.
The only thing that works
The first time I heard the soundtrack, I said “Haaaeeuuh yaaaay the return of opera singers... too happyyyy hmmmpfff.” At the time, the prospect of reinflicting myself with the burlesque vocalizations of the good old days of Heroes II chilled me. But then I remembered that I actually liked it a lot. I also liked seeing the pattern invented by Paul Romeo, Rob King and Steve Baca repeated again in this game. That is, rhythmic, slightly sinister tracks during the fighting (not my favorites), hectic compositions as you wander through the cities (the ones with the soloists, here), and incredibly inspired melopoeia during the exploration phases. The ones I preferred, I think that's quite obvious. Here again, the magic is as good as ever. When madly melancholy chords entered my ears at the same time as three wandering hydras quenched their thirst on the banks of a magical pond... for that alone, Heroes IV deserved to sell ten times as many copies, and save the studio from bankruptcy.
Golden goose gone too soon
We found out later with Randall and Leyland, but the developers at NWC released this game in big rush mode, just before their publisher 3DO, which owned it all, went bankrupt. The Heroes of Might and Magic license was making good money, as was Army Men, but it somehow wasn't enough. Heroes IV couldn't turn things around on its own at the end, despite the release of two expansions, undermined by too many screwed-up decisions on the part of the big shots (including, it seems to me, wanting to develop too many different games, too fast, on too many platforms). I still wonder how they managed to sink their company with so much potential in their hands, but after all, I don't have one hundredth of a millimetre of their skills... in STUPIDITY! Looking back, it's clear that the team ran out of time, or money, for that matter.
I can't imagine the distress of employees invested in the project, forced to botch the thing, and still get fired a year later, to top it all off. The cities in particular are howling at the content being cut into little pieces. Nor was there any multiplayer mode at the outset, finally added via one of the additional CDs. The more you played it, the more these horrible flaws took precedence over what you loved about it. Yeah, even the music and that special charm of the beautiful landscapes. And then, our beloved Heroes III kept waving at us, pointing out all the great mods the community was creating for it. So, after a good thirty games on IV, we quickly got back on our feet and took things down a notch. The 90s weren't going to let us down that easily.