Heroes of Might and Magic II
The Succession Wars
Eternal Cuddly Game #5
Type of game
The first proven masterpiece of videog-game-based therapy, through calmness and laughter. Guaranteed healing! Unfortunately, it is unlikely to be covered by health insurance.
Release date on our machines
October 1996, a period saturated with incredible video games in my head and on my computer, and yet...
Developer
New World Computing, Inc., the first ones I would resurrect if I were an expert in necromancy.
Publisher
The 3DO Company, the second ones I would resurrect, but before they would release their console. And... they wouldn't release it, mind you.
Heroes of Might and Magic II: available on GOG.com and the Ubisoft Store, both in Gold Edition with the expansion. Right, we'll buy it on GOG, shall we?
My encounter with this title is not one of my most romantic anecdotes. One day, as I was walking past my father-in-law's office, I spotted a box containing a burned CD, almost new and yet already half broken, with a poor black and white piece of paper inserted behind the cover as a sleeve. I picked it up, wondering what kind of weird programme the narcissistic pervert on duty had got hold of this time, just to impress his friends and family with his so-called hacking skills. Then I realised it looked like a game, albeit a really ugly and fake one, and I tried it anyway, but only because I had nothing else to do at the time. And then HOLY CRAP! It was awesome! And really pretty too! Damn it, stepdad, you could have at least told me you'd cracked something this cool! You weren't ever going to tell me, were you? You were going to keep it to yourself and throw it in the bin three days later.
Not great artefact
I've never seen you spend even a second roaming your hero or building a single structure in the world of Enroth, you bloody... Right, I'll calm down. Of course, I never asked him any questions to solve this eternal mystery. Why did he collect so many video games that no one knew how he got them, why did he never play them, and why did he keep them a secret while leaving them lying around for everyone to see in the flat? As soon as I clicked ‘New Game’, I didn't care about the answers anymore, because I loved Heroes of Might and Magic II so much.
Medieval
Fairy Tale
Although I had already dabbled a little in real-time strategy games such as Command & Conquer and turn-based RPGs such as Warriors of the Eternal Sun, I had never seen anything that combined the two, while adding a whole host of other features. Not only do you build your cities (those of the knight, the barbarian, the witch... six in total), lead our armies into battle (six different creatures per city, from mouldy skeletons to prestigious phoenixes, including burly minotaurs and shining paladins, plus a few other unaligned ones), and pamper our heroes by teaching them skills and spells, while equipping them with magical items. The playing field acts as a huge interactive board with seven types of terrain, including grass, snow and desert, and even eight if you count water. Let's say eight, then, since you can also travel on water by boat. You'll visit millers, witches, mysterious hermits and other creatures, some friendly, some hostile.
In certain levels and in the story-driven campaigns, a real narrative is told to us based on the passing of time and the places we discover. By the way, did I mention the resources? Golden gold, brown wood, yellow sulphur, grey iron, pink crystals, silver mercury, and multicoloured gems! Say that sentence like in the old Lucky Charms advert, and you'll see how satisfying it is. No one wants to try? Well, anyway, I was saying that the gameplay gave me the most incredibly cool rush of my life. I really felt like I was playing three games at once. It didn't benefit from the most precise balancing, if we dwell on details such as: a single genie can halve the number of enemy creatures it hits (even if that means vaporising two thousand titans), or ghosts that start the battle at twenty and end it at nine hundred and twelve, because each of their victims immediately joins their ranks for ever. But the exploration/construction/battle loop unfolds in the most beautiful way.
Even though I loved the phases of building and consolidating our fortresses (on an increasingly rich fixed map), as well as the epic battles on the battlefield (a grid made up of hexagons, a hexgrid then, with a very strange but very stylish isometric view), I much preferred the adventure sessions (in a much less bizarre and even more stylish isometric view), which are every bit as good as those in Grandia, even if they are completely different. I discovered thousands of wonderful scenes, where each type of terrain takes us on a journey and lulls us in its own way. For example, when we let our hero rest near an enchanted fountain that rewards us with its mesmerising flow. A little further on, the bleating of a goat comes from a welcoming farm, while from a crystal mine, we can hear the workers digging the stone with their old rusty pickaxes.
Heroes 2, as I called it probably like every one else, taught me the benefits that impeccable pixel art could have on me, especially when accompanied by equally melodious sound design. During moments like these, a kind of divine grace envelops our soul in the most comfortable cotton wool in the world. Nothing can happen to us, our problems disappear (especially the problems of an eleven-year-old boy, which are both trivial and of the utmost importance).
Hilarious Fantasy
What was I saying about the battles a little earlier? Dantesque clashes? Hahahahah, sorry. Yes, it's a change of atmosphere from the blissful landscapes you ride through on horseback, no doubt about it. But, um, while I did feel a certain amount of anxiety during difficult battles, or a sense of omnipotence when I crushed my opponents, there was nothing epic about it. In fact, the battles made me laugh a lot. The jerky movements of the creatures, their indignant groans when they took a hit, the sequences of blows and counterattacks with the animations set to very fast in the options... it was as hilarious as a fairy hovering around a circle of magic mushrooms in an enchanted forest could be soothing. And to think that Heroes 1 went even further in the same style...
When I say we laughed, I mean my mates and I fell on the floor holding our stomachs. And by mates, I don't mean two or three random people who have long since been erased from my memory, but mainly Randall Geyser, who immediately jumped on the hype train. For once, I was showing him a computer game and not the other way around. The dragons and their cute little snouts, the goblins and their cries as pathetic as they are amusing, the iron and steel golems that look like Jean Reno, not to mention the elves (who look nothing like Orlando Bloom or Evangeline Lilly), the hobbits and the orcs who burp when you hit them. I'm not sure the developers wanted us to come out of every skirmish with stomach cramps.
Although, when you see the faces of some of the heroes, you end up wondering if the goal of Heroes of Might and Magic II isn't just to kill us with laughter. A good half of these knights, magicians, witches and barbarians have been portrayed with teeth that are far too visible for us not to see a grotesque pattern. And between those who smile like idiots, pull impossible faces or display an unflappable poker face, it's impossible to get bored. How many times did we recruit this or that person into our ranks, just so we could admire their ridiculous faces at will? Far too often, and we ended up losing the game as a result. Despite everything, we sense a search for a certain consistency linked to various mythologies, which determine the entire theme of their associated city. Thumbs up for immersion.
We want to keep creatures belonging to the same city category together. Firstly, it boosts their morale more than if they were mixed with individuals from other environments. Secondly, it looks better graphically, with the same uniform background enhancing each unit miniature. There! It's neat, tidy, everything in its place! This gives new meaning to the word communitarianism. I'm not saying it's good news, but it does have the merit of being a change from the usual crooked politics. On the other hand, Heroes 2 turning me into the Home Secretary of a crypto-fascist government was something I hadn't anticipated at all. Did I go bad because I was forced to keep the pigs together? Even Master of Orion II wouldn't have made me that sectarian.
Enchantment by sounds
The music follows a similar pattern to the rest of the game, in that some tracks transport us with their beauty and melancholy, while others have the completely opposite effect. How would you describe the opposite of beautiful melancholy? With jerky snickers, of course! And in this case, it doesn't happen during the fights, whose somewhat martial rhythms dampen the joyful chaos a little, but in the cities. Putting yourself in the shoes of a child raised on Eurodance, alternative rock and Rinse FM or Hot 108 Jamz rap helps you understand the shock you have to endure. So, clicking on a haunted castle to enter it and being greeted by an opera singer at the height of his career feels weird! The guy is belting it out in German, too (no dubious references here, just the roughness of the language doesn't help). No one mentally prepares kids for this kind of encounter. Okay, I'm exaggerating a bit, especially since at the time, my computer played the compositions in MIDI format, so without vocals. Needless to say, the tracks were butchered by the brave Soundblaster. Which one? I don't remember, but it was assigned a number that was a power of two. I discovered the soaring voices of sopranos and baritones when I put the disc into my hi-fi one day, when I decided to do that with all my PC games, just to see. The surprise effect was guaranteed! Just as much Wipeout, but not in the same genre. Then I saw that by poking around in the menu, I could activate Hi-Fi + Opera sound, so I did. It changed the allocation of certain tracks to certain cities, removed some background music and completely replaced the main menu composition, but that didn't stop me from enjoying it... and having a good laugh. Today, I prefer listening to the MIDI version, with a few exceptions, probably because I also like to suffer for no reason. That said, while I love all the tracks on this soundtrack, nothing comes close to the themes accompanying the adventure map, especially those for the grass, earth and swamp terrains, which still bring tears of nostalgia to my eyes today. The trio formed by Paul Romero, Robert King and Steve Baca have since become some of my all-time favourite composers. Their works reach levels of perfection that I could never have imagined, even in my wildest music-loving fantasies. But as I'm starting to get carried away, overwhelmed with emotion just talking about it, I feel like listening to something fun instead. With vocals, please.
But still, listen to something truly beautiful, a thousand times more gorgeous than your finest sealed retro games, rated 95+ and displayed on a diamond shelf, illuminated by divine spotlights.
False notes and contraband
One last detail made us completely addicted to this game: hot seat mode, which allowed us to play multiplayer games on the same computer. It brought back a certain conviviality inherent to consoles that we had lost when PCs flooded into homes. Without exaggerating, we had some pretty incredible moments, even if we didn't often manage to finish the epics we had started. It took too long, and it meant that we had to meet up over several days to pick up where we had left off last time. Because, of course, as good devotees of the concept, we almost exclusively played on the largest maps. During the first few hours, we would start with unwavering seriousness. Then after a while, madness would take hold of us, and there was nothing we could do about it. Such was the hidden power of Heroes 2. We would start doing crazy things, like rolling around on the floor or spouting nonsense in ridiculous voices. But the game was going crazy too! The music sounded extremely out of tune, without warning, both on the adventure map and in the cities. But really out of tune, eh! With the melody going haywire and playing nothing but wrong notes. Except that unlike us, she was back to normal after half an hour. I never knew why it fixed itself, but the excuse to have even more fun was obvious. Finally, there was the ultimate tool to make us happy: a level editor! We could more or less create the worlds we wanted, with a little thought, a lot of time spent designing them, and a lot more time testing them. Well, we often skipped the testing phase, and sometimes the design phase too, which led to absurdities such as starting a scenario with ten heroes armoured with six stacks of 9999 black dragons, parachuted into a shabby and even non-functional setting.
Once, I had dug impassable holes between my enemies and me; I could never lose, nor win, well done, lad. Randall and I exchanged our experiments, a floppy disk containing the map files hidden in our schoolbags. We passed it around discreetly during break time at school, as if it contained the most secret information in the world! At the same time, we weren't really allowed to bring floppy disks to school, whether they contained bits of digital magnificence from Heroes 2 or instructions on how to blow up the building. But we did it anyway, and we thought we were high-flying dealers. That was the extent of our civil disobedience. Perhaps we should have gone a little further than that.
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