When the original Puzzle Quest appeared on the scene, no one could have predicted the surprising popularity of the puzzle RPG genre. Now, Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes is the latest pretender to the throne, bringing with it some deep and strategic gameplay.
Game: Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Capybara Games
Genre: Puzzle RPG
Price: 1200 MS Points
Verdict: A competent puzzle RPG hybrid with beautiful art and obnoxious amounts of loading.
Pros: Gorgeous artwork, smooth animation, fun mechanics with considerable depth.
Cons: Optional battles are cheap and unbalanced. LOADING…
Acquired via Publisher
The Might & Magic series has been around since the dawn of gaming, and its clever blend of fantasy and sci-fi has made it a consistently popular choice with hardcore PC-owning RPG fans. Spinoff series Heroes of Might & Magic has kept the franchise’s name burning in recent years, despite shifting to a more strategic style. And now Clash of Heroes bounces off in yet another direction to try its hand at the puzzle RPG genre. The game first appeared on the Nintendo DS back at the tail end of 2009, but now it’s made its way to the high definition consoles.
Clash of Heroes is a prequel to Heroes of Might & Magic V. The game sees players leading five different factions through their respective campaigns, each with their own specific lineup of troop types and special abilities. Beginning play as the elf hunter Anwen and proceeding through the story from the perspective of four other protagonists throughout, it’s up to the player to protect the world from demonic forces in a suitably heroic manner. The story is pretty clichéd, but it serves as a good incentive to proceed through the game’s quests and battles, and the gorgeous art style gives the characters a great deal of personality.
Exploration of the game world is simplistic, being based around “nodes” which characters move between rather than free exploration. This helps keep players focused on moving forward, but it’s also a little frustrating at times to not be able to wander off and enjoy the scenery. Sidequests are clearly marked with a giant question mark above them, so it’s difficult to miss any optional content. Good for completionists, bad for anyone who likes to find things for themself. But the exploration isn’t by any means the main part of the game. No, you’ll be spending rather more time battling your enemies than shooting your mouth off at them.
The battle system sees two rival armies facing off against each other–the player at the bottom, their opponent at the top. Units at the bottom of a “stack” can be picked up and moved to another one, and stacking three units of the same color on top of each other creates an “attack formation” which will do something unpleasant to the enemy after a number of turns of “charging.” Placing three units of the same color side-by-side creates a wall, which protects against incoming enemy unpleasantness. It’s a simple system that is then supplemented by a number of additional mechanics and unit types, all of which are introduced gradually and clearly via a number of optional tutorials. By the end of Anwen’s campaign, the player is confidently juggling regular, Elite, and Champion-type units as well as casting their protagonist’s special ability. At the same time, the opponents amp up their challenge factor, and objectives other than “defeat the enemy” start coming in to play.
It’s an unusual but effective system to resolve conflicts. It doesn’t suffer from the detached feeling that the abstract conflicts of Puzzle Quest engender, and it includes a considerable amount of strategic depth. The mechanics are simple to learn and hard to master, but the main plot quests are paced well enough as to be challenging but never impossible. Sadly, though, the same cannot be said for the various optional sidequests, the vast majority of which appear to be completely insurmountable challenges.
The trouble is that in most cases, the challenge factor has been upped simply by giving the player’s opponent vastly superior units and a ludicrous amount of hit points. With little opportunity to level grind in the game, and a certain element of many battles being resolved by lucky initial unit placement, this becomes an exercise in frustration for those who want to complete everything the game has to offer. It’s also impossible to return to earlier campaigns once you leave, too, so if you miss out on something, it’s gone forever–or at least until you start a new game. The key word here is “optional” though–none of these quests are absolutely necessary to progress, and frustrated players can simply choose to ignore them.
One thing that cannot be ignored, however, is the shocking amount of loading which goes on throughout the game. There’s an obtrusive full-screen loading page between almost everything that you do–between a chapter’s prologue and the chapter itself, between exploration of the field and the battle preview screen, between the battle preview and the battle itself, and between the battle results and the return to the field. The game is quite slow-paced anyway, but the number of loading screens drags the pace down even more. It’s surprising to see this issue in a game with beautifully-realized but ultimately simplistic presentation, not to mention one that was ported from the DS. It’s somewhat distracting, but not enough to ruin the game, fortunately.
Ultimately, Clash of Heroes provides a considerable amount of bang for your fifteen bucks, and that’s certainly not to be taken lightly. The single-player campaign will happily consume a healthy number of hours from your life, and mixes things up by switching to new protagonists and units just often enough to keep things fresh and interesting. And after that, you can jump into the multiplayer modes to compete against your friends and throw bears at them. Which is nice.
Despite its flaws, Clash of Heroes is a worthy purchase for fans of the genre. It’s a solid game that offers excellent value for money, and is friendly to both quick-play and more long-term sessions. If you’re looking for a puzzle RPG that involves something a little less abstract than match-3 gameplay, you can’t go far wrong with this. Just condition yourself to love the word “LOADING.”
GrE Grade: A-
Popularity: 3% [?]
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