Game: Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes

Platform: Xbox Live Arcade; PSN

Publisher: Ubisoft

Developer: Capybara Games

ESRB: E

Genre: Tactical puzzle battles

Players: 1-4

What's Hot: Beautiful hand drawn art, multiplayer no longer restricted to local matches only, same addictive puzzle mechanics

What's Not: Long loading times are both frequent and annoying

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Review by: Brandon "Arrow Storm" Cackowski-Schnell

I typically don’t play games more than once but I couldn’t have been more excited for the HD remake of Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes, a game that still stands as one of the best games ever released for the Nintendo DS. Despite having put upwards of 70 hours on the DS version, I was more than happy to jump back into the addictive puzzle battles of the remake and found that aside from some annoying loading times, nothing was lost and plenty was gained in the jump to HD.

Clash of Heroes tells the story of five heroes from five different areas of the same world, all coming together to fight demons and usurpers and other arms of the same overreaching malevolent force. To fight said evil you recruit various unit types and then bring them to battle. Battles are a turn based, tactical sort that utilize vertical and horizontal combinations of units to create attack formations and walls. Build a column of three regular units and you now have an attack formation that, once fully charged up after a unit specific number of turns, will stride to the top of the screen doing damage to enemy units and hopefully taking some life off of your opponent. Normal units are eventually joined by elite units that offer side benefits such as poisoning enemy units or healing your own units, with the last tier, the Champions, providing the ultimate in destruction and defense..

As there’s a limited number of moves to be made per turn, making smart moves is important for success. Sacrificing units to create walls or attack formations gives you back a move and creating more than one formation with a single move gives you back even more moves. This becomes more important in later matches as Champions require four normal units to charge up, meaning that without some careful move planning, they can’t be built in one turn, something that can prove devastating should your opponent get their Champion built before you do. In addition to how you build your formations, when and where you build also plays a part as two formations built with the same charging up time become linked, providing more power and two formations built on top of each other become fused, providing more power and more hit points. With the right planning and moves, you can build a devastating offensive, and as the game uses a charging formation’s attack power as its hit points, the best defense truly is a good offense.

As the ability to make the most out of your moves hinges on a favorable board set up, your initial drop of troops, as well as subsequent calls for reinforcements, can make or break your match. It can be annoying to see a less than favorable set up while the AI is charging up Champions and Elites with a seemingly limitless supply of moves. Luckily the game has a selection of artifacts, items that convey special bonuses or abilities, to help mitigate the problems brought by unfavorable unit positions,. Each hero also has their own special power, triggered once the mana reserve fills up that can dramatically turn the tide of a battle when used properly. It’s a lot to keep track of, however it never feels like too much, even during some of the very tough boss battles and losing a match makes you want to get back into it and try a new troop load out or artifact selection rather than throw the controller in frustration.

The story is split up over five different heroes and with each hero having different units, artifacts and special powers. Splitting up the story keeps the mechanics fresh as the units are all slanted towards offense or defense differently meaning you have to stay on your toes and relearn the system every time a new unit is unlocked or a new campaign is started. You’ll mostly fight against units of the same type you have, but there is some variation as the story progresses, a good thing as it helps get you familiar with facing off against the different troop types should you enter the multiplayer arena.

The DS version had multiplayer, however it was limited to local only. The XBLA/PSN versions removes this restriction, allowing you to face off against opponents anywhere in the world. As the game is turn based, multiplayer is a smooth affair, whether playing the traditional one on one versions or the new two on two co-op mode. Players that have spent a lot of time in the single player campaign will be at a definite advantage as they have more heroes and more artifacts from which to to choose. Relying on the random artifact selection can be tough as the game doesn’t care that it just gave you an artifact that boosts a troop you’re not using, so if you’re planning on playing against other people, spend some time unlocking artifacts in single player first.

Even if you played the original version on the DS, it’s well worth it to jump back into the game via the HD version. Every unit and background is now hand drawn and units have excellent attack animations, complete with some fantastic audio. Unfortunately this all comes with a price of long loading times as you move between screens, something that doesn’t seem like a big deal at first, but becomes quite annoying as time goes on. As you look to level up your hero as much as possible, you’ll be going between screens on side missions, collecting bounties and searching for artifacts, so you’ll see the loading screens a lot. Even with this, at fifteen bucks, there’s a tremendous amount of content here in the story alone and the multiplayer and quickplay modes will offer plenty of strategic puzzle combat once the fires of evil have been tamped out.

Brandon Cackowski-Schnell is a regular contributor to GameShark and is the cohost of Jumping the Shark , GameShark.com's official podcast and co-founder of No High Scores.

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