Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era is a turn-based tactical RPG/kingdom management game by Hooded Horse, where players command and conquer fantastical armies. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn’t do well, and if it’s worth your money.
Everything We Know About Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era
Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era Gameplay
Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era maintains the core turn-based strategy loop of exploration, kingdom building, and tactical combat. Players manage Heroes to scout the world map, gather resources, and develop their main town, all in a competitive race to overpower rivals.
The game introduces key innovations to the formula, including Faction Laws that grant unique, realm-wide bonuses, and a deeper Hero progression system featuring subskills. Furthermore, the hex-based combat is modernized with a Focus resource that enables units to use unique Active Abilities, adding a new strategic layer to every battle.
Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era Story Plot
Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era is a prequel to the original series, transporting players to the continent of Jadame on the familiar world of Enroth, a region referenced but never before fully explored in the main Heroes games.
The campaign is centered around an existential threat: the emergence of the Hive, an aggressive, demonic insectoid faction that seeks to devour the world. This apocalyptic menace forces the continent's normally rivalrous six factions—including the knightly Temple, the undead Necropolis, the fey Sylvan, the subterranean Dungeon, and the enigmatic Schism—to confront a common enemy.
The narrative is designed to be nonlinear, giving players the freedom to choose which missions to undertake and which factions to support or betray. These choices influence the fates of characters, alter faction standings, and change the geopolitical map of Jadame, allowing players to shape the early history of the Might and Magic universe and determine which power ultimately prevails in the struggle for the continent.
Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era Release Date
Released April 30, 2026, on Steam Early Access
Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era was released in Early Access in 2026 on PC via Steam, and its demo is now available.
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Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era Review [Early Access]
More Like Golden Era
Heroes of Might and Magic, which I’ll shorten to HoMM moving forward, was part of the turn-based strategy boom of the late 90s alongside other huge titles like Command & Conquer, XCOM, and Jagged Alliance. I can’t speak for everyone, but it wasn’t among the most memorable titles from that era for me, though I can’t really figure out why. I liked it very much, I just didn’t follow its trail afterward.
It didn’t fade into obscurity after its breakout fame. In fact, it released a new title as late as 2015 and had been consistently up until that point. Perhaps I was more focused on the RTS juggernauts at the time, but it certainly has my attention now with the release of HoMM: Olden Era.
It’s been an era since the last HoMM game, with a little bit more than a decade separating Olden Era from HoMM VII, so let’s find out if the devs used that time to make something amazing.
Jadame’s the Name, Political Unrest’s the Game
Let’s begin with Olden Era’s new setting for its turn-based tactical fantasy, which is the warring continent of Jadame. Populated by multiple factions consisting of the requisite human, elf, undead, and fae analogs, more on those later, Jadame is not a peaceful place. With alliances, neutralities, and hostilities abound, no matter where you look, it’s only natural that each of the six major factions has personal armies to keep their assets in check.
That’s where the player comes in as a leader of one of these armies, although the context of that position relies greatly on what game mode you’re playing on. For Arena, Classic, and most other modes, you play as whomever you wish from a selection of 100+ heroes, and with a retinue of your choice or whatever chance allows you. For the Campaign Mode, it’s determined by the story’s needs at the moment.
Already, the game shows a strong first hand of great variety in faction choice, game mode variety, and hero selection, with six each for the former two, and over a hundred for the latter. Not a lot of strategy games can boast that, though we will see exactly why later, because that big 100 is a deceptive number.
With the setting primed, let’s get to what you actually get to play in HoMM: Olden Era, because there’s a lot.
Deep, Deeper, Yet Deeper Strategy
When it comes to strategic depth, Olden Era has a lot of games beat owing to its unique mechanics and great variety of variables in play. The backbone of Olden Era’s gameplay is its unique action economy, which I can only describe as a calendar. Just like most strategy games, the action economy is what triggers the strategic use of resources that the genre builds around.
In the case of Olden Era, it’s Movement Points (MP), at least for the overworld. Players can move around the game’s isometric map as if it were an open world and interact with as many things as they wish, so long as they have the movement points to spend. Now, how is this like a calendar exactly? Well, Movement Points replenish at the end of each day, which the player has to trigger manually. This day cycle of moving and ending days makes up the bulk of progression, with players using MP to get upgrade resources and initiate objectives, spending said resources freely, then ending the day to continue.
Every seven days, a week passes, just like in real life, with other cycles like unit recruitment turning over only at the end of each week instead of the usual daily. Every four weeks, a month passes with much of the same.
This is a game of cycles and priority, with the freedom to move and do as you please within those boundaries. This is already a very fun way to go about things. No non-diegetic energy points to use, no unexplained turn format in the lore. You just get day-by-day progress to your tactics, and I consider that an in-universe boon to immersion.
Sometimes, movements can end in combat, whether by attacking a unit on the map or by ending too close to them and getting attacked as a result. This is where more traditional action economies take over, though Olden Era does have a few new things up its sleeve as well.
Units are not treated as individuals. Rather, they’re treated as archetypes, or "Stacks" as the game calls them officially. Each stack represents a type of troop, with the number below representing their numbers. Stats shown in the game represent each individual within a stack, so how much an attack or effect diminishes a stack is entirely dependent on how weak each unit is.
This, of course, also determines attack, so combat must take place with variables like range, counterattacks, movement, and non-damage effects in mind. This level of the grand theatre takes place on a hexagonal grid, with combatants moving and fighting respectively to adjacency, like they would in chess. Spells also exist as additional battlefield and overworld utility, representing the "Magic " half of the title.
Together, this creates a strategy on the macro and micro scales, as resources from the overworld trickle down to the troops in the long run, be it through upgrades or numbers. This grants HoMM: Olden Era quite the depth, as no decision can be taken so lightly, and it’s not because you’re restricted.
That’s not even half of it, though, as the game is also part kingdom management, which, in turn, plays into its grand strategy layer as its own source of variables.
Might, Magic, and Economy
As armies tend to require a garrison to survive, Olden Era also lets you manage cities for their improvement and your defense. In fact, the defense and capture of these cities determine the endgame for all modes except Arena, which is pure combat. Losing these cities means you lose any chance of recruiting new units, upgrading existing ones, or gaining new resources. While not a game over outright, it’s a bleeding wound for any body of tactics you may have had.
That’s why Olden Era doesn’t keep this layer as a static point-and-click resource game of positive and negative values. Cities in this game are living, breathing places with their own defenses (and siege mechanics), day-to-day economies, market trading, unit recruitment and upgrade rates, and most notably, hero recruitment.
Sure, you don’t get to decide where buildings go, but they do show up in the animated background when you buy and/or upgrade them. It’s a very simplified, but no less tactical, aspect of the game that is just as important as overworld traversal and combat, despite its comparatively small screen time.
That’s what I love about Olden Era. Everything feels fleshed out and well explored, with no loose ends or half-thoughts anywhere in there. While that sounds like a standard expectation for turn-based strategy, it’s actually quite rare to have every gear turning as it should without wasting the space it’s in.
Of course, all of these basic concepts apply differently according to what game mode you choose to play, so let’s get to those.
Deceptive Roster Size, Impressive Number of Game Modes
HoMM: OE has six basic game modes to play from the get-go: Tutorial, Arena, Classic, Single-Hero, Scenario, and Campaign. The tutorial is self-explanatory, though, if I may share, it’s very thorough and helpful for the strategic depth to follow. It’s dedicated to every core gameplay aspect without spoiling anything important; a tall ask for tutorials nowadays who either say nothing or show too much like MENACE’s.
Arena is the combat sim of the game, where you draft heroes, skills, equipment, and units before fighting an AI or enemy player in a single-round grudge match between armies. It’s fast, fun, and extremely addictive if you’re not careful. Classic and Single-Hero are the standard gameplay modes, with the latter just limiting you to one hero and disabling hero recruitment for a more streamlined experience. Lastly, the Campaign, which tells the tale of Jadame and its agents as they navigate a budding corruption spreading across the land.
Now, that’s a great selection as it is, with decent variety and multiplayer capability across all of them. This game was built to be experienced in full, and the only thing that can rival the game mode variety in showing that is the game’s hundred-strong roster.
Well…technically a hundred-strong, at least. See HoMM: OE has a roster of 108 heroes spread across 6 factions, with 18 per. While each has a unique portrait and name, technically, it’s just the same 18 archetypes reflavored across 6 factions.
Each hero and their unique bonus is just repeated six times, changing face every time, so despite not looking like it in multiplayer, technically, you can fight duplicates. At least the context of each faction’s main bonus changes what a hero’s abilities can accomplish, meaning not all 18 archetypes are made equal every time.
It’s deceptive, though perhaps not purposely so. I might even go as far as to say it’s a design choice to make multiplayer mirror matches more interesting. That said, though, these hero archetypes represent a bigger problem that Olden Era still has to own up to.
Some Balancing Issues Still
Olden Era has a few balancing issues. I can’t speak for multiplayer balancing because that’s a meta-oriented issue in a space without a meta yet. I speak for the game’s difficulty balancing regarding its AI, which jumps from barely a challenge to a literal strategic champion within the space between East and Normal difficulties.
I understand if the game wasn’t made to be easy, strategy games most of all, but a consistent ramping of difficulty is important for those settings to matter. Going from a coughing baby to a hydrogen bomb in one click is a bit much, and definitely something that can be tuned by the devs quickly after release.
This isn’t the only issue this game has though. It’s deep, it’s well designed, and it has a huge set of variables to permutate your way through. What’s not to love? I’ll tell you what this game needs: better voice actors.
Looks Fantastical, But Doesn’t Sound the Part
Olden Era’s voice acting is sub-par, no ifs or buts about it. Granted, it only shows up during the Campaign Mode and very rarely during any other mode, so it’s not a huge issue by any stretch. It is nonetheless an issue, though, because even if the performances on display here aren’t bottom-of-the-barrel, they sure aren’t good either. I literally just skip the mid-mission dialogues in the Campaign Mode, since I’d rather hear the game’s surprisingly banging soundtrack over all that.
That’s just one shame among many, though, because the game knocks it out of the park visually in stark defiance of its aural disappointments. Sporting a finish that makes it look like an oil painting come to life, Olden Era looks old and new at the same time, which is exactly the vibe a multiple-decade-spanning IP needs.
The visual principles in play have the variety to match its faction and roster size, while the UI itself is as efficient as it is grand. Sure, it all gets visually noisy when enough are on screen, and the isometric view certainly doesn’t help pare that down, but I’m willing to give this much to the game, considering how much else it does perfectly.
Olden Era Heralds the Golden Era for HoMM
Well, that’s all my MP spent, it’s time to end the day for this review of HoMM: OE. What else is there to say but praise for what this game ended up representing? It’s not a stretch for me to consider this a golden standard for strategy games, despite the lower score than some modern counterparts.
It’s not the perfect strategy game, seeing as its audio and balancing need work, but it sure is a great product overall. It has great replayability, overall good quality, and as much content density as you can ask for if you’re willing to forgive some technicalities.
One could definitely argue that the golden era for HoMM was all the way back when it first started, when it first proved it could be popular past the breakout of its genre. I prefer to think that this is the dawn of one, though, when it managed to not just survive a 10-year hiatus, but make something amazing of itself as well.
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