The year of 2026 has been treating strategy gamers unsually well. It’s one of the densest in History for high-quality releas. In this first half of the year we already received MENACE, one of the best turn-based strategy game of the last 5 years; Slay the Spire 2, which became the Task Force Admiral, which is probably the best naval wargame in history. We can still expect Star Wars: Zero Company coming later this year, Dawn of War 4 being just a couple of months away, and -of course- Heroes of Might & Magic making a comeback with Olden Era.

Now that the time is finally here, the question is: “What is Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era, and is it worth your time?” Let’s find out together.

Here’s a small disclosure before we begin: In all of my life, I have never played Heroes of Might & Magic III. I considered playing it before doing my review, but time constraints made it impossible to do so promptly. I have, however, played quite a lot of Heroes of Might & Magic on the Game Boy. And for nearly 20 years, those memories have long remained encased in my head, until I first boot up Olden Era during my first time playing it, in September of 2025.

• Genre: Turn-Based Strategy
• Developer: Unfrozen
• Publisher: Hooded Horse
• Release Date: 30 April, 2026
• Reviewer: Nuno Marques (PC)
• Target Audience: Turn-Based Strategy players; RPG players; Heroes of Might and Magic fans

So, to answer the first part of my original question: Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era is a turn-based strategy game, and the official prequel to the Heroes universe. Players travel and explore the land, fighting computer-directed mobs to take control of resources, items, and cities. Cities can be upgraded using several resources, and units can be hired in towns or acquired during adventures. Battles are also turn-based and take place on a single, hex-based map, where unit stacks can represent any number of units, from just 1 to several hundreds, with each fighting side being able to cast spells and use abilities to turn the tide in their favor. If this sounds simple, it’s because it is. Olden Era has that old school simplicity to it that instantly reminded me of my Game Boy days, to the point I think I never even felt the need to touch the tutorial.

The Early Access release of Olden Era is going to feature 6 factions, all of which are fundamentally different from each other, but share several similarities, some of which I’ll talk about later during the course of this review. There’s an in-game tutorial, the first act of the campaign, several premade scenarios, Classic, Single Hero, and Arena modes for single-player and multiplayer. There’s a hotseat mode for those of you who wish to sit down and play with their friends, and a map editor as well. For an Early Access title, Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era is extremely well furnished, and there are several dozen hours of gameplay just to experience something, at least once. It’s impossible to fault Heroes in that regard.

Amongst the available factions, one will find the Temple, which is your typical human archetype faction, with foot-soldiers, archers, priestesses, knights, griphs, and paladins. The Necropolis has armies composed of skeletons, undead beasts, and vampires. The Grove is composed of forest spirits, trees, and druids. The Hive is an aggressive army of creepy-crawlers. The Schism is a fun mix between something that came out of H.P. Lovecraft and Tzeentch from Warhammer 40.000. And last, but not least, the Dungeon faction is an underground faction that’s pretty damn powerful, with Minotaur, assassins, hydras, and dragons.

Each faction has its unique playstyle, and these differences in gameplay are further reinforced by the inclusion of 18 different heroes per faction, all of which also come with their unique stats, buffs, and playstyle differences, with some being better adept at doing magic, others at defense, some specializing in gathering more resources, all that great stuff. So, technically speaking, and given the differences in playstyle, each hero could be considered a sort of sub-faction, and while on the surface they might all play the same, it’s this sort of building experimentation with armies and spells that turn Olden Era into a game that’s truly (I hate this phrase) “easy-to-play, but hard to master”.

The available factions and their respective heroes should be enough to keep oneself entertained for a long time, and having played essentially just the Temple, Schism, and Dungeon, I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface of learning each of them.

In a game like Heroes of Might & Magic, how interesting the units are is essential to keep people like me coming back for more, and to have some reason to experiment. All units can be upgraded, and Olden Era allows players to pick between two upgrades, which is a nice touch, each of which also has their own stats and abilities. In this regard, my only complaint is that I would love to see a lot more neutral mobs that the player cannot hire directly through its cities, but is available to hire during exploration and battles. There are some here and there, but I would love to see some more. These provide a nice change of pace, and they’re always exciting to come across. I hope the developers keep adding them. A special kind of Dragon, a rare elemental unit, a giant. Something that could be gatekeeping a rare and powerful item (your hero can equip them), or just having them join your party, is the perfect lure to tempt adventurers. At the moment, I find myself more often than not just fighting Halflings and Ghouls instead of Dragons and Dragonslayers.

Another criticism I would like to add is some missing fantasy trope units, most of which I hope will be added later down the line. Call me picky, but I want to see goblins, orcs, demons, gremlins, centaurs, and all kinds of elementals in my fantasy games.

The game modes you might need to enjoy HOMM are all here, with the first act of the campaign, the Classic mode, where you control multiple heroes, and my favorite, the Single Hero mode. In the review version of the game, there are also 8 standalone scenarios. If you just want to jump into a turn-based battle, Olden Era comes with the Arena, which allows you to select a hero, pick their equipment and spells, build an army, and fight. Most of my time was spent playing either Classic or Single Hero. Not because I disliked the campaign, but just because whenever I started a new game, I stuck with it until the end, a fact that ended up occupying a lot of my playtime. I will also save the campaign to play as a whole when the game is finished. I’m super happy with what’s available here, and as I mentioned before, it deserves to be told once more. Olden Era is packed with things to do.

Being packed with things to do wouldn’t be that great of a thing if the basic gameplay wasn’t something worth playing. Fortunately, Olden Era nails the HOMM gameplay loop that had me changing my Game Boy batteries every couple of days. As someone who enjoys the exploration part more than I do the fighting, Olden Era nails that. There are hundreds of things to do in a given map, and I don’t think I have ever spent a turn where I had nothing to do near me (well, aside from when I was waiting for the week to go by to restock my troops because I overestimated the capabilities of my armies). Aside from exploring, every turn allows the player to build a new building in each of their cities, enact laws, and research new spells. It’s during the exploration that players must find equipment and kit out their heroes, as well as level them up and unlock new stats, buffs, and abilities. This comes together to create a very addictive gameplay loop that we all know and love called “just one more turn”, and Olden Era has that in spades due to its mix of exploration and constant progression.

That isn’t to say the gameplay loop is perfect. Over the course of long matches, some of the neutral encounters can start to feel a bit redundant, even repetitive. The same unit composition over and over, the same types of battles, and the same challenges keep arising, and by the time you’re entering the mid to late game, those are not challenges anymore. Once you cross the threshold of having a decently equipped army, most encounters will start to become just a nuisance. And I get it, no game is supposed to last forever, but I personally would love to see more challenging mob composition so that I can work towards it during my campaign. Aside from that, I have no further criticism.

The battles in the Olden Era follow the classic Heroes formula: a hex-based map, where each unit takes its turn based on its initiative. Once every unit has moved (or skipped the turn), the turn comes to an end, and the whole affair repeats until a winner emerges. I personally take a lot more joy from Olden Era during its exploring phase, not because it’s special in any way, but it’s the most interesting part of the game, for me, and I already play plenty of turn-based combat titles. With that being said, I think this is where most players will have the most fun: each unit behaves differently from one another, some are great at charging the enemy, some are perfect for long-range fights, some do area denial, and others do area-of-effect damage. Some can blink in and out of a strike, avoiding any terrain features, while others have different attacks for different situations. The combat is a highlight of the Olden Era, and the existence of active hero abilities and spells just adds to the complexity and depth that they carry. If you can think of a spell, chances are, it exists in Olden Era: from healing, single-target nukes, percentage-based damage, markings, buffs and debuffs, summoning, repositioning spells, terrain-denial, etc. There are a lot of spells in this game. The focus mechanic has your focus meter rising after dealing or taking damage, and it serves as the necessary juice to use more powerful unit abilities and your hero’s too.

It’s a great classic combat system that doesn’t become overbearing or overly complicated, and most battles can be finished within 5 to 10 minutes, at most. Plenty of things to experiment with, discover, and optimize, if you’re so inclined to do so.

Let’s talk about the game’s presentation before we wrap this one up, and I think this is going to be a point where most people will be a bit more reticent, and I have seen a lot of discourse online about the graphical style of the game, with half of the players saying they love it, while the other half longs for something a little less colourful, and less “mobile-looking”. I think I fall into the middle ground in this discussion. Do let me explain. During the exploration phase of the game, I think the colorful palette and the highly detailed environments work incredibly well for me. Everything feels visible, vibrant, and has that fantastic and whimsical look that I love seeing. During the turn-based battles, I’m not totally in love with the art style- and I still find some units hard to distinguish at a glance- but I don’t hate it either. In the end, I just think that everything looks a bit too smooth during combat, and units have a rubber-like look to them that I’m not totally buying. Then again, I’m a fan of a more detailed and gritty look, and I think the setting of Heroes is perfect for those late 80s and 90s fantasy art styles one will often find in books from that time. Maybe that’s why it isn’t completely working out in my favor. Is it enough to destroy my enjoyment of the game? Not at all. Is it adding up to it? I don’t think so, either.

When I played the game last year, the UI was in quite some dire straits, with missing tooltips and unreadable fonts aplenty. Now, in the review version of the game, I haven’t come across a single example of that. Nice work on that, too. Sound and music are okay, but I don’t think I’ll be playing these tunes anywhere else. Performance of the game is perfect, so far, with zero crashes and no problems running the game at a smooth 120 fps.

Let’s round this one up on a positive note: Despite some criticism, I do love the simplicity, the pick up and play, and the whimsical old-school feel of Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era. The moment the game instantly flooded me with memories I didn’t even know I still held on to was the moment when I realized that this is a game that wants to bring back the style of the Heroes of Might and Magic games of yesteryear, and it’s doing so in the best way possible.

Final Score 8.5/10

I’m excited to see what’s coming next for Olden Era, but I believe that Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era has a bright future ahead of it that rivals the brightness of its art style. Not only that, but this new Heroes entry proves that the formulas of old, if properly worked on, updated, and brought up to modern standards, are still very much beloved by gamers all over the world, and with Olden Era having achieved over 1.5 million wishlists, it seems like players are willing to give this one a go with their wallet. I happily award Olden Era a score of 8.5 out of 10.

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