Review: Heroes Of Might And Magic III (3DO/New World Computing)
Tuesday, September 26, 2000 - by Greg Martinez

Heroes of Might and Magic III was ported to Mac about a year ago, and yet you may not have heard much about it. I know I didn’t. I was only able to find two online reviews. After recently reading those very positive reviews I bought a copy from CompUSA for $44.95. After playing it for over a week I believe this game should be a big seller (although I don’t know if it is). It is turn-based, which gives you time to relax, collect your thoughts, and plan the next battle. The graphics and animations are very good, even on my original rev. A iMac.

Quoting from the back of its box "You control the land’s greatest heroes and fiercest creatures in a conflict of epic proportions…" There are a number of human and some creature heroes. With each hero you hire at a tavern you build an army around them that they lead. The army can consist of humans (swordsman, archers etc.) and/or mythological creatures(unicorns, battle dwarfs etc.). You build these armies in the various cities. Some are human cities and some are creature cities. The battles take place in separate combat screens that take over your monitor. This is good because the humans and creatures are nice and large even on an iMac. You can micro manage the battle by giving an order to each individual piece. If you prefer, you can press the automatic button and the computer will make all the combat movements. Each figure can be a stack, for example an archer can be one archer or hundreds of archers. The Heroes do not take part in the physical battle. However, they do use magic spells against the enemy. Heroes that learned a substantial number of spells can turn the tide in a battle. The magic system is elaborate.

Parents will be pleased at the lack of blood and guts. However, this is a combat game. There is plenty of killing, however, when someone or something dies they usually just fall down, crumble, disappear in a puff of smoke etc. No decapitations or blood that I have seen. There are no bad words. Actually, the battles in the combat screen play out like an animated chess game with audio. That’s the best way I can describe the combat, you have to see it to understand fully what I am saying. One negative thing parents of young children should be aware of is that sometimes you are given little choice in the type of hero and creatures in your army. While many are normal things like knights, some are evil in nature (demonic, gargoyles etc.). You can sometimes avoid using the evil characters, but you will usually find that as the game progresses you will have a mix of good and evil characters in your army. I wish the developers gave players more control over which Heroes you can hire and the makeup of their armies. You do make a lot of choices, but in some cities its between different evil characters. For some parents with very young children, perhaps this is problem.

Overall, Heroes… compares well with other turn-based games such as Civilization and Alpha Centauri. The combat screen is a better approach than the combat in Civ or AC. The background music in Heroes is fine, it doesn’t take over the game. The audio in combat is fine also. Note that I have not tried its Internet play. Game stability on my machine is good. I would give this game four out of five stars.

Minimum system requirements are:

• Power Mac or compatible with 603e/180 or better. Any iMac, iBook, Power Book G3, Power Mac G3, G4
• Mac OS 8.1 or better
• 64MB RAM with Virtual Memory set to 96MB
• 225MB HD space
• QuickTime 3 or later
• Apple Game Sprockets (Installed by CD if you need it)
• 4X CD ROM, keyboard, mouse.
• 28.8 modem for internet play

System I play it on:

• Rev.A iMac (with its original 2MB video RAM)
• Mac OS8.6
• 64MB RAM with Virtual Memory set to 96 MB
• QuickTime 4.X