Heroes of Might & Magic 4

Heroes of Might & Magic 4
Studio	New World Computing
Publisher	3DO
Erstveröffent- lichung	March 28, 2002 April 24, 2002
platform	Windows , Mac OS
genre	Turn-based strategy game
Game mode	Single player , multiplayer
control	Keyboard , mouse
system advantages preconditions	Pentium II 400 MHz 64 MB RAM 16 MB graphics card 1 GB hard disk
medium	2 CD-ROM
language	German
Current version	3.0
Age rating	USK

Heroes of Might & Magic 4 is a turn-based strategy game from the US developer New World Computing . It was released in March 2002 by 3DO for Windows and Mac OS . It was the last game in the series developed by series creator New World Computing, after the bankruptcy of 3DO, the rights were transferred to French publisher Ubisoft in 2003 .

action

After the events of Heroes Chronicles: The Sword of Frost , the old world colony is destroyed in a large explosion. However, through mysterious dimensional portals, the survivors can escape to a new world called Axeoth. The developers took this step in order to be able to part with various legacy issues and contradictions.

The campaigns describe six independent stories in which the survivors of the old world try to gain a foothold in Axeoth. Among other things, the Djinn Solmyr has to prevent his master Gavin Magnus from controlling people's thoughts with a magical pendulum (in this questionable way he wants to ensure world peace). Lysander, ruler of Erathia's successor state, Palaedra, is confronted with a man who claims to be the last survivor of the Griffinheart family and thus the rightful king, and Tarnum's stepson Waerjak tries to reunite the barbarian tribes.

content

For Heroes of Might & Magic 4 , the number of city types and creatures has been reduced (creature upgrades have also been abolished) in order to be able to work out greater differences between the remaining ones instead. A central aspect of the game are the six attitudes to which not only the city types, but also the spells are linked. These can only be learned from heroes with the appropriate talents, and each alignment has different effects.

• Life (port, knight / priest ): Human soldiers; Healing and protective magic
• Order (Academy, Lord / Magician): Magical and artificial creatures, such as golems, magicians and jinns ; Influence spells and illusions
• Death (necropolis, death knight / necromancer ): undead and demons ; curses
• Chaos (asylum, thief / witcher ): bandits and monstrous creatures such as Ifrit and Hydras ; Attack spells
• Nature (Refuge, Sagittarius / Druid ): forest dwellers, animals and elementals (e.g. elves and unicorns ); Summoning creatures
• Power (castle, barbarian ): Wild creatures such as nomads and ogres ; no magic

Another noticeable change is that heroes can now personally take part in the battle. In this context, armies with several or no heroes are now also possible. This feature was desired by many players, but in retrospect it turned out to be a bit unbalanced: While inexperienced heroes are relatively weak and useless, a hero with fully trained combat skills can defeat larger hordes of monsters on his own. Furthermore, the heroes can achieve higher classes and associated bonuses depending on their main talents. If you concentrate z. B. prefers nature and death magic (which is not necessarily easy to do), the hero becomes a demonologist and learns magic formulas with which he can summon demons. Archmages who have mastered at least three types of magic can all use spells with greater effect.

In the cities it is no longer possible to build all the dwellings, as some of these are mutually exclusive. The player must therefore always decide which of two types of creatures he can use better. At the academy, for example, he has the choice between gold golems (resilient defenders) and magicians (who can do powerful spells, but are very vulnerable).

A scripting language has also been added to allow scenario developers to develop more complex events.

To the disappointment of the players, New World Computing did not publish a random map generator for HOMM4 (on the grounds that it was too difficult to guarantee the playability of the random scenarios). The maximum number of players has been reduced to six again.

development

Heroes 4 has been rewritten from the ground up. While the gameplay was still very similar to that of its predecessor, there were also some major innovations, such as the fact that the heroes fight for the first time on the battlefield. For financial reasons, 3DO could not afford to delay the release of the game any further, so that the retail version contained various bugs and no network mode (this was only updated a few months later ).

After 3DO's final bankruptcy, the French publisher Ubisoft bought the rights to the Might & Magic series by auction for 1.3 million US dollars in 2003 and later also published a Heroes of Might & Magic 4 Complete , which includes the main program with its two add-ons ons bundled.

reception

Heroes of Might & Magic 4 was good, although restrained Ratings ( GameRankings : 79.82%).

Extensions

The Gathering Storm

The first add-on for Heroes 4 again contains six campaigns, which are also located in Axeoth (but without any reference to older episodes). Five heroes have to find numerous artifacts in order to then face the demon master Hexis together. The campaigns are much shorter than those of the main program, and the story is nowhere near as well elaborated as in its predecessors.

In addition to new scenarios, The Gathering Storm hardly offers any additional features (some new, strong creatures are present, but cannot be recruited by the player). The sales figures were correspondingly bad.

Winds of War

The second add-on, released in spring 2003, contains six other short campaigns in which different rulers invade the great land of Channon for different reasons. As always, new individual scenarios are also included, some of which were created by fans as part of a competition. Otherwise, like its predecessor, Winds of War offers very few new features, including some new strong creatures, which, like those already introduced in The Gathering Storm, are unfortunately not available to the player for recruitment.

Web links

• Heroes of Might & Magic 4 at MobyGames (English)
• German-language fansite with forum , accessed on December 13, 2017.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Rob Fahey: Namco, Ubisoft and MS carve up 3DO assets ( English ) In: Gamesindustry.biz . Gamer Network . August 18, 2003. Retrieved March 30, 2014.
2. ↑ http://www.gamerankings.com/pc/470764-heroes-of-might-and-magic-iv/index.html