The top HN post talks about the importance of removing stuff, and based on this press release Olden Era takes the opposite "kitchen sink" approach. More heroes, more factions, more abilities, more spells, more character tree options, more more more. What makes HOMM2 and HOMM3 so unbelievably good is that the developers said no to so many things and instead spent their time on perfecting the game mechanics of the original DOS game.
It's still early, and the game might turn out great. I think the visuals look promising. But even if Olden Era flops good things might come of it. This genre of game was left for dead ages ago, and a revival of the genre is a good thing for sure. There are two generations of gamers who have never played the originals from the previous millennium, even though the games have held up incredibly well. Revived interest in these games might also encourage indie developers to take a stab at it.
AFAICT they only announced six factions, whereas the original game shipped with seven. The article doesn't seem to suggest there will be more heroes, just that they were paying attention to making each hero more distinct from the rest (which is IMO a good thing, since the heroes were a bit generic in the originals).
The spells system main difference is to reduce randomness, which again seems like an improvement.
So the area where MORE seems to be happening is in the skill tree section (and the new Faction Law system). I guess that's worth criticizing, but then again if you don't make some new stuff, why bother releasing a new game and not just a HoMM3 reforged version?
The original HOMM was a very simple game. HOMM2 was released one year later, after learning what worked and what didn't in the original game. Then, after three more years of work HOMM3 perfected those game mechanics. That's how HOMM3 ended up in a local maximum.
If you want to make a game that's better than HOMM3 in some meaningful ways I think you have to start with a much simpler game that shares some of the game mechanics. That means taking features out. Then you build on top of that to take the game in a different direction. If you take HOMM3 as a starting point you end up adding the features that were intentionally left out 25 years ago.
You also have the balance problem - it’s hard enough to make the three factions of StarCraft balanced and competitive against each other - with six or seven you have definite winners and losers when played optimally.
The later HOMM games DID take them in different directions- some of which are amazing on their own, to be fair - but being saddled with the history of HOMM3 held it back, in my opinion. Judged on their own they’re interesting and fun, but as “HOMM3 but better” they fall short.
Learning the original backstory for HOMM3 is eye opening - and one of the biggest rifts in the community is if the original vision is “good” or if what they shipped is “better” - I’ll admit to being in the latter camp, I think.
The Cove is acceptable but feels (to me) like an even more unbalanced version of Conflux - fun to play as not so much against.
I just don’t know if the sci-fi/ Factory town is something I can ever really get strongly behind. And this is from someone who has no problem with tech mods (GregTech New Horizons!) in Minecraft.
HOMM3 is very unbalanced and I think it adds to the charm. Some spells are useless and some spells are so good they almost break the game. Same for some unit stacks. Discovering cheesy strategies that allow you to take on a horde of computer enemies was part of the fun. If you make a multiplayer game you can't have that level of whimsy. (I don't know what HOMM3 multiplayer is like and I don't know how people make it work.)
They make it work by banning certain spells/heroes and reducing the game to a single "aspect" if you will - when and how you do the break. It's completely different.
You can learn a lot about the game from watching, and it'll improve your play, but it's not at all like a comp-stomp.
Vastly different spell strength plus random spells in mage guilds sucks. Even highly varied random starting artifacts is bad. Utterly useless skills like Diplomacy. There are small and aggravating quality of life issues like the autopathing taking more movement than manually doing things because of the way diagonals work.
I also consider the really abusable monster AI to be a detriment, though some people like this as it lets you access powerful resources "too early."
Useless skills were a big part of the fun as you would scheme to lock in all your basic skills to avoid duds. And if you didn’t, you had a game of risking certain choices to get benefits early at the expense of late game hero strength.
The wildly varying hero starting strengths weren’t as fun but I did enjoy how picking up on that taught the game mechanics. I remember HOMM mechanics details better than nearly any series.
Community mod, that re-balances game mechanics, fixes bugs, adds features like advanced keyboard shortcuts, fullscreen hd, two new factions, online multiplayer lobby.
I think the follow up games to HOMAM3 suffered a lot from focus on graphics and looks, opposed to investing more time into gameplay, map design, and computer opponents. They lost a lot of charm. Skeptical, whether yet another 3D graphics title will reach the heights of HOMAM3. Just too much effort spent on unimportant stuff. Maybe hire some good 2D artists.
Big pet peeve also: A Heroes game without a hex grid battle field just feels wrong. Square logic is easier, but come on, get good developers and look at something like https://www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/ and figure out the logic. It is not magic.
Yeah this is most modern games - bewildering options. It’s the reason I stopped playing the Witcher 3 and various other games, and why Stray was amazing and so much fun to play
It's still early, and the game might turn out great. I think the visuals look promising. But even if Olden Era flops good things might come of it. This genre of game was left for dead ages ago, and a revival of the genre is a good thing for sure. There are two generations of gamers who have never played the originals from the previous millennium, even though the games have held up incredibly well. Revived interest in these games might also encourage indie developers to take a stab at it.