The Might & Magic series is one I hold dear. To this day, it continues to hold a special place in my heart, and will likely continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Now, some of my readers might see "Might & Magic" and immediately think of the "Heroes of Might & Magic" series, but nay, I am not exactly talking about that, albeit they are closely related. For the unaware, the Might & Magic series are a series of roleplaying games, while Heroes of Might & Magic is a series of turn-based strategy games, and a spinoff series of Might & Magic. Yes, a spinoff has become more popular than the original series that it grew out of. Such a rare event.

For the chronologically confused

Since HoM&M is a spinoff series of M&M, it naturally follows that M&M is an older series. But how much older?

Well, here be the list of all of the main M&M games in order of release:

• Might & Magic I: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum (1986)

• Might & Magic II: Gates to Another World (1988)

• Might & Magic III: Isles of Terra (1991)

• Might & Magic IV: Clouds of Xeen (1992)

• Might & Magic V: Darkside of Xeen (1993)

• Might & Magic IV-V: World of Xeen (1994)

  • Basically M&M IV and M&M V can be merged into a single game - World of Xeen - if you own both, unlocking an extra questline with an extra ending, as well as the ability to travel back-and-forth at will between the two worlds. The 1994 re-release further expanded on this by adding some voice acting.

• Might & Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven (1998)

• Might & Magic VII: For Blood and Honor (1999)

• Might & Magic VIII: Day of the Destroyer (2000)

• Might & Magic IX: Writ of Fate (2002)

• Might & Magic X: Legacy (2014)

Now, in contrast, Heroes of Might & Magic:

• Heroes of Might & Magic: A Strategic Quest (1995)

• Heroes of Might & Magic II (1996)

• Heroes of Might & Magic III (1999)

• Heroes of Might & Magic IV (2002)

• Heroes of Might & Magic V (2006)

• Might & Magic Heroes VI (2011)

• Might & Magic Heroes VII (2015)

And if we merge the two lists, add some of the other spinoff games too, and order by release:

• Might & Magic I: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum (1986)

• Might & Magic II: Gates to Another World (1988)

• Might & Magic III: Isles of Terra (1991)

• Might & Magic IV: Clouds of Xeen (1992)

• Might & Magic V: Darkside of Xeen (1993)

• Might & Magic IV-V: World of Xeen (1994)

• Heroes of Might & Magic: A Strategic Quest (1995)

• Heroes of Might & Magic II (1996)

• Might & Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven (1998)

• Heroes of Might & Magic III (1999)

• Might & Magic VII: For Blood and Honor (1999)

• Crusaders of Might & Magic (1999/2000)

• Might & Magic VIII: Day of the Destroyer (2000)

• Warriors of Might & Magic (2000)

• Legends of Might & Magic (2001)

• Heroes of Might & Magic IV (2002)

• Might & Magic IX: Writ of Fate (2002)

• Heroes of Might & Magic V (2006)

• Dark Messiah of Might & Magic (2006)

• Might & Magic Heroes VI (2011)

• Might & Magic Heroes VII (2015)

• Might & Magic X: Legacy (2014)

Obviously, the order of release is not the same as the chronological order of the lore. In fact, the whole lore gets tangled by the fact, that the whole series can be neatly divided into two or three groups:

• Might & Magic I-IX and Heroes of Heroes of Might & Magic I-IV are set on a variety of worlds, but their plots are all closely intertwined, share a lot of characters, etc. even if a lot of Heroes 3 fans are unaware of this. Oh, and all of them were developed by New World Computing.

  • Can be further subdivided into the Corak vs Sheletm saga (consisting of Might & Magic I-V) - set on a variety of worlds - and the Kreegan-saga (consisting of the rest of this group, except M&M IX and HoM&M IV) set on the planet of Enroth.

  • Heroes of Might & Magic IV and Might and Magic IX are set on the planet of Axeoth, but could be grouped with the Kreegan-saga group, because most of the characters are originally refugees from Enroth, including a large amount of familiar faces from previous games.

• Heroes of Might & Magic V-VII (and probably all subsequent entries for the foreseeable future), Dark Messiah of Might & Magic and Might & Magic X are set on the world of Ashan. Besides the occasional easter-egg references to earlier entries, they are completely cut off from the previous continuity, with brand new characters and brand new lore. Oh, and they're all published by Ubisoft.

• Crusaders of Might & Magic, Warriors of Might & Magic and Legends of Might & Magic are set on their own respective worlds, and the only thing they have in common with the rest of the Might & Magic universe is the fantasy elements (dwarves, elves, necromancers, magic, etc.). They all have fully self-contained plots independent of the rest of the series, despite having been developed by New World Computing.

In this article, I am going to be focusing on the first group - which is to say, the games developed by New World Computing -, ignoring the other two, tho I might come back to CoM&M in a later article.

Now, the actual lore and chronology of even this one group - which I described as all being intertwined and connected - is still a bit tangled, and I will explain why. But first, I want to describe each game of the Might & Magic main series in a few words, and in order of release.

Humble beginnings

Let's talk about gameplay first

In a sense, the early Might & Magic games played a lot like the early Final Fantasy games (and by that, I mean the ones on the NES and SNES, in case you're unaware of there being Final Fantasy games before 7). They were "roleplaying games"... which is to say, that they were dungeon-crawlers:

• Rather than a single character, you controlled an entire party of named characters, who were mostly lacking personality, as they never talked

• You had towns, which contained blacksmiths to fix your weapons, shops to buy weapons and armour and sell any unwanted stuff, churches to resurrect your dead characters, mages guilds' to buy spells for your spellcasters, training grounds to level up your characters, inns to hire new characters, taverns to listen in rumours and buy food, and the occasional NPCs to give quests, etc. You know, the usuals.

• 99% of all quests were simple fetch-quests: Go to a dungeon, fight your way through a bunch of mooks and maybe solve some puzzles, kill a boss to get some artifact, bring the artifact back to the quest-giver, and your rewards are money, items, experience points, and plot progression, basically. Rinse and repeat until you have beaten the game, oo-rah.

• Beware of random encounters!

Now that I think about it, the first two Might and Magic RPGs played almost identically to the first three Final Fantasy games on the NES, except for being first-person instead of overhead, having somewhat cruder graphics, but a bit more sophiscated gameplay (e.g. party members having to rest and eat, roguelike elements) too. Both were obviously inspired by Dungeons and Dragons and other pen-and-paper roleplaying games, and both elected to throw away D&D's "fire-and-forget" magic system (where a spellcaster temporarily forgets a spell after casting it, until resting) and replace it with mana / spellpoints, a stat similar to healthpoints, functioning as "currency" to cast spells from.

Okay, so we have concluded that M&M and FF basically share a common heritage, in spite of the great geographical distance, but after the end of the 8-bit era, they obviously went to evolve in completely different directions. While Final Fantasy threw away character customizability and player freedom in favour of a more railroaded (albeit polished), narrative-driven experience with memorable characters, Might & Magic remained a semi-sandbox RPG series with a high degree of player freedom, roguelike elements, with heavy character customizeability. What Might & Magic games lack in narrative or character interaction, they make up for in character customizeability, player freedom and character progression, with a huge amount of skills your characters can specialize in.

The first Might & Magic game was released in 1986 on the Apple II. Developed by Jon van Caneghem as a passion-project, it was rather crude, but set the standard for the rest of the series. Besides the Apple II, it was also ported to the PC (MS-DOS), Commodore 64, Mac, NES and MSX (I strongly recommend playing the Mac or NES version).

Might and Magic II was released in 1988, also on the Apple II first, but quickly ported to the MS-DOS, Commodore 64, Amiga, Mac, and later the Sega Genesis and SNES too. Avoid the SNES version like a plague, for it is broken - play the Mac or Sega Genesis version. It plays almost identically to the first game, to the point that you can even import your characters from Might and Magic I, if playing on the same platform!

Besides the highly improved graphics, Might and Magic III - released in 1991, first on the MS-DOS, then ported to the Mac, SNES, Amiga, Sega CD and TurboGrafx16 (I recommend the original MS-DOS version or the Mac version) - saw combat better integrated into the main gameplay loop: in Might and Magic I-II, just like in Final Fantasy, any encounter with enemies resulted in us being transported into a separate screen, and our characters not being able to do anything non-combat related until the battle was over. In Might & Magic III, for the first time, combat would be conducted on the same screen, with the same UI as regular travels. Characters equipped with bows could shoot enemies from a distance before they could engage your entire party in melee. Hell, you could even run away from enemies that don't have ranged weapons!

Might & Magic IV and V - released in 1992 and 1993 respectively, both on the MS-DOS first, but then ported to Mac too - don't really add anything new to the mix in terms of gameplay. They use the same engine as Might and Magic III, and play just about the same. I mentioned this previously, but these two games are interesting in the sense that when you have both installed, the two combine into a single game called World of Xeen, and you actually unlock extra content that is otherwise locked when you only have one. This extra content includes another quest line, leading to a final ending.

Might and Magic VI - released in 1998, being a Microsoft Windows exclusive - came with a new 3D engine (albeit monsters and NPCs still used sprites rather than 3D models), ditched the grid-based system of the previous games in favour of full freedom of movement and increased verticality, added tiers to the various skills and greatly expanded the list of skills. They also tied the magic system to the skill system (e.g. having to have Basic / Advanced / Expert Spirit / Body / Water / Fire / Earth / Air / Dark / Light Magic skill to cast a certain spell), as well as the combat system to the skill system (e.g. having to have Basic Blade skill to swing swords). Oh, and this game added hirelings too, who bring bonuses to the party, but cannot fight. Instead of being ghosts that pop up at buildings, NPCs now are visible and can be interacted with, albeit most have nothing to say.

Might and Magic VII - released in 1999, another Microsoft Windows exclusive - brought unique prestige classes, giving characters a path at getting an upgrade depending on whether they chose Good or Evil.

Might and Magic VIII - released in 2000, Windows exclusive - completely breaks everything by mixing classes and races, and making the player start with only a single character. Also, it used the same engine as Might and Magic VI and VII, which was really showing its age by 2000.

Might and Magic IX - released in 2002, Windows exclusive - doesn't innovate anything, besides going back to the VII class and race system. Graphics-wise, it finally brought the series into full 3D, ditching the sprites in favour of 3D models. Unfortunately, this one was also the last one to be made by New World Computing, which went bankrupt after this.

Might and Magic X? I'm going to be honest, and admit that I never played it (besides, in this article, I stated my intent to focus on the games actually developed by NWC), but it appears to be an homage to Might and Magic I-V, except with modernized graphics, so....

The Plot

This is the part where most people would put a spoiler warning and warn people to stop reading if they haven't played the games, and to go play the games.... But let's be honest here: there isn't much to spoil, because, frankly, straight-up adapting the plot of the Might & Magic games in itself wouldn't make for a particularly good book or movie (unless you added some perks and quirks like Thuryl did). But I digress. With that being said, I will keep it vague and brief. For people who played only the Heroes of Might & Magic games, some names are going to be familiar.

Basically, the Might and Magic RPGs - at least the first eight entries - aren't truly fantasy, but science fantasy. Your characters are medieval knights, elves, wizards and magicians fighting with swords and first combatting traditional medieval fantasy monsters, but by the end of the games you will be equipping your heroes with blasters and fighting robots. Get used to it. By the way, the first five games are actually set on giant, planet-sized spaceships, or "nacelles". Fun.

In Might & Magic I: The Secret of the Inner Sanctrum, six adventurers living on the world of VARN (Vehicular Astropod Research Nacelle) decide to go on an adventure to find a holy grail of sort and solve the Secret of the Inner Sanctrum (and encounter - at least for Heroes players - familiar faces, such as Crag Hack and Lord Kilburn). During their adventure, they get entangled in a conflict between Corak and Sheltem. Who are Corak and Sheltem? Sheltem - who is masquerading as the formerly benelovent Lord Alamar - is basically an AI created by the Ancients (some mysterious race who created these worlds) originally created to guard the world of Terra, but he ended up going evil and flying other worlds into their suns to "protect Terra" and other villain stuff. - in the game though, he is only referred to as "an escaped alien prisoner". Corak is another AI (but for some reason has a spirit - don't question it) created to stop Sheltem. Spoiler alert, Sheltem escapes, but the six adventurers follow him through some gate to another world. A perfect setup for a sequel....

... which is Might & Magic II: Gates to Another World, set on CRON (Central Research Observational Nacelle). Sheltem is threatening to destroy the world within 100 years (fun fact: even if you take 100 years to beat the game, it doesn't happen. Oversight?), and your adventurers (you can import your adventurers from the previous game) are supposed to stop him by helping Corak get to him. We save the world from being exploded, but once again, Sheltem escapes, and sadly, this time we wave one final goodbye to our heroes, because in the sequel, we can't import the old saved game.

The third game, Might & Magic III takes us to Terra, where all things have started. Eight new adventurers - Sir Canenghem, Crag Hack (yes, THAT Crag Hack), Maximus, Resurrectra, Dark Shade, Kastore, Robert the Wise and Tolberti - take it upon themselves to aid Corak in once again attmepting to stop Sheltem. There are three kings in the land of Terra vying for power, one good, one evil, and one neutral but dedicated to free will. You have to help one of them to gain access to the final dungeon and end the game. Whatever evil plan Shletem had this time, you once again foiled it, but sadly, he once again escapes, and your heroes try to pursue him, but instead accidentally travel forward in time, and to another world, where you will meet them in Might & Magic VII. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Might & Magic IV: Clouds of Xeen sets us up for an adventure to defeat an evil lord named Lord Xeen.

During the ending, we find out, that Lord Xeen was working for a mysterious figure wearing armour. Who could this be? Is that you, Sheltem?

Yes, once again, Sheltem is masquerading as Lord Alamar. In Might & Magic V: Darkside of Xeen, we control the same group of adventurers as in the last game. Sheltem is trying to drift the nacelle of XEEN away from its sun and freeze the world, and we must stop him!

Luckily, Sheltem cannot escape any longer, we finally see the evil villain brought to justice, albeit at the cost of Corak's life.

This brings the whole Corak-Sheltem saga to a ceremonious close. But this is not the end of the game: as I previously said, owning both Might & Magic IV: Clouds of Xeen and Might & Magic V: Darkside of Xeen merges the two games into a single game named World of Xeen, which allows players to come and go between the two sides of XEEN at will, and unlocks an extra quest line that sees the two sides of XEEN unified, the nacelle being turned into a planet, while somehow, everyone survives this and all buildings remain intact. Don't question it.

Now, unless you have the memory of a goldfish, you might remember that Might and Magic V was released in 1993, and Might and Magic VI was released in 1998. This 5-year gap actually had lore-wise consequences too.

You see, after M&M 1-5, New World Computing began working on the Heroes of Might & Magic spinoff, releasing one before being acquired by 3DO. Heroes of Might & Magic II would be the first game developed by NWC that would be published by 3DO. The original creator of Might & Magic, Jon van Caneghem mentioned in interviews, that he went ahead with the 3DO acquisition because 3DO had an MMORPG named Meridian 56 at the time, and he wanted to create a similar Might & Magic MMORPG (as far as he was concerned, the end of the Corak-Sheltem saga was supposed to be the end of Might & Magic, at least the original series).

Sadly, there would never be a Might & Magic MMORPG. Instead, we got more Might & Magic, and Heroes of Might & Magic games (more on them later). But what would these new M&M games revolve around, now that the Corak-Sheletm saga was closed? Demons. They decided to start with a new saga about the Kreegans - aliens from outer space, who merely happen to look like the horned demons from mythology, hell-bent on enslaving all the other races and their struggle about the Ancients. Oh yeah, anybody remember the Ancients? The guys who created both Sheltem and Corak? Yeah, me neither.

Might & Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven involves four adventurers on Enroath, set seven years after the events of Heroes of Might & Magic II (more on that later). Basically, demons have landed on the planet, and they have created a cult with the intent of overthrowing the good King Roland. Besides having to bully the aforementioned cult, we also have to rescue his evil brother Archibald, who got turned into stone (more on that later). Why Archibald? Because apparently, he's the only one who knows some sort of code needed to prevent the planet from self-destructing upon the arrival of the Kreegans. Uh, okay. Anyway, the heroes get to learn how to use blaster guns, and then assault the spaceship of the Kreegans' ship and kill the Kreegan Queen. The demons are driven back, the heroes get their rewards for saving the world, hoo-rah.

After the events of the previous game - and also after the events of Heroes of Might & Magic III, more on that later , in Might & Magic VII: For Blood and Honor, we control four new adventurers, who are on the Emelard Island, on a contest. The winner of the contest will win a castle and with it a land named Harmondale. Unfortunately, our castle is overran by Goblins, our new subjects treat us like ****, and worst of all, our estate is contested territory between the humans and elves, meaning we've basically inherited a future warzone.

But that's not all. Besides the whole war between the humans and elves - which the player can resolve peacefully and diplomatically, if they play their cards right - there is also an issue of the strange arrivals we see in the intro. Basically, eight strange figures - "sea people" - stepped out of the water, wearing black amulets, "shedding their skin", and having their arguments, splitting into two groups. Who are those strange people? Glad you asked! Those are the eight heroes from Might & Magic III! That's right, they initially intended to chase Sheltem to XEEN, but obviously ended up crash-landing on Enroth instead.

Once again, we have to battle the Kreegans, we have to kill their leader Xenofex, help the aforementioned Archibald rescue his brother Roland from the Kreegans, and then decide on Good or Evil, meeting up with one of the two subgroups of the M&M3 adventurers. Depending on which side we choose, we either end up reactivating a clone of Corak who will give us advice on how to run the world in peace, or reactivating a so-called "Heavenly Forge" to manufacture futuristic blaster guns and conquer the world in the name of Evil. Originally, the Evil ending was supposed to be canon, but due to some conflicts between NWC/3DO and the Heroes of Might and Magic fandom, they went with the Good ending.

Might & Magic VIII: Day of the Destroyer is basically about the aforementioned Ancients - remember them? Me neither - getting paranoid, being alerted by the last two demonic/Kreegan invasions, and deciding that the planet of Enroth is more trouble than its worth, sending an emissary to plant a bomb that can destroy the whole planet. Yes, that's pretty much it. Our heroes basically grind, complete a game's worth of quests, and stop the world from exploding. Hoo-rah.

Might & Magic IX: Writ of Fate is set on the world of Axeoth, the same world as Heroes of Might & Magic IV, but on a different continent, so there isn't much overlap. All the sci-fi elements are removed completely, and instead, inspiration is taken from Germanic and Celtic mythology. Basically, the goal of the player is to beat back a Barbarian invasion and then? I'm honestly lost in this game's plot.

This was also the last game in the main series, before 3DO and New World Computing went bankrupt. And it shows. The game had a very rushed release, and it most definitely shows.

Might and Magic X is set on Ashan, the same world that Heroes of Might & Magic V and all of its sequels are set on. That's all I know about it.

Let there be spinoffs

The original Might & Magic games were mildly successful, but not as nearly succesful as the spinoff series Heroes of Might & Magic. In fact, the majority of Heroes fans never even heard of the original Might & Magic RPG games, let alone played them. This is going to have consequences, as we'll see later.

Released in 1995, Heroes of Might and Magic: A Strategic Quest created a whole new series, that would overshadow the series it grew out of. It was a turn-based strategy game with RPG elements, though I feel like the name is a bit misleading. Heroes?! These "heroes" are just standing around watching the battle, not even intervening at all besides casting spells! The adventurers from the original Might & Magic are far more heroic! Anyway, the "heroes" (really, generals) control armies, which consist of creatures you recruit from both towns and out-of-town dwellings. Heroes have stats that influence their creatures, each army of creatures must be led by a hero, and each hero must be attached to an army consisting of at least one creature. Your armies go around the map exploring, gathering resources, capturing buildings, capturing enemy (or neutral) towns, defeating enemy (or neutral) armies, etc. This all happens on the strategy/adventure map - when your army enemies a hostile army, you enter a battle map, on which you move your creature stacks around like chess pieces, while your hero may or may not have the ability to cast spells to potentially turn the tide of the battle. Also, you can equip artifacts onto your heroes, which will further empower them.... to empower their creatures.

In Heroes I, there are four factions to be specific, named after the type of "hero" that commands their army: Knight (good, might-oriented), Sorceress (good, magic-oriented), Barbarian (evil, might-oriented) and Warlock (evil, magic-oriented).

The game also features a campaign, during which the knight Lord Morglin Ironfist - who is originally from VARN or CRON, if you remember what I said about Might & Magic I-II -, the sorcerress Queen Lamanda, the barbarian Lord Slayer and the warlock Lord Alamar (yes, THAT Alamar) are vying for control over Enroth. Spoiler alert, Lord Ironfist wins (ironic, since the Knight faction is the weakest in the game), and marries Lamanda. We also see some familiar faces from the original Might & Magic I-V games, such as Lord Kilburn, Maximus, Sir Gallant, Kastore, Crag Hack, Kastore, Crodo, Yog, Tsabu, etc. In fact, now that I think of it, the majority of Heroes from Heroes I definitely made an appearance in the Might & Magic I-V games as NPCs, enemies, hirelings or pre-made party members, reusing the same portraits too.

Humble beginnings for an iconic spinoff series that ends up overshadowing the series it grew out of.

Released in 1996, Heroes of Might & Magic II: The Succession Wars brings to the table two new factions - Necromancer and Wizard - and so-called "secondary skills" for heroes, which brings various bonuses and ties into the magic system.

Story? Morglind Ironfist from the previous game unified Enroth, but now he's dead, so his two sons Roland Ironfist (who is good) and Archibald Ironfist (who is evil) are fighting over the throne. You, the player control a grand general, controlling heroes and armies to defeat the other side during the campaign. Canonically, Roland wins and turns his brother Archibald to stone, which becomes an important plot point during Might & Magic Magic VII (hope you remembered that part).

After this, Roland marries Queen Cathrine of Erathia, which leads us to the next game....

Released in 1999, Heroes of Might & Magic III: The Restoration of Erathia plays quite similarly to its predecessor, but vastly expands the reportoire of playable factions, castable spells, classes of heroes, number of creatures, etc. It also streamlines and balances everything. It is, without question, the most popular Heroes of Might and Magic game, the gold standard. The number of factions was increased from 6 to 8, being the Castle (Cleric, Knight), Rampart (Druid, Ranger), Tower (Wizard, Alchemist), Inferno (Heretic, Demoniac), Necropolis (Necromancer, Death Knight), Dungeon (Warlock, Overlord), Stronghold (Battle Mage, Barbarian) and Fortress (Witch, Beastmaster).

Story-wise, we're set after the events of both Heroes of Might & Magic II and Might & Magic VI, with Queen Catherine - wife of the aforementioned Roland Ironfist - receiving news of her father's death, and promptly returning to Erathia to find out what's going on. The whole kingdom is under attack by the demons, the necromancers are conspiring to resurrect her father as a Lich, etc. You know, standard fantasy stuff. As the player, you control Catherine's armies and defeat all the evildoers to restore peace.

For Heroes of Might & Magic III, there were two official expansions: The Armageddon Blade and The Shadow of Death. The earlier is a true sequel, set after the events of Restoration of Earathia, Might & Magic VII, but before the events of Might & Magic VIII, also introducing a new faction, the Conflux (Elementalist, Planeswalker). The latter is a prequel to Restoration of Earathia, telling us about rise and fall of Sandro, and how he tricked some heroes into doing his bidding and almost conquering the world.

The Armageddon's Blade is about a sword known as Armageddon's Blade, which is used to slay Lucifer Kreegan, the leader of the Demons.

Ohohohoh, but this was not enough. 3DO and New World Computing decided to milk Heroes 3 a bit more, and release a set of campaigns called Heroes Chronicles, featuring the protagonist Tarnum. They are all over the timeline. Some are set early enough to be contemporary with the plot of the first five Might & Magic games and the Corak-Sheltem saga. The last one is set following the events of Armageddon's Blade and Might & Magic VIII. Yes, it's tangled.

And one more interesting bit of trivia: Armageddon's Blade was originally intended to have a faction named the Forge, which would have been technology-based, with semi-robotic units equipped with modern weapons. This would have been based off the Evil Ending of Might & Magic VII, where the Heavenly Forge of the ancients is restored and starts producing blasters. Fan outcry - which included death threats - stopped the development of this in its tracks, and instead, they introduced the aforementioned Conflux, and made the Good Ending of Might & Magic VII canon. Fun, huh? Shows you that most Heroes-fans never played the original Might & Magic RPGs, given how ignorant they were of the existence of sci-fi elements in Might & Magic.

Released in 2002, Heroes of Might & Magic IV is set in a completely new world named Axeoth - the same world that Might & Magic IX is set in. The old world of Enroth was destroyed in a cataclysmic event, but luckily, a large number of refugees fled to the new world to populate it, including almost the majority of our beloved heroes from Heroes III.

Heroes IV was rather hated back in the day I was active on Heroes of Might & Magic forums, because it was different from Heroes III, but I still loved it, and it still holds a special place in my heart, as the first Might & Magic game I ever played. Yes, I am biased.

But even taking my personal biases aside, Heroes IV is a step forward in some regards, but also a huge step backwards in many others. The graphics are beautiful, and so is the music. Heroes' skills have been expanded to include sub-skills, and now a hero's class depends on which skills they take and specialize in. Arguably, the biggest change is the fact, that heroes have gotten decoupled from armies: armies of creatures can now function without heroes (albeit they cannot flag dwellings, mines and capture towns without a hero, only fight enemy armies, gather resources and explore), and heroes now take an active role on the battlefield, allowing heroes to exist without armies. A single army can now contain multiple heroes, or none at all! This was arguably the main reason why Heroes III fans hate Heroes IV so much, not liking the idea of heroes actually acting like heroes rather than armchair generals.

Arguably, the biggest steps back were in the number of unit tiers and factions. You see, in Heroes I, there were 5 tiers of creatures per faction, which remained unchanged in Heroes II (though most creatures now had upgrades, with Dragons having two upgrades!). Heroes III increased this to 7 creature tiers per faction, and had a fixed, single upgraded equivalent for each un-upgraded unit. Heroes I had 4 factions, Heroes II increased this to 6, Heroes III further increased this to 8 (9 in the expansion Armageddon's Blade)....

... while Heroes of Might & Magic IV has 4 creature tiers (albeit in each town you can recruit two level 1 units, while having to choose between two creatures for each subsequent tier), no more creature upgrades, and only 6 factions: Asylum / Chaos (Thief, Sorcerrer), Necropolis / Death (Death Knight, Necromancer), Haven / Life (Cleric, Knight), Stronghold / Might (Barbarian), Preserve / Nature (Archer, Druid), Academy / Order (Lord, Mage). Okay, so Haven equals Castle, Preserve equals Rampart, Academy equals Tower, Necropolis equals Necropolis, Asylum equals Dungeon, Stronghold equals Stronghold.... where's Fortress and Inferno? Your eyes are not deceiving you: they're not there. Some of Fortress's units got added into Asylum, while Inferno got merged into Necropolis, arguably the most controversial decision during the creation of the game. Heroes IV's Necropolis is an Infernopolis, featuring both Undead and Demons. Makes no sense to me.

To make matters worse, now all heroes start with the exact same skillset assigned to their class, adding zero tactical weight to hiring your heroes - you might as well pick them based off looks.

Returning to an earlier point, the whole thing about having two creatures per each creature tier, and forcing the player to choose between two units for every tier after level 1.... It was an interesting idea, and had potential, but it was rather poorly executed, because many of choices were literal no-brainers: e.g. Angels vs Champions, Black Dragons vs Hydras, Titans vs Dragon Golems, Devils vs Bone Dragons.... in these cases, everybody was going to pick the first one of each pair!

Still, on the plus side, Heroes of Might & Magic IV arguably features the best and most user-friendly map editor ever. It also added some quality-of-life features, like a Caravan system to easily transport armies from one town to another, or to remotely recruit from creature dwellings.

Heroes of Might & Magic IV spawned two expansion packs: Heroes of Might and Magic IV: The Gathering Storm (2002) and Heroes of Might and Magic IV: Winds of War (2003). Both add new creatures, new artifacts, new maps and new campaigns, albeit the latter was particularly low-budged, and was in fact, the last dying breath of both New World Computing and 3DO. They both went bankrupt, and Ubisoft bought up all of their assets, including the rights to the Might & Magic franchise.

After this, they made Heroes of Might & Magic V, which I'm not going to talk about in this article. Only in the next one.

More spinoffs?

The Heroes of Might & Magic series is not the only spinoff of the Might & Magic series: there also exist the games and Swords of Xeen (1994), Crusaders of Might and Magic (1999/2000), Warriors of Might and Magic (2000), Legends of Might and Magic (2001) and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (2006).

Let's go over them in release order: Swords of Xeen was a fan-game made with the same engine as Might & Magic IV-V, featuring the exact same enemies, nothing else to say about it.

Crusaders of Might & Magic was an Action RPG.... and two different games. You see, it was released on both the PC/Windows and the PlayStation 1, and both games are quite different. The earlier version was released unfinished, features bad voice acting, is extremely easy, but overall has an okay gameplay. The latter version is finished, features even worse voice acting, but is actually very hard, basically the Dark Souls of Playstation 1.

Warriors of Might and Magic is a game I never played, but by the looks of it, it appears to play similarly to Crusaders of Might and Magic, whose sequel it was originally intended to be, before they changed their minds after the negative reception of the earlier game. It was released on both the PlayStation 1 and 2, but not the PC.

Legends of Might and Magic was a first-person shooter. I never played it, but by the looks of it, it might as well be the spiritual predecessor of Dark Messiah.

Dark Messiah of Might & Magic was published by Ubisoft rather than 3DO, so it has no place in this article, but only in the next one.

The Great Sale

Might & Magic started off as a passion-project by a lonely programmer, and evolved into something much bigger, before it fell victim to corporate greed. Under the overprotective rule of 3DO, the creative vision of its original creator Jon van Caneghem was being constrained, which partially contributed to the eventual fall of the franchise. 3DO eventually went bankrupt in 2003, and the Might & Magic franchise was auctioned off at a firesale price to Ubisoft, which took the series into its own hands.

In the next episode, we will learn what happened to Might & Magic under the custodianship of Ubisoft, and the final fall of the series from grace. Brace yourself, because it's going to get ugly.

Among other things, Ubisoft did a complete reboot of the lore, erasing all the previous worlds and having all new games set in a world called Ashan. All the sci-fi elements of the original Might & Magic? Gone completely.

Lessons: To redefine fantasy

When someone says "fantasy" in English, everyone instantly knows what it means: a genre of fiction that includes supernatural elements largely inspired by (mostly European) mythology, including magic, fictional races like elves and dwarves, etc.

In my native Hungarian, the word "fantázia" has a secondary meaning: it means imagination, it's a synonym of creativity.

Quite ironic, given how stale fantasy has grown the past decades, becoming less and less imaginative as the time went on. Now, don't get me wrong, I love me some Standard Fantasy tropes and races (e.g. Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Dragons, vampires, etc.), but I also like it when someone comes along to spice things up, which is what Might & Magic did with the sci-fi elements.

Yet at the same time, we saw them chickening out of the idea of adding Forge to Heroes of Might & Magic III due to fan outrage, which, I believe was the beginning of the end. Just four years after caving in to fan demand and keeping the HoM&M series as Standard European Fantasy with no sci-fi elements, they went bankrupt, the franchise sold to Ubisoft, which went the "tried and true" route, played it safe, still only getting lukewarm reviews.

Who knows, what could have been, had they been daring, defied the vocal minority among fans and went against the grain. Ironically, integrating Medieval Fantasy and Sci-Fi into each other is completely noncontroversial today, and video game developers ignore death threats. Or what would have been, had 3DO went along with the idea of a Might & Magic MMORPG instead of scrapping it.

In the next episode, we will see our childhoods uprooted, and turned into something.... something not of this world. In a negative sense.