Now, for the prequel expansion pack. I actually ended up playing the Shadow of Death campaigns first, since I thought, “Oh, it’s a prequel, I should play the games in chronological order!”
It’s actually a pretty generic affair – a bunch of characters, two of which are apparently staples of the Might and Magic series, get duped way too easily by a super-powerful necromancer named Sandro, who makes them gather small-scale artifacts that he can combine into super-powerful ones. You then get to play as Sandro with said super-powerful artifacts, which I must say is immensely satisfying on a cathartic level. After Sandro has built up a massive power base and made his presence known, the four heroes realize they were played like fiddles and start working on a super-powerful artifact of their own, the “Angelic Alliance” (a sword that casts a buff spell at the start of battle and grants a morale boost to “good” troops), then crush him in a climactic battle. The final campaign revolves around Sandro and his last-gasp efforts to be important. It turns out he actually sets up the important plot points in the main Heroes 3 game – he poisons and kills King Gryphonheart, forms an alliance with the Kreegans and Nighon overlords, and then gets himself imprisoned by being tricked by his superior into attacking an innocent necromancer lord.

…Wait, back up a bit there. How in the world do necromancers have a stable society? The game repeatedly establishes that they are the vilest of the vile scum out there, their country is a blighted wasteland since they don’t need any food, and apparently they’re constantly fighting each other for power, as Sandro did earlier in the game. Yet apparently they have a king, a stable society, and an orderly law system? Sandro didn’t cross any lines when he rampaged across the countryside destroying everyone in his path in order to become the most powerful necromancer ever, but attacking this one guy is a heinous crime?

As you can tell, the plot revolves around evil necromancers, again. Oh boy oh boy. One of the four heroes, Gem, apparently has a massive vendetta against them, even moreso than most people. In her narration, she’s constantly flashing back to seeing them pillage and raze her hometown (I think?) in excruciatingly gory detail, and Sandro dupes her by saying that the artifacts she’s collecting can suppress necromancy (they in fact do the opposite, as should be pretty obvious from even a cursory glance…). During the semifinal campaign, she’s constantly working herself into a self-righteous frenzy over what monsters the necromancers are and how awful everything is and acts like she’s on a personal crusade. Laying it on a bit thick, 3DO. The story never acknowledges how she’s basically calling for genocide the entire time (even though it does in a similar scene in Armageddon’s Blade where the character is talking about the Kreegans), and seems to think her indignation is always 100% justified. There’s black and white morality for the sake of simplicity, and then there’s this. It really seems like the storywriters are determined to make the necromancers as vile as they possibly can for no real reason.

Now then, Armageddon’s Blade. This one is a doozy and requires some more meta talk. One of the staples of the Might and Magic series is (apparently) that they like to blend science fiction elements (such as lost super-technology) with fantasy elements like magic. The Heroes series lacked this, being pretty much pure fantasy all the way through. Seeking to correct this by injecting a bit of science fiction into the world, the developers planned on maaking the “evil” ending of Might and Magic 7 canon and having it impact the sequel expansion of Heroes 3. In Might and Magic 7, the “evil” path revolves around you discovering and restoring a “Heavenly Forge” created by ancient precursors, which can be used to craft sci-fi superweapons. In the next Heroes game, the “forge” was planned to be added as a new faction, and the story would have revolved around stopping their attempt to take over the world with superior firepower.

However, this plan was met with an extremely negative reaction from the fans of Heroes when it was announced, to the point where some people sent death threats. 3DO eventually decided to scrap the plan and hastily slap another storyline (and faction) together at the last minute. As a result, what they pushed out the door, Armageddon’s Blade, is a train wreck. An elegant and surprisingly well-salvaged train wreck, but a train wreck nonetheless. There is no central storyline like in the original game; instead, like in The Price of Loyalty, each of the six campaigns are standalone stories. I highly, highly suspect that this was not originally going to be the case, as many of the campaigns are simply awful. They contain the blandest storylines I have ever seen, are incredibly dull and repetitive in gameplay, and in an alarming number of cases look like they weren’t even proofread. Dialogue is never written consistently or correctly, and there’s one point where they don’t even bother to capitalize “I”. I don’t know what kind of hack writers the developers had to throw at the game to come up with this filler, but I shudder to think of it.

One of the storylines is about a female dungeon overlord named Mutare who wants to gain power for herself, a bit like Sandro in Shadow of Death, come to think of it. She eventually discovers a vial of dragon blood that she uses to turn into a dragon, which would be pretty cool if it conferred any gameplay benefits whatsoever. Still, the campaign is pretty dull and generic overall, and doesn’t really go anywhere. I expected it to be more about dragons when I saw the description, but no dice.

Another storyline is virtually identical, only substitute “barbarian” for “dungeon overlord” and subtract the dragon bits. So basically, the same, but even more unimpressive.

A third storyline is quite possibly the worst one of the bunch – it revolves around a witch named Adrienne who was outcast from Tatalia for practicing fire magic, which is a really big deal apparently? The story revolves around her trying to purge the undead menace from invading Tatalia, because it’s not like we haven’t rehashed that plotline a billion times over by now. The writing is a godawful mess – the tone sometimes tries to be comedic (I think?) and at other times tries to be so dark and gritty that it loops back around to ridiculous. I apparently have to rescind my earlier rant about Gem’s genocidal tirades, because that was toned back from the over-the-top things that go on here. It also throws a wrench into the whole “undead are trapped souls” thing, because it portrays the undead as mindless automations…the only time I think they’re portrayed that way in this universe, I think. (…More evidence that this is a hack writer unfamiliar with the source material.) Even in gameplay terms, the scenarios are an absolute slog and painfully repetitive. It’s just awful all the way through.

There is one side-story I liked, even though it seems to exist solely for the purpose of showing off the new super-creatures that Armageddon’s Blade introduced. It stars Dracon, a young wizard who wants to make a name for himself by slaying dragons. For a story that seems so generic (and it doesn’t have much in the way of plot), it has shockingly well-written atmosphere. The gameplay is interesting as well – it’s a departure from the normal format of “kill all the other guys” (you only even have an enemy opponent in one of the four scenarios) to almost a puzzle game where you have to make it to the end of the area and defeat the big boss fight before time runs out. It’s hair-pullingly difficult at first – I had to use a walkthrough, I admit it – but if you can make it past the first scenario, you really start to get a handle of the strategies necessary, and victory becomes all the more satisfying – especially since said victory is always against incredibly powerful creatures the likes of which you don’t see in any of the other campaigns. Another thing I really liked about it was how magic-heavy the gameplay was, since as I have stated before, the fumbling of the magic system is one of my pet peeves with the series. In this campaign, you get top-tier spells from the very beginning, and using them wisely is crucial to victory. The designer for this one really had a great understanding of the game mechanics and used it to craft a truly unique experience, so bravo, unknown developer!

Then there’s the actual storyline campaign, “Armageddon’s Blade”. The premise is that the Kreegans have a new king, one who plans to “set the world on fire” by crafting a magic sword, which has the capability of doing so…somehow… It’s not very clear. But this was thrown together at the last minute, I’ll cut them some slack. Anyway, the Kreegans are invading, so Catherine and Roland (as well as a new character, a half-elf forest ranger guy named Gelu) take it upon themselves to stop them!

One thing I immediately noticed is that the main villains are not necromancers this time! Hooray for originality. (Is it sad that I’ve become so exhausted that I’ll define “originality” as using demons instead of necromancers as the villains? It is.) This does lead to some really bizarre weirdness in how the narrative treats them, though. There are odd points where the narrative tries to humanize the Kreegans (mainly during the quarter of the campaign where you play as them), then in the next breath portrays them as ruthless, chaotic evil overlords who torture people for kicks. I am honestly just baffled. For instance, there’s this one point where the protagonist of the Kreegan side, Xeron, is informed that his mother was killed in one of Gelu’s raids and he has a tearful breakdown, and I just spent the next few minutes staring at the screen in confusion. Why would demons (or aliens, whatever) even have the same familial structure that we do? And more importantly, why should I care? Like all the other Kreegans, she probably tortured people for the lulz. I’m sorry if I can’t muster up any sympathy. And then, practically the next day, Xeron decides to beat his spy to an inch of his life (plus threaten him with tearing out his heart and eating it) because he couldn’t get all of the information he wanted. Cognitive dissonance much?

There’s also a scenario with Roland as the protagonist that I actually liked. It’s mentioned that the entire war has taken a massive toll on him – there’s one scene where he has vivid nightmares of when he was held hostage by the Kreegans and tortured daily, described in graphic detail. He tries to rally the troops and convince the Erathian nobles to keep fighting the war with him, but he can’t (although I am kind of surprised what part of “blowing up the world” the nobles don’t understand), eventually leading to mass desertions and him abdicating as king of Erathia. I think this is a pretty good deconstruction of the noble fantasy hero who fearlessly charges into one challenge after the other – it’s clear that Roland’s adventuring days are over, and that the endless warfare has exhausted him mentally and spiritually.

However, one part I felt was bizarre is a bit where he’s all “we must exterminate all the Kreegans, take no prisoners” and so on in a speech to the troops, and the narration notes how he’s turned into such a cold and hateful man because he’s calling for genocide. I…I don’t even. Gem’s borderline insane obsession with exterminating all necromancers in Shadow of Death (and Adrienne’s here) is just peachy keen, but calling for destroying devils and demons who personally tortured him, invaded his country, and threatened to blow up the world, oh that’s such a controversial thing we need some moral nuance on that? If you’re going to have your antagonists be objectively evil and the scum of the earth, game, at least be consistent about it.

The replacement faction for the Forge is the “Conflux”, a faction with an elemental theme. The creatures are the four elementals (plus a “magic elemental”) and some random mythical creatures (pixies and phoenixes) thrown in to round out the lineup. It’s very obviously a slap-dash effort, but the developers did decently well considering the circumstances, I think. Their role in the story is pretty generic – they’ve apparently decided to appear on the material plane all of a sudden (perhaps in response to the Kreegans, I don’t know) and Catherine is able to form an alliance with them to stop the Kreegans. It’s their troops that the main characters fall back on after the Erathian nobles pull out.

In the final scenario, the good guys capture Armageddon’s Blade and use it to defeat the final Kreegan forces, killing their king and ending the menace once and for all. Because Catherine is a smart and wise leader, she leaves the apocalypse sword in the hands of Gelu without making even a token effort to destroy it. Nothing could possibly go wrong with this plan, nope nope.

Something I really like is Catherine’s character. Uncharacteristic for the time, she’s a surprisingly well-written and powerful female character, even taking precedence over her husband, who resigns himself to a general under her command for the duration of the war. Roland is even addressed by Erathian citizens as “husband of my queen” instead of “my king”.

Overall, the writing in the campaign is actually pretty good – I wouldn’t have guessed it was a plan B slapped together at the last minute after they scrapped the original draft.

I actually really liked the gameplay in this campaign. Instead of scenarios starting off with slow, long periods of gathering resources and building up castles, you generally start with a large army and a decently built-up set of castles, allowing you to quickly plunge into enemy territory from the start. It’s a nice contrast to how long and tedious most of the other scenarios (and turn-based strategy games in general) are. Gelu is also a major help in that regard, as he has one of the best specialties ever: he can upgrade ordinary archer units into a super-powerful neutral unit that’s usually very difficult to get and has low growth rates. As such, he can grow in power extremely quickly and easily overwhelm the enemy with his awesome archers. It’s very cathartic after being used to long slogs.

To be honest, though, this game is more than a little disturbing to me. It’s…strange. I constantly get the feeling that I’m not playing the game the way I’m supposed to. My strategy is to play it safe. I always feel like I take too long to do things – I want to explore every nook and cranny, then make sure I’ve built up a big enough army for me to make it to the next area safely. I chase any infiltrators across the map trying to stamp them out, because I’m terrified of losing any ground, but it seems like the better strategy is to change ahead fearlessly.

But most of all, I try to save people.

You see, there’s this spell called Resurrection. It does exactly what it sounds like. On the surface it’s not very different from summoning spells, because the creatures you raise don’t stay alive after the battle. But if you crank your earth magic skill up to expert level, that changes. Suddenly, troops raised by Resurrection do stay with you after battle – you can actually use it to minimalize casualties. In every campaign, I made a beeline for both this spell and earth magic, then I proceeded to spam it in every battle. If I had lost a lot of troops, I would whittle the opponent down to almost nothing, then try to stall as long as I could in order to keep casting Resurrection.

I did this mostly because I’m an obsessive packrat and completist, and permanently losing troops made that part of me twitch, especially since it’s virtually unavoidable. But I think that, on another level, I did it because I didn’t like seeing troops being mowed down so relentlessly. As time goes on – possibly because I have a tendency to drag levels out, I will admit – the death tolls become absolutely horrifying. Literally hundreds of troops can die in a single battle, on both sides. Resurrection allows the player to mitigate that, at least somewhat – and I’d like to think that, in-universe, it would be something expected of any commander claiming the moral high ground.

But…that takes effort. A lot of effort. Battles are just so freaking repetitive, and they just drag on and on and on even without trying to stall for extra resurrections. My strategy wasn’t kind on my heroes’ spell point reserves, either. It began to feel more and more like I was exploiting a weird niche mechanic occurring on the fringes of the game engine, rather than utilizing a legitimate tactic.

So I started becoming lazy. Does it really matter if I save a handful of elves this battle, I thought, I can just replace them next week. I’m so tired of this, I just want the battle to be over, I said. Then I discovered the quick combat feature. Even though it felt silly to use it, like I was ignoring half the game, I did it anyway. And the interesting thing about quick combat is that I always suffered far more losses than I ever did when I was actually directing things – the AI is suicidal, it seems.

At first I cared. I only used quick combat judiciously, when I felt certain I would win anyway. Sometimes I boggled at my losses, reloaded and tried again, properly this time. But, eventually, I stopped caring. It didn’t matter anymore. I could afford those losses and still win, because I was getting better at the game.

Now I look back on that, and I can’t help but feel a little bit queasy at my detachment. The lives of your soldiers in a war game like this don’t matter at all. I kind of wonder, where are they all coming from? Every week, on the dot, you get a new slew of recruits appearing out of thin air. You pay money for them – but are you paying them, or the town itself? You never have to pay upkeep for them. Are these soldiers going along with you willingly? In earlier games, the knight faction was literally recruiting peasants, armored in rags and armed with farming tools. That looks an awful lot like conscription to me. Yet the knight faction claims the moral high ground over the necromancers, on the basis that the necromancers enslave people’s souls. How is that different than enslaving their bodies, really? And while we’re on the topic…how does that resurrection spell work, anyway? In Dungeons and Dragons, the recipient has to be willing, but does that apply to an en masse casting like the version we see here, especially since it can be used on nonsapient animals? This leads to the very real possibility that some soldiers might not actually want to be resurrected, but their leaders won’t even grant them the release of death. Now I feel horrible for abusing that spell so much…

But of course I’m overthinking this. You’re not meant to think about this. It’s a wargame – the soldiers are faceless, interchangeable, disposable. However, I think that the reason this game provokes such an especial cognitive dissonance is because it tries to dress it up in fantasy RPG imagery. Everything has such life and personality. There’s magic! Unicorns! Rugged, heroic individuals on personal quests! The whole story is dressed up as an epic battle of good versus evil! Even the random wandering monsters can have personality – some of them will choose to join you. But…what happens to all those creatures who wish to “join you for greater glory”? Your army is a meat grinder. It’s not as noticeable if they’re creatures of your own faction that you’re constantly replacing, but when they’re not? You use them as cannon fodder, because you know you won’t be able to keep them. You can just watch as they’re slowly whittled away to nothing. Why did they join you in the first place? They never say, exactly. They never complain about the fact you’re sending them to their deaths. And it doesn’t matter, because they’re just interchangeable mooks.

Even though all those soldiers in the game are nothing but bits of code, I still feel disturbed because of what they represent. Art reflects culture, and nowhere is that more apparent than in games, where the audience can directly interact with the art itself. The desensitization and detachment I felt towards those little blips on a screen when at first I was so concerned for their well-being…looking back, that horrifies me. I watched the death tolls rise – dozens, hundreds, thousands of dead – while cheery victory music played after every battle, and I didn’t care. What does that say about me?

I don’t want to scaremonger and say that video games are warping our minds and corrupting our youth. But this glorification of war and dismissal of collateral damage in a quest for personal glory really isn’t a healthy mentality to perpetuate, and it only gets worse in Heroes of Might and Magic 4.