|
|
Heroes of Might and Magic II is the best turn-based swords and sorcery strategy game ever. Period. This game combines fun combat with resource management that involves more resources than any other game on the market, with a very difficult A.I. that makes for challenging play. You wont be dissapointed with this one.
Heroes of Might and Magic two takes place in the land of Enroth, the same setting as Heroes I and Might and Magic VI, as well as Heroes III. This world is a decidedly Tolkien-esque and therefore Dungeons and Dragons world of "Halflings" (hobbits) dragons druids and arch-mages. It all centers, however, around heroes. These are your generals for your troops, and you can't have an army outside of one of your castles without one. These heroes confer attack and defense bonuses on your troops, as well as casting spells on the enemy troops. However, they can't take part in the combat directly.
The units in Heroes II are grown in buildings you build in your castles and in independent residences outside. Heroes II operates around one day being one turn, and every week new monsters/troops/units grow in their respective holdings. These units have several characteristics: Attack Value, Defense Value, Movement, Hit Points and Damage Range. Attack and Defense value are increased by the attack and defense values of the Hero who is leading them. Many of the units come in two variants, a "normal" one and an upgraded one that you get when, well, upgrade the dwelling of the normal creatures. On type, Dragons, have three variants. An upgraded unit costs more, but can have increases in any of the unit characteristics.
Combat in Heroes II takes place in a seperate tactical screen of hexagons whenever one hero attacks another hero, or if a hero attacks one the "traveling" monster groups that sit in one place waiting for you to attack them, usually guarding some treasure or other. The unit with the highest speed goes first, then the second highest speed, and so forth until all units have moved. Each hero can cast one spell per round, or the collection of all the units moves. In cases of ties in movement, the attacker goes first. In repeat ties, the attacker goes, then the defender, then the attacker then the defender and so on. Each unit go move a number of squares depending on their movement speed. Some units can fly, which allows them to cross the entire screen in one move. Units attack in one of two ways- hand to hand and archery. Hand to hand combat occurs when a unit from one side attacks a unit from another. The calculations are as follows: The Defender's defense value is subtracted from the Attacker's attack value. Then, a number is randomly chosen from the Attacker's Damage Range. Then, if the subtracted Attack-Defense difference is positive, it modifies the damage number higher. If it is negative, it lowers the damage number. Then, the number of creatures in the unit/stack is multiplied with this damage number. This is the total damage. It is then subtracted from the defender's hit points, carrieing over one at a time. So if you had 7 Black Dragon's with 300 hit points, and 10 titans do 1000 damage to them, 3 black dragons would die, and another would be down to 200 hit points. In combat, after a unit is attacked, usually it gets one retaliation. There are exceptions, but this is pretty common. A retaliation is just like a normal attack.
Archery is just like normal combat, except the unit is able to attack from across the screen, which allows him to attack without being retaliated against, and doesn't move him into harms way in order to attack. The downside is most archery units attack with half strength when another unit initiates hand-to-hand combat, and a unit can't use its archery power if an enemy unit is on a hex adjacent to it.