Heroes of Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes

Being the last post I meant to do at the beginning of the year, I thought I should finally get this one out of my head. Heroes of Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes for the DS comes from the interesting game studio Capybara Games. This installment in the Might and Magic series is completely different, and was turned into an addicting puzzle game with a manga graphical twist for the portable installment. The strict paths on the over-world is still the same, but there's no castles to upkeep or any of that; the game is more linear, where you follow the paths, fight and repeat. This isn't to say that's a bad thing, just different. Besides being the surprisingly deep puzzle/battles being more addictive than cake, the gotta catch them all that comes from unlocking the rest of the troops is pretty intoxicating too, with there being three small troops, two medium troops with some powers, and two huge troops that can decimate a playing field. The way battles work out is you're given so many troops to play with on the field, and using three moves you have to form three vertically to initiate attacks, or three horizontally to form walls. Simple, see? However, adding in the character specials, character equips, chains, bonus moves, etc, it gets pretty exciting. However, there is a bit of luck involved that more than once lost me a match, and sometimes an enemies attack would automatically make some of my remaining troops into a bunch of walls that may or may not get on your nerves (part of the game, but still made me a bit angry). Also, I really didn't care for the story (which you play through the different characters, each with their individual nuances), and I really started to find myself only playing the quick battles. Lastly, while some of the story battles were a nice change of pace with the varying objectives, some of them were super annoying objectives so this actually kind of equals itself out. I wanted to give this a higher score, but the single player just wasn't doing it for me. On the awesome side, Heroes of Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes is getting a makeover for the Xbox 360 and the PS3, so I think I'll give it another go.

Judgment: 7.5 Blargs out of 10 Snargles