Might & Magic Clash of Heroes originally released on the Nintendo DS back in early 2010 and was met with a large amount of critical praise. Since then Ubisoft have been hard at work moving over the title onto this generation of consoles. Offering a vast singleplayer campaign and both online and offline multiplayer modes this is certainly a meaty downloadable title. But just how well has the port fared?
Straight away in firing up the campaign the game's striking visual art style hits you. Ubisoft have done an absolutely superb job in converting over the DS versions 2D old-school visuals into unique and visually appealing, cartoon styled high definition sprites. It's rare to see an XBLA with such visual flair. The animations are well rendered, and the game's cutscenes look stunning and sound great thanks to some solid voice acting.
You travel around the world by moving your character between nodes on the overworld screens. Here you can speak to other characters, gain sidequests and initiate battles. Most of your time will be spent inside these battles; which follow a strategic style of gameplay on a grid-like playing field. The game uses a similar vertical playing field to that seen in Capybara Games' last title 'Critter Crunch'. You'll have a limited amount of moves per turn; in each you're able to move your units around the grid. By placing 3 of the same units of both type and colour vertically on top of one another you'll initiate an attack. Each units attack has a certain turn wait time before it activates. These vary from 1 to as much as 6 turns depending on the unit. However if you place 3 or more of the same units horizontally you'll create a wall. These techniques can all stack too, to create chains of attacks, stronger walls and various other advanced moves.
As you progress through the games lengthy 5 campaigns you'll experience many different heroes, sidequests and secrets. Each hero you play as has unique units, strengths and weaknesses. Clash of Heroes features 10 heroes to master. After playing some multiplayer and delving into various of the game's heroes it became quickly apparent that each hero's units offer quite a noticeable change in tactics and strategies. Whereas one hero may play fairly defensively and fight from behind their guard of walls, others may even use their walls as a multiplier to supercharge their abilities and unleash a barrage of damage. Each hero also offers a unique super ability. Every time you take or deal damage your MP increases - when your MP reaches its maximum you're able to use the hero's special ability. These can range from a 3 isle arrow barrage, to a defensive barrier which fires energy bolts back at the enemy. As you partake in battles both your heroes and your units will increase in level - as a result of this their damage and toughness increases giving you a notable improvement in battle.
Not only that but each hero has individual units unique to them, each with different damage and toughness values. Super units can also be used which require you to stack either 2 or 4 of a specific coloured standard unit behind them to trigger their ability countdown. These can take multiple turns but often have devastating effects when the countdown runs down. The game is riddled with secret units and artifacts throughout the campaign. Artifacts are basically equipment for your hero, and can offer various bonuses such as boosting your overall health by 25%, or improving a certain units ability. It all comes together to create a fairly simple to play but shockingly deep combat system.
The multiplayer offers both offline and online play in either 1v1 or 2v2 battles. Offline players can connect up to 4 controllers and play with their buddies, or you can partake in online matchmaking bouts either alone, or with a buddy. Both private and ranked matches are possible. Sadly there's no ability to connect an extra pad and team up locally with a friend against 2 online players - this would truly have been the icing on the cake. Artifacts earned in the singleplayer campaign carry over to the multiplayer, along with a persistent character level online allowing you to individually level up your favorite heroes by battling other players. Fighting against real life opponents is a whole different experience to the AI, generally human players are much smarter and you'll end up getting into some truly epic strategic matches which can last over half an hour!
Overall Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes offers a fantastic and unique blend of real time strategy and puzzle gameplay elements to create an easy to jump into but tough to master combat system. Combine that with some RPG-lite elements and you've got an insanely addictive experience. The battles offer a genuine amount of skill and depth which create some brilliantly intense battles against both humans and AI opponents alike. The campaign will take you roughly 20 hours at least, and offers tons of secret units, artifacts and side quests to discover. Although it would have been nice to see some local same console online multiplayer, it's hard to fault such a complete package - for 1200msp/£11.99 your getting a ton of value for your money. Fans of other titles in the genre such as Puzzle Quest should look no further for their next fix. Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes is a must have for all gamers!
Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes Gets An Official Game-Pad: 9.2/10