Dotemu seemingly has great taste in older games. This is shown through its interest in titles like Windjammers and Streets of Rage. Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes is similarly great! And similarly underappreciated, too. The game flew under the radar with its initial Nintendo DS release, too late in the year to get a lot of media attention. The “HD” versions on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC found a bit more love, but there are still many out there who would love what Clash of Heroes offers and just haven’t discovered it.

Ubisoft, conversely, has rarely made a good choice with the Might & Magic franchise since acquiring it from the wreckage of previous publisher 3DO two decades ago. Clash of Heroes is, inarguably, its best one. In the game, you play through a “campaign,” which is largely a mostly-linear series of puzzle battles. It was clearly designed with the DS in mind, with each faction on its own screen aligning groups of the same color unit and launching them at opposing defenses. That said, the gameplay holds up just fine on other platforms.

There’s certainly a degree to which Clash of Heroes’ gameplay fits in better with the Puzzle Quest era in which it was created than it does today. It’s a victim of its own critical success, in a lot of ways! Its ideas have been much more thoroughly explored now by projects big and small. That said, it also means the wider games community is more ready for what it has to offer. It’s a think-y, turn-based game, which makes sense with the Might & Magic world.

The new portraits for Definitive Edition are 10% more anime and 30% less in harmony with the game’s visual style. And we’re not sure why they exist? If there’s a behind-the-scenes reason for the new character portraits, we’d love to hear it. As it stands? It seems like a wasted effort. There wasn't a glaring issue with the previous portraits, and the new treatments change some of the characterization of the game's protagonists. In particular, Aidan and Anwen feel decidedly less... themselves.

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Much of the messaging surrounding Definitive Edition’s release focuses on its rebalanced approach to multiplayer. This aligns with Dotemu’s similar approach to Windjammers, attempting to take a game with a cult competitive following and build a more robust community around it. In the pre-release period, our ability to test this part were limited. Still, players have had a long time to point out what needed fixing. Definitive Edition also packs in local co-op play. We loved that feature in the PlayStation 3 port, and it wasn’t available in most releases.

Returning to the game over a decade later, we had fun! But we could clearly see some of the game’s rough edges. Most notably? The campaign’s final chapter really phones it in. It pre-levels protagonist Nadia, throws units at you in batches and has nearly every battle take place on the spiral staircase of a tower. This was... fine, as a smart allocation of development resources for a small Nintendo DS project. But two remakes in? The game could really use a bit more time to learn and enjoy the Academy faction.

While Definitive Edition definitely feels a bit redundant on PC, its PS4 and Switch iterations bring the game to new platforms. (Is the Xbox’s backward compatibility part of the reason it isn’t launching on Series X? It’s possible.) It’s nice to see the game back on a Nintendo platform. Clash of Heroes is the sort of game that fits nicely with contemplative handheld play! We’d say the same for Steam Deck, but we know from experience that the original release worked on it just fine.

So if this is step one, with step two being using this work and availability to build a full sequel? That’s great! And we've seen Dotemu take that exact path before, so there's reason to hope. But by itself, it’s a peculiar project and doesn’t offer much new for fans of the old games to play. We’d have loved to see a new element, like a remixed campaign, to entice fans to make a return trip.

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Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes: Definitive Edition launches July 20, 2023 on the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PC. While Capybara Games developed the original game for original publisher Ubisoft, Dotemu handled both sets of duties for this new edition.

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