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Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes

If you’ve ever wondered what a “Puzzle RPG” might look like, you should play Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes, a successful blend of tactical puzzling with light RPG elements that perfectly fits on Nintendo’s mobile DS platform. Toronto-based indie developer Capybara Games, before Clash of Heroes known for their addictive mobile puzzle games, somehow managed to seize Ubisoft’s Might & Magic license to produce a highly original take on the increasingly crowded and perhaps stale handheld puzzle genre. A few years later its gameplay was rebalanced and ported to the PC, but here I’ll focus on the original DS version instead (and a Definitive Edition is coming soon for both PC and Switch!).

The essence of Clash of Heroes boils down to tactically piling up units to wear down and eventually deplete your enemy’s HP. This can be done either by stacking them horizontally, which will transform into a wall if matched three or more, or vertically, which will form a chain and start charging up to attack. Basic units take up just one space and are ready to attack after two to three turns, but don’t do a lot of damage. You’re better off linking attacks by chaining multiple attacks of the same type at the same time, or by fusing attacking units by stacking chains. Does this sound like Yoshi’s Cookie, Meteos, and countless of other handheld puzzlers? Because it does to me.

On the battlefield. Units with raised swords and a number next to them are charging up and will attack after that number of turns.

Except that Clash of Heroes somehow manages to feel very fresh: it’s completely turn-based so there’s no pressure of falling blocks (Tetris-like) or a timer that can run out (Bejeweled-like). You can take your time thinking and planning ahead—and you should—but every turn is limited to three moves (with the exception of special items which provide various benefits). Should you fortify your defenses? The enemy has a knight lined up and ready to go within three turns, but if we take that hit instead and focus on the right to pigeon-hole an attack there, we might get another attack in. If you’re lucky, you can create an L-shaped chain which is both a wall and an attacking chain.

Each unit comes in one of three colors, and colors have to be matched in order to form a chain. Then there’s elite units that take up two slots and require two units of the same color to be charged up, such as the knight and the lich in the above screenshot. These are your primary damage dealers: they’re much more potent and can also act as great blockers, but they’re trickier to activate, take longer to charge up, and appear less often on the battlefield. Even rarer are the true champions which take up four blocks of space, such as griffins, angels, death knights, and so forth. To activate those, you’ll need four same-colored units (2x2), and a lot of patience. If you do manage to get one of these babies activated—and defended for a while—they’re very likely to completely turn the tide of the battle. However, if the enemy manages to attack them before they’re charging, they’re sitting ducks, and they’ll be lost forever.

There’s no way to undo a stupid mistake, and wrong moves will punish you, but lost units can reappear by calling reinforcements at the cost of another move. The less units still standing on the battlefield, the more fresh meat will join the fray. And herein lies the biggest problem of Clash of Heroes: you don’t start with a clean slate, and reinforcements appear in a (semi-)random fashion. That means retrying a particular difficult boss fight can suddenly become a cakewalk if the right units appear at the right places: a blue spearman behind a blue knight means only one move to charge it, or even better, two or three promising units behind a griffin makes it easy to activate the time bomb that otherwise would not appear at all—or worse, with the completely wrong combination.

An introduction to the boss fight in story mode (left), and on the battlefield (right). These fights are unique and challenging!

In Clash of Heroes’ campaign mode, you roam around the world chasing a rather simplistic plot and gathering resources to spend at special shops, which can either restock your lost elite units or sell a trinket that for example might increase damage of deers by 25% . Movement is done in a grid-like fashion and its resource collecting and movement flair very faintly smells like Heroes of Might & Magic of yore. Yet I feel that Capybara—or perhaps, Ubisoft—did not put in enough effort to try and hit a home run with the Might & Magic franchise. This could just as well have been [insert generic fantasy realm here]. Sure, there are angels and demons, but in which fantasy world aren’t there any? The story feels weak and the Might & Magic subtitle feels slapped on, perhaps simply to boost sales?

But that’s not what we’re here for: it’s the challenging turn-based tactical battles that truly shine. Five different factions, each with their own unique regular, elite, and champion units, are gradually introduced as the story mode progresses, but a quick battle—either singleplayer against the AI or multiplayer using Download Play—is a great way to flex your brain muscles and kill a few minutes of time. Just be prepared to curse the randomness now and then and restart a battle. Speaking of cursing, I found the campaign mode to be particularly difficult and never managed to finish it. The boss battles can be brutal and pose more of a unique puzzle challenge that are hard to brute force. Perhaps the later PC version better balanced out these issues. It bummed me out as the optional quests in campaign mode also provide interesting alternative puzzle approaches (defeat the enemy with x moves or less, form a chain with x moves or less, …).

Left: I'm about to buy 5 Angel Champion units. Right: Victory! Units level up until lvl5.

The “RPG” part of the “Puzzle RPG” is limited to gathering three resources used to buy units and leveling up your hero (max HP & army members) and units (max attack). The story itself provides zero role-playing opportunities, although to be fair Capybara tried to spice things up with anime-like cut-scenes that are mildly entertaining. I would have liked to see an option to just unlock everything and treat this as a pure puzzler.

Even though there are ways to please the RNG gods in Clash of Heroes—for example, by buying a lot of knights, they appear more often than your other elite unit—randomness stays a big factor. Balance issues night further increase frustration; such as the relative uselessness of normal units and the overpowered champions that, once charged, are almost guaranteed wins. Still, if you can look besides these issues and treat it as a tactical “play with your cards right” game, I found Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes to be a remarkable game that stands out in an overabundance of mediocre Nintendo DS puzzle games, despite the absence of rich Might & Magic lore.

Bio and Support

I'm Jefklak , a high-level Retro Gamer, and I love the sight of experience points on old and forgotten hardware. I sometimes convince others to join in on the nostalgic grind. Read more about The Codex here.

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Having not played either the original or the HD remaster, I obviously can't speak to whether Dotemu have made any substantial changes to the balancing of the AI in Clash Of Heroes here. But man alive, I'd almost argue that this is the game that should have been called Grindstone, because eking out a victory in these 15-20 minute battles is sometimes like pulling actual teeth - and it will repeatedly whomp you into next week if you don't keep pace with its story missions by completing various side scuffles and bounty contracts - all of which are just as difficult and challenging as its critical path.

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gracie corner costume