Heroes of Might and Magic II: The Succession Wars

Shared by: MR
On: 2014-04-14 22:59:21
Updated by: InkBlot
On: 2023-04-19 07:06:47
Other contributors: that-ben
Rating: 9.60 Clarus out of 10 (5 votes)
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What is Heroes of Might and Magic II: The Succession Wars?

Heroes of Might and Magic II: The Succession Wars is a turn-based strategy war game taking place in a mythological world filled with fantastic creatures ranging from goblins to dragons, hydras and titans.  The graphics and sounds are rich and the gameplay is smooth, even on mid 90's 68K Macs.  Heroes II is really a masterpiece of a game and it is still very much enjoyable 25 years later.

You can play Heroes of M&M II in your modern web browser now!

See also: The 3rd installment Heroes of Might & Magic III which is probably one of the best games ever made.

In our March ’97 issue (p79), we warned you against Heroes of Might and Magic, not because of the game, but because of the port quality. With the sequel. Heroes of Might and Magic II: The Prince of Loyalty, we can skip right to gameplay, because there’s nothing wrong with this version technically.

The game mechanics haven’t changed much from the original: You still control castles and heroes, and your goal is to take over the other castles and defeat all other heroes on the gameboard. There are six different types of heroes and castles — barbarian, sorceress, wizard, warlock, necromancer, and knight — which control different species of fantastic creatures — goblins, druids, golems, rocs, mummies, and calvary, to name just a few. Casdes provide troops and the funding needed to hire them. To improve both troops and income, a hero needs to claim control of a variety of building materials scattered throughout the countryside. Improving the fortifications requires wood and stone and leads to better defense, whereas mercury, gold, and sulfur allow you to upgrade the mage tower which gives a hero more spells to cast. Opposing heroes vie for control of these resources.

The sequel adds more hero types (necromancer, wizard) and their associated monsters (vampires, halflings). There are more buildings on the playing field, and you can climb a tower to get a glimpse of the surrounding countryside, even of places you can’t physically reach yet. The castles have been upgraded, with more options: You can build a captain’s quarters, turrets and a moat for defense. If a hero isn’t in the castle when it’s attacked, the captain leads the defense. You can also upgrade the creature habitats: cavalry become champions, giants become titans, and liches become power liches.

Battle mechanics are slightly different from the original. Your hero gets a number of spell points, and once he or she runs out, no more spells may be cast. There are also some new batde spells: the “death ripple” is amusing to watch as it ripples along th screen, wounding all living creatures in its path. The death ripple can be countered with a “holy word” spell, which clouds the video and wounds undead creatures, such as vampires and hches. If your hero runs out of points, you can take him or her to a castle to recharge (but not during battle).

Completely new in the sequel are campaign intros which introduce the opposing forces. You can choose to play the good (outcast and honorable) or evil (in power but oppressive) side. We found the campaign scenarios difficult after the first few levels. If you get stuck, play a standard game, and work up to beating the expert levels at the highest difficulty rating, and then go back to the campaigns.

The game is zippy on a standard Power Mac. However, if you’re running on a 68040, turn off ambient animations and computer opponent animation. Our only nit to pick with Heroes II is that we wish that ports would use the standard file dialog for saving and opening games, and that the light source for shadows was in the Mac-standard upper left comer. Still, if you’re a role-playing or strategy fan, you’ll have tons of fun with Heroes of Might and Magic II.

Tafel, Kathy. (October 1997). Heroes of Might and Magic II. MacAddict. (pg. 72).

 


Download Heroes of Might and Magic II: The Succession Wars for Mac

(24.21 MiB / 25.39 MB)
Heroes II, bare bones CD-RIP (game runs fine, but no music) / compressed w/ Stuffit
1758 / 2014-04-14 / 2021-03-15 / 3c0883d8201ea3069e28aa8f69b48f7b3412976e / /
(568.13 MiB / 595.73 MB)
Heroes II, full CD image / Zipped
299 / 2018-09-12 / 2021-03-15 / 4ac1da76827b558b7a3dc60a9afa957139064072 / /
(143.51 MiB / 150.48 MB)
/ DiskCopy image, compressed w/ Stuffit
28 / 2022-12-18 / 032289e6308ce16b3d1633d56854ddbb6427a93d / /


Architecture


68K + PPC (FAT)



System Requirements

From Mac OS 7.1 up to Mac OS 9.2





Compatibility notes

Architecture: 68K + PPC (FAT)

Mac OS 7.x - Mac OS 9.2.2

Note: This game runs in 256 colors mode (8-bits)

 

 


Emulating this? It could probably run under: Basilisk II





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