The game is being advertised as a return to form prequal to HOMM franchise. Assumingly before the first one.
From the steam description: "Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era is the official prequel hailing back to the origins of the genre-defining, critically acclaimed series of turn-based strategy games"
In addition to being a cheap looking homm3 clone there are some red flags.
This is the tier 6 unit upgrade of the humans, please note that the knight was downgraded to tier 5:
https://mightandmagic.fandom.com/wiki/Mother_superior
This is the unit that replaced the monk: https://mightandmagic.fandom.com/wiki/Lightweaver
The elves have been changed to being green skinned because no white skinned creatures are allowed.
From the unit description humans are insane religious zelots so I assume that they're going to be the bad guys all along in the campaign.
Also the game looks like a cheap mobile copy of homm3. Every item I found early needs to be quirky humor. It has almost no real innovation and homm2 is more appealing visual then this game.
And if anyone missed them the first time, the first few King's Bounty games after some Russians bought the IP from the original did a pretty decent off-shoot of the HoMM style too.
Maybe the later ones are decent too, I kind of fell off on them because the sequels all started to get a bit samey. Don't remember any woke pandering, although the humor is very eastern European (aka weird sometimes).
Crossworld's was probably the pinnacle of the series and it's just a couple of bucks fairly often, including right now.
It seems I already own it. My playlist is way too long.
Haha, I hear you brother. If they keep sucking the life out of games maybe one day I'll even clear it. Been playing Max Payne 3 for the first time this week, scotch in hand for the authentic experience. That one has been gathering dust in the library for many years.
Using cheat engine's built in "speed hack" which just multiplies the entire game speed, has been a godsend for clearing out the old turn based ones with needlessly slow animations. I bet I could easily turn a 20 hour play through of xcom into a 8 hour one with it.