Sleeper Hit Alert: Might & Magic - Clash of Heroes

EFR LIVES!

Sorry for not being able to update the blog as much as I'd like - the Christmas season has been pretty hectic and with all the parties and obligations EFR has gone sadly neglected. I'll try to post more often in the next couple of weeks.

Back to the subject of this post - I'd like to call your attention to what was, by far, the sleeper hit of the year for me. No, it's not a PS3 game, although there have been plenty of unheralded classics there as well...

I'm here to tell you about Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes (NDS).

I first heard about this game from Tycho's blog over at Penny Arcade. I often agree with their opinions regarding incoming titles, but at the time I really wasn't in the mood for a strategy game so I glossed over it and gave my PS3 some much needed attention. However, a couple of weeks later, when I was looking for something casual to play I decided to give it a
shot, and...

I CAN'T STOP PLAYING this motherfucking game!

Developed by Capybara (the guys behind Critter Crunch on PSN), CoH can best be described as a puzzle/strategy game with light RPG elements, an unholy combination of Puzzle Quest and Magic: The Gathering. For those of you who understand what either/both of those games are about, that's a dangerously addictive tag team. The art style they chose was unfortunately "American-drawn anime", which usually doesn't lend itself to pleasant visuals, but in this case they did a bang-up job - think "Teen Titans" and you'll have a good idea of what the game looks like.

The game is very inventive with the different mission objectives they give you to do to mix things up, and there are plenty of side quests and the like to keep the obsessive-compulsive SRPG gamer playing for a long time. And when I say a long time, I MEAN a long time, as the average clear time for the campaign mode rests at around 40 hours with all the side quests
completed. All things considered, if you have a DS, giving CoH a shot is almost a goddamn requirement.

(Fair warning: if you're yo-ho-hoing this game [or even if you just want to try it out, to find out if the boxed copy is really worth the cash] know that you'll have to search certain message board forums for the fixed rom, as the standard release has a metric fuckton of AP checks. It's totally worth the effort though.)