Heroes of Might and Magic II: The Succession Wars, developed by New World Computing and released in 1996 for DOS, arrived at a moment when turn-based strategy games were flourishing on the PC platform. Its predecessor, Heroes of Might and Magic (1995), had itself been a spin-off of the King's Bounty lineage, and the sequel refined and expanded nearly every system the original introduced. By 1996, DOS was still the dominant gaming platform even as Windows 95 was beginning to reshape the landscape, and New World Computing delivered a title that felt both polished and ambitious within those technical constraints.
The core gameplay loop places the player in control of one or more Heroes — named adventurers who traverse an overworld map divided into hexagonal-style regions. Each Hero can recruit armies from towns, explore resource deposits, capture mines, and visit magical sites that grant spells or stat bonuses. Combat occurs on a separate tactical grid where stacks of creatures take turns attacking based on their speed attribute. The strategic layer and the tactical layer are tightly interlocked: a Hero's Spell Power determines how many hit points a spell like Fireball damages, while Knowledge governs how many spell points are available. Attack and Defense stats directly modify combat outcomes for every creature stack in the Hero's army.
Towns are central to the experience. Six distinct town types — Knight, Barbarian, Sorceress, Warlock, Wizard, and Necromancer — each offer a unique building tree and creature roster. Constructing the right buildings in the right order is a critical resource-management puzzle, since gold and building materials such as wood, ore, sulfur, crystal, gems, and mercury are all finite and contested. Each town type also has a thematic identity: the Necromancer faction, for instance, can raise fallen enemy units as skeletons after each battle through the Necromancy skill, creating a powerful snowball dynamic if left unchecked.
The campaign structure presents two separate story campaigns — one for Lord Roland and one for his brother Archibald — framed as a war of succession. Each campaign consists of a series of scenarios with specific victory conditions, ranging from defeating all enemy Heroes to capturing a particular town within a time limit. Standalone scenarios and a map editor further extended the game's lifespan considerably. The AI, while not sophisticated by modern standards, provided a reasonable challenge on higher difficulty settings by receiving resource bonuses and starting with stronger forces.
Reception in 1996 was enthusiastic. PC gaming publications praised the depth of the strategic layer, the variety introduced by the six town types, and the significantly improved graphics over the original. The game's hand-painted art style gave creatures and town screens a distinctive storybook quality that resonated with players. An expansion, The Price of Loyalty, released the same year, added new campaigns, artifacts, and towns, demonstrating the commercial momentum the title had generated. Heroes of Might and Magic II became a touchstone for the turn-based strategy genre throughout the late 1990s and helped establish the Heroes series as one of the defining franchises of that era.
