Heroes of Might and Magic III is easily one of the greatest turn-based strategy games ever made. It can be punishing and completely engrossing, the kind of game where "just one more try" turns into an all-night session that ends only when your alarm goes off. Released in 1999, it predates many modern gamers. A 2015 HD re-release introduced the game to a new audience, but it omitted both expansions and is generally considered inferior to the original.

For Gamescom 2026, Ubisoft re-released Heroes of Might and Magic III Complete on Steam and announced Heroes of Might and Magic III Remake. The remake preserves the core of what made the original so special while bringing it into the modern era with updated visuals and quality-of-life improvements. I played an early build, and it immediately felt like the Heroes of Might and Magic III that I remember, just with a fresh coat of paint.

Built in the Snowdrop engine, Remake includes the original game and both expansions. Ubisoft wouldn't confirm whether it will support the massive fan expansion Horn of the Abyss, but the company said it is in contact with the mod's development team. Interestingly, Horn of the Abyss also arrived on Steam shortly after Ubisoft's re-release, so we'll see where that relationship leads.

Visually, Remake looks like what Heroes of Might and Magic III might have looked like if it had been designed today. The updated graphics retain the visual DNA of New World Computing's classic, so the new look doesn't feel out of place. That's particularly important for the game's enormous library of community-created maps, which Remake will support. More than 25 years of custom maps can be imported and played in the new engine with updated graphics, giving players a huge amount of content from day one.

Remake will also launch with a map editor and campaign editor, along with Mod.io integration to make user-created content easier to find and play.

The demo included an early campaign mission that doubled as a tutorial in addition to a stand-alone map scenario. The campaign made me feel like I'd somehow become an expert. The stand-alone scenario quickly reminded me that I hadn't played Heroes of Might and Magic III in far too long, and it proceeded to kick my ass.

That's the appeal of the series. Success requires balancing exploration, combat, and town management, and none of those systems exists in isolation. You need to explore enough to gather resources and expand your territory, while making sure your armies are strong enough to survive and your towns are adequately defended.

Exploration uses a stamina system tied to the passage of days. You can field multiple heroes, each with their own army, but spreading your forces too thin leaves them vulnerable. Keep everyone together, meanwhile, and you risk falling behind on exploration and expansion. Town management presents a similar balancing act in that you need to recruit troops for your heroes while maintaining enough of a garrison to protect your towns. One useful quality-of-life addition in Remake lets you queue town upgrades in advance, reducing the amount of micromanagement when you're busy elsewhere.

Combat is where those strategic decisions come together. Armies consist of stacks of units, with each stack taking its own turn. Combining units into a single stack makes it stronger, while splitting them across multiple stacks gives you more turns at the cost of individual strength. Battles take place on a hex grid, and Remake clearly displays each unit's movement and attack range, including those of enemy units.

Charging straight ahead is rarely the best approach, even with a powerful army. Winning while minimizing casualties means understanding your opponent and positioning your forces carefully, often forcing the enemy to come to you. Like chess, the ability to think several moves ahead can make the difference between victory and disaster.

Unfortunately, the demo was single-player only, so I couldn't test multiplayer. Remake will support both hotseat and online multiplayer for up to eight players, giving the game's famously competitive battles plenty of room to breathe.

I also didn't get to see how the game handles controllers on consoles. Heroes of Might and Magic III was built around mouse and keyboard, which is how I played the demo, so adapting its many systems to a standard controller could be a significant change. That's something I'll be particularly interested to try when the game is closer to release.

For now, though, Heroes of Might and Magic III Remake looks like a promising way to bring one of the genre's enduring classics to a new generation without losing what made it special in the first place. The combination of the original game, both expansions, decades of community maps, new editing tools, multiplayer, and thoughtful quality-of-life improvements gives it plenty of potential. After getting a taste of the remake, I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops and losing far too many hours to "just one more turn" when it finally arrives.