With the announcement of Heroes of Might & Magic Olden Era, many of the series’ fans fell back to their favorite game of the series, Heroes of Might & Magic III. That move makes sense given how Olden Era is going to be a prequel game to the original timeline (from I to IV) and how the game’s design appears to take a lot of inspiration from III. But not everyone can abide by the PC version of the game, and hence the want to play it on their mobile devices. After all, this old game should run fine on your phone, right?
Unfortunately, Ubisoft, the owners of the Might & Magic trademark, never made a mobile version of the best game in the series, in spite of remastering the game on HD some time ago. But do not despair as fans of the game developed their own emulator to enable players to play Heroes of Might & Magic III on their mobile devices, and in this article, we’ll also show you how.
Step 1: Get a Copy of the Game’s Files on Your PC
You first need to have a legitimate copy of Heroes of Might & Magic III on your computer, and by that, we mean the original, not the HD remaster created by Ubisoft. The most common way to do this is by purchasing Heroes of Might & Magic III Complete on GOG Galaxy and then installing the game on your PC.
Another way to do this is by using a Disc Drive extension and installing the game through an old CD copy of the game. This method should also work if you have a copy still lying around your house somewhere.
Step 2: Move the Games Files to your Mobile Device
The next step is to get the entire game folder into your mobile device. There are multiple ways to do this, like connecting your phone via Bluetooth or wired connection to your PC and moving the files manually. You can also use cloud storage services like WeTransfer, Dropbox, or Google Drive to host the files online and then download them to your phone.
It doesn’t matter where you save the game files as long as all the files can be found in a single folder. Be sure also to unzip the folder if it were transferred zipped.
Step 3: Download and Install VCMI from the Google Play Store
You will then have to download the VCMI app from the Google Play Store or from GitHub. VCMI is a community-run emulator that uses files from the original Heroes game to simulate it on Android. Among other features, VCMI also comes built in with a mod manager and a couple of quality-of-life improvements that you can easily turn on and off to customize your experience.
Unfortunately, there’s currently no way for users to play Heroes of Might & Magic III on Apple devices as VCMI is not available on the App Store.
Step 4: Run VCMI and Verify Files
Finally, you’ll have to run VCMI on your mobile device and verify the HOMM 3 files saved on your phone. Usually, VCMI should be able to instantly detect the files from your phone, but sometimes you might have to give the app sufficient access to your files or find the game folder from your phone directory manually if the automated process doesn’t work.
Once the game files have been loaded and verified by VCMI, you’d then be able to install mods and change settings through the VCMI launcher before finally opening the game and replaying Heroes of Might & Magic III again on your phone after all these years.
VCMI’s simulation of Heroes of Might & Magic III is superb, complete with a lot of improvements and a responsive, sleek touch screen control scheme. In fact, this might even be the best and most recommended way to revisit Heroes of Might & Magic III, and you already know what we’ll be doing to tide the wait until Olden Era comes out this January.
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