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I have heard some really bad things about HoMM 6 and 7 and am wondering if they are worth getting. I know publishers buy good series to make money off of the name people have grown to love and trust by spending a pittance on development, making a poor game and slapping the name on it in order to scam players. It definitely looks like 7 falls under that category. what about 6? Right now I have HoMM 1, 2, and 3. Of all of the HoMM games, which ones are worth playing.
I am strong supporter of Heroes ever since my first sighting of 2. 3 is a superb upgrade from 2. 4 is....different (not an upgrade from 3, but still good). 5 is also superb (IMHO). 6 needs permanent online to access some of it's items, more of a piracy protection really, but it was panned by the critics. When I had a good long look at a friends version I saw why. It was the first one I didn't buy. 7 is more of 6.

Of course "what is best" is a personal opinion, but for me, 3 and 5 are best with 4 a close second.

I only tend to use the campaigns for a tutorial, and prefer the skirmish or single maps. There are literally hundreds at Celestial Heavens and Maps4Heroes, pick some that suit your preferred style.

There have recently been sales of H1 - 5 packs here for less than £10 so if you wait a bit I am sure it will happen again.

Heroes 6 and 7 aren't available here at GoG. Just as well.
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trademark.895: I have heard some really bad things about HoMM 6 and 7 and am wondering if they are worth getting. I know publishers buy good series to make money off of the name people have grown to love and trust by spending a pittance on development, making a poor game and slapping the name on it in order to scam players. It definitely looks like 7 falls under that category. what about 6? Right now I have HoMM 1, 2, and 3. Of all of the HoMM games, which ones are worth playing.
I'd say HoMM4 and 5 are both worth picking up, but different people have different opinions. As already stated, 4 is a different animal from the others, while 5 most closely resembles 3.
I played Heroes 2, 3, 4, 5, Kings Bounty and had a look at HoMM 6.

I would say Heroes 3 is the best in the series gameplay wise and for maps/random maps against humans or bots.
You won't make a mistake buying the fourth title because in my opinion it contains the best campaigns and stories of all the titles I personally played. Heroes V story isn't that bad but i disliked the gameplay. Everything after V losses the flair of the HoMM series.
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Drullo321: You won't make a mistake buying the fourth title because in my opinion it contains the best campaigns and stories of all the titles I personally played.
HoMM4 has an extremely unbalanced Combat skill. It especially manifests itself in campaigns with hero carryover. Possibly doesn't stand out as much in single maps.

Still worth getting though.
I liked homm4 but I played it with a lot of micromanagement because armies can move without heroes and I was splitting the army all the time to travel faster and used creatures as scouts

And it's true that the hero is very powerful, you can kill 5 black dragons with one attack after you level up enough. The disadvantage is that the hero has very few hit points so if the opponent casts a lightning bolt, it's reload time
Post edited January 09, 2018 by Zadalon
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Zadalon: And it's true that the hero is very powerful, you can kill 5 black dragons with one attack after you level up enough. The disadvantage is that the hero has very few hit points so if the opponent casts a lightning bolt, it's reload time
Potions of immortality. After a week or so, any important hero should never leave home without half a dozen.

Edit: The combat skill also leads to getting innate Magic Immunity on the hero.
Post edited January 09, 2018 by Bookwyrm627
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Zadalon: And it's true that the hero is very powerful, you can kill 5 black dragons with one attack after you level up enough. The disadvantage is that the hero has very few hit points so if the opponent casts a lightning bolt, it's reload time
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Bookwyrm627: Potions of immortality. After a week or so, any important hero should never leave home without half a dozen.

Edit: The combat skill also leads to getting innate Magic Immunity on the hero.
Ok, I buy potions of immortality but they change the way one plays, I try to avoid having my hero killed in combat, lightning bolts are something I can't do anything about obviously. If one has potions, he falls into the trap of playing more carelessly and less strategically because even if hero dies, he can resurrect. If you have the risk of reloading, I think you play better.

And I always hated magic resistance in the homm games. It is annoying when enemies have it, so I see it as fair play to never get it as a skill:)
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Bookwyrm627: Potions of immortality. After a week or so, any important hero should never leave home without half a dozen.

Edit: The combat skill also leads to getting innate Magic Immunity on the hero.
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Zadalon: Ok, I buy potions of immortality but they change the way one plays, I try to avoid having my hero killed in combat, lightning bolts are something I can't do anything about obviously. If one has potions, he falls into the trap of playing more carelessly and less strategically because even if hero dies, he can resurrect. If you have the risk of reloading, I think you play better.

And I always hated magic resistance in the homm games. It is annoying when enemies have it, so I see it as fair play to never get it as a skill:)
Fair enough. I see the potions as an option available to literally everyone with access to any town's item shop; they are a bit too pricey for the first week or so, but I'll use one on every important hero after that precisely to prevent certain kinds of reloads and try to give each hero a spare.

They do enable charging into certain fights that would otherwise be unwinnable, if you have the spare money to burn on them.

Magic Resistance is one of those skills that makes certain creatures really annoying, and it is another of those skills that keeps a hero alive. There are too many lethal effects out there for me to NOT take it.
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trademark.895: I have heard some really bad things about HoMM 6 and 7 and am wondering if they are worth getting. I know publishers buy good series to make money off of the name people have grown to love and trust by spending a pittance on development, making a poor game and slapping the name on it in order to scam players. It definitely looks like 7 falls under that category. what about 6? Right now I have HoMM 1, 2, and 3. Of all of the HoMM games, which ones are worth playing.
Heroes 2 and Heroes 3 are pretty close but I would say H3 is best with H2 being a close runner up. Heroes 4 is okay but you really need the Equilibrious mod for it to be playable/enjoyable. I still got tired of it half way through the campaign. Heroes 5: Tribes of the East was a lot better than standard H5 (I am an orc fan) but the game still does not compel me to play it for long. The rest of the Heroes games are not worth bothering with IMO.


Heroes 2 - The strengths of this one are the charming, colorful graphics, the unmatched musical score and little details like Trolls being the barbarian town's heavy missile unit (Heroes 3 replaced trolls with cyclops which does not make sense to me), necromancers having mummies instead of 'Black Knights' and all towns able to have level 5 mage guilds.
Weaknesses are that there is no ability to order units to 'wait' (they must move/attack when their turn comes or skip their entire action that turn) and heroes are limited to just 5 stacks of creatures (H3 has 7). No mods like HotA and HD+ and only 6 hero classes to choose from.


Heroes 3 - The strengths of this one are many. Each town/faction has both one 'Might' and one 'Magic' hero class so Necropolis for example have Death Knights and Necromancers, Rampart have Rangers and Druids, etc. for 10 different towns (11 with the HotA expansion). Each creature for each town (of which there are 7 from level 1 creatures such as goblins or skeletons to level 7 creatures such as behemoths and Red dragons) has an upgraded version so if you build the relevant structures Goblins can be upgraded to Hobgoblins, Bone dragons to Ghost dragons etc.

Also having separate magic skills for each of the four schools (Earth magic, Air magic etc.) makes spells cast in those schools much more effective. A slow spell cast by someone with no earth magic skill will temporarily slow an enemy unit to like half speed but cast by an Earth magic expert results in ALL enemies being slowed. Of course there are some issues with this as it makes it almost free of cost to slow down entire armies or hasten your own. And Earth magic (which nonsensically is the only realm for the uber-powerful Town portal spell) is easily the one skill every character must get with air magic being second with it's Dimension door and haste spells while fire magic and water magic are not necessary at all.

Other cosmetic weaknesses are things like cyclops in the Barbarian town, sprites in the OP Conflux, Gold dragons in the Rampart town (a nature- based town. Why would they have Gold dragons which would burn down their forests?!), and more