Hero's Hour

As others stated, this game is a lot like HoMM. That's not a bad thing, I love HoMM particularly the older entries, but it's so similar you can't help but compare this game to those classics. The two main differences are in combat and graphics. Hero's Hour has real time combat in which you can drag your units around but they mostly do their own thing. It means there's more happening on the screen which is kind of cool, but it also feels like you have far less control over what's happening. The most immediately obvious difference is in visuals though. Old HoMM games have nice pixel art that still looks good, Hero's hour uses the faux retro 16 bit style that honestly has been done to absolute death and beyond at this point. Some may love this visual style, but to me it makes all games using it basically look the same with no visual identity of their own. So yeah. Give it a try, it's not a bad game by any means, but the game is so similar to classic HoMM and inferior where it differs that personally I'd rather just play more HoMM3.

I really love this game because you can set up to play a short or long game and the pacing itself doesnt drag as much as a HOMM game. Its very fast paced while keeping plenty of strategy even if it has a simple look. I do have one major problem with this game though, when you start a game it does random map generation... sometimes it will generate a map where you will never be able to reach a specific area or enemy due to a glitch in pathing and placement. It doesnt happen very often but its super annoying when it does happen (just ended up playing one match for an hour before realizing i would never be able to finish) Fix that glitch and it would be a solid 5 out of 5

Hero's Hour is a game that very obviously pays tribute to the classic HoMM games (most specifically, HoMM 3), and in many ways tries to have similar gameplay to it - sadly, the underlying mechanics of the game are very much at odds with this. Let's dive straight into the thick of it: difficulty, balance and meta-strategy. The game's balance is absolutely horrid: each 'town' offers a couple "builds" you can focus on, depending on your heroes' skills & army comp and to a lesser extent your build priorities, gear, spells, etc. Some of these options are insanely strong and synergetic, and others are absolutely abysmal even when there seems to be somewhat clear and strong synergies to build off of - Necromancy for example, is by far the worst "build" you can focus on with the Undead faction! On the other hand, building around the 'Bodyguards' skill/mechanic is easily accessible to any town and ridiculously strong, letting you kamikaze heroes into mobs or enemy heroes ad infinitum as they get a free army every time you recover or rehire them - without ever having to hire any troops or spend any resources! This is the case for almost any town I've played so far, which all have two 'classes' of heroes with a unique skill. So skill balance is completely out of whack, what about units? Yeah, it's not much better. While having an amount of variability in unit 'quality' between different factions and different tiers is required for building an interesting roster of units, here the variability is far too high and, due to there being no limit to the different types of units a hero can carry into battle, and no penalty of any sort for mixing and matching, this makes unit balance an utter joke. To top it all off, rushing is the ONLY viable strategy: you cannot enjoy the overworld game if you want to win maps. Forget magic and exploration, just grab what you can, stack ranged troops on a summon build, and rush the next castle - you'll always win once you know how to do it right.

If you liked heroes of might and magic then there is a lot to love here, there are fresh concepts but it is all still familiar, highly recomended :)