Heroes of Might and Magic® 3: Complete

Heroes of Might and Magic III boasts that "minute to learn, lifetime to master" learning curve only few video games in history do. The gameplay manages to be so simple and approachable while at the same time containing enough depth to keep you entertained for years to come. Learning to build your armies and improve your heroes is simple, but learning to use every monster and spell to their best effect can take years of experience. I picked this game up in 1999 and still play it to this day - trust me, I know. For a game introduced last millenia HoMM 3 has aged extremely well. The beautiful hand drawn sprites still look great to this day, and all the windows and pop-up screens are well polished and easy to use. Also John Romero's music score is among the greatest ever. Only with time will you value how much care and precision was put into every little detail of the game. Click on a hero sailing on a boat and, and a fitting music piece is introduced in the background. Make your way through a desert and another music piece is heard. Small things like this hardly make or break a game, but it all just goes to show how New World Computing set out to make the best game they possibly could, and how handsomely that work paid off. The flaws in Heroes 3 are few and minor. Not all of the eight factions are equally balanced, and a few of the skills are all but useless. Short of these small imperfections, there's little bad to say about the game. I LOVE Civilization and still I would still name HoMM 3 my favourite TBS game hands down any time. More than that, I would name it one of the best PC games ever. Why HoMM 3 isn't a regular visitor in all the greatest video game lists out there is a mystery to me. Really, it is that good!

I would say it is the greates game i have played. (turn Based game) I remember when i started playing Heroes of Might and Magic. So awesome world, it's a masterpiece and if you haven't got it, get it i bet you are going to like it. Great soundtrack, Great story. the best thing with it is the Random Map Generator. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Get it if you want a nice Turn based game, where you can play it some times. You aren't going to get disappointed about this game.

There's so many things about this game that are depressing. Maybe it's the 15-20K hours I've dumped into it in the last 17 years. Maybe it's the understanding that I'll never play a game with this replayability ever again. Ubisoft taking a steaming dump on all the later sequels is certainly a factor. No other game in existence has made me whisper softly to it "you...complete me"

I've installed Heroes 3 on no less than 4 different computers with 3 different OS's over the last 17 years, and with the random map generator, the possible gameplay is never exhausted. When the old desktop I used to play Heroes on bit the dust, I got a Windows 10 machine and I was sorry to see that 3DO's ancient DRM on my physical discs and Windows 10 wouldn't get along. Thus, I purchased the GOG version for 10 bucks and hoped for the best. Setup was painless, except for one quirk. The first time I tried to play a random map, the game wouldn't let me because the map couldn't be written to the hard disk. Fortunately, GOG's forums provided a simple solution (just make a new folder titled random_maps in the HOMM3 folder) and now I can play the game until this new machine wears out!

My version of HOMM3 is still on the old optical media. Yet I felt compelled to tell others contemplating this game on GOG at the current price of £3.59 - to go ahead and buy it. I missed the original title back in 1995, but managed to pickup a demo of HOMM2 in 1996, which quickly turned into a purchase soon after. There was a definitive crossover here that I first witnessed in Master of Magic - a hybrid of turn-based strategy in battle, paired with exploring a larger world map. Along came HOMM3 in 1999 and arguably, it's the best game of the series - certainly the most memorable. The game excelled in being easy to learn, yet very difficult to get the best out of. Complacency was your worst enemy. You could amass what you thought was a potent army - only to get it decimated by the ranged units of the enemy. Your army might have a default Evil slant towards their make-up - for example if you chose the Necropolis faction and the various death-biased units that it commands. This helps in attacking the factions that have an inherent Good alignment such as the Castle faction - but that philosophy cuts both ways. When the Good guys are on the attack, those of the Evil bias can have a tough time indeed. HOMM3 does a great job of making you want to explore, to amass more resources and take on more difficult encounters. Those monsters that destroyed your low level units are soon mere causalities of the map, once your armies get up to spec. The risk versus reward vibe is strong throughout this game, which invariably makes the compulsion to have 'just one more go' really quite addictive. Other aspects of HOMM3 must be mentioned too. This was created when the series was still under the helm of New World Computing - one of the great legacy software houses along with the likes of Looking Glass, that have unfortunately be absorbed into the annals of history. The music is beautiful - that of the Rampart faction is worth listening to, alone. A worthy purchase for any gamer.