Heroes of Might and Magic® 3: Complete

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.

The more recent games can up the graphics but they cannot capture the magic of this game. It benefits from having the most factions, all of which are cool in one way or another (including the ones that don't seem very cool at first). I don't know how easy it is to access them now, but back in the day there were hundreds of player made maps for this game. Hell, I even did one myself. A lot of them were bad, but the good ones were very good indeed and, now that the dust has settled over many years, it should be easy to identify the best ones. Seriously, you could probably play this game forever. Every time you say "I'll just finish this map and then play something else" you will find youself starting another map. Note: I dislike the campaigns. I am not saying they are bad, they are just not the draw here. For me, the draw is the random/premade/fan-made maps.

I remember playing this game for the first time like it was yesterday. It's still a pleasant experience, even after all this time, and none of the later installments have managed to capture the charm and "magic" of HOMM 3. I recommend this game to anyone who likes fantasy settings and gaming.