Heroes of Might and Magic® 3: Complete

RIsky game: Seriously addictive. The wictims ofthen mumble: Just one more turn, and I will finish.

If you read my review to Heroes of Might & Magic (HoMM) 2 Gold, I can make it short: This is basically the same game but even better, while it has more difficult campaigns. The story plays when Catherine Ironfist becomes queen of Erathia and has to fight against the "devils" (or rather Kreegans) to restore peace in Erathia. Well, the gameplay, as said before, is quite the same. Again, one commands heroes that run around with creatures to collect resources, explore the map, fight other creatures, fight other heroes, conquer towns, sometimes defend own town, etc. - much like in HoMM 2. If I remember it correctly, here level limits for heroes were introduced and heroes could be taken across campaign levels. Actually, it was my bad skill in this why I stopped playing HoMM 3 after a while. There's a mission where one has several heroes (four or eight) in the second campaign, and that became too much for me at that time since I was used to do everything with a single hero. Well, the improvements over HoMM 2: There are nine town types now (eight without addons), with even more buildings per town. There are more objects to find on the maps, in render graphics. The ambient sounds are also better. There are more spells, more creatures, more artifacts, more victory conditions, etc. - there are also more maps and campaigns! So the game becomes more complex but not so complicated that one really needs to read the manual. To me, this is still the best of its genre (turn-based-strategy). HoMM 4 and 5 are also good games, but 5 is annoying to always adjust the view so one sees everything, while 4 concentrated more on different aspects, making also a very good game, only slightly worse to me than HoMM 3. There might be much more to write about HoMM 3 but I suggest you just to play it or - if you don't want to buy it directly - test the demo version. Tip: You might also want to install "In The Wake of the Gods", an inofficial freeware addon for HoMM 3 (see the thread in the forum for details).

This is absolute gem of a game. Played for first time over 20 years ago and just recently bought another copy to play over again. The game have got great story, the music is awesome, even the hand drawn 2D graphic looks ok. The Heroes of Might and Magic saga and Might and Magic saga are very much intertwined and the story that runs throught the games is interesting and very well written. The only complain of mine is that 3DO did not follow on their planned story line and didn't add the "evil" mechanised city in Shadow of Death expansion and give us Flux instead. This is probably down to HoMM always being considered high fantasy game rather than fantasy/sci-fi mix as M&M. Anyway, overall game is great and well worth givin it a chance.

Along with all the other great reviews here is another. This game has Quality and Quantity when it comes to Replay ability and Visuals for it's time and now. I've yet to find a game that's as addicting and provides as much content as HoMM 3 does. For current lovers of the series who already know of In The Wake of Gods. I recommend checking out this Fan-Made expansion that's being made called Horn of The Abyss. ;) It's currently only in the Russian Language but, and English Translation is being Made. -- www(DOT)hota(DOT)acidcave(DOT)net Along with that check out VCMI WoG Recreated which is basically going to be WoG with even more content better support. An well you can check it out yourself. ;) - forum(DOT)vcmi(DOT)eu/portal(DOT)php

I won't buy GoG HoMM 3 for the simple reason that I am a lucky owner of one of the original limited edition HoMM Collection box, however if you haven't got your hands on this game I can only recommend you to grab it right now. HoMM 3 is a timeless favorite when it comes to turn based strategy games. To this day no contender has been able to hold its own against this game, including its own successors HoMM 4 to 6. HoMM3 still remains THE masterpiece and you could say it has almost not aged: - the campaigns are lengthy and challenging - the many factions (8) are rather balanced and offer a variety of gameplays that can suit all player preferences (yet Rampart forever !) - the RPG elements (heroes class, talents and artifacts) are well thought and bring a good deal of strategic options (although I can think of 2-3 heroes talents and spells that are clearly better) - maps are well designed and shows a great deal of attention to lots of tiny details - the graphics are lush and still gorgeous so many years later - the soundtrack will send chills down your spine - turn by turn game. RTS will never beat this when it comes to carefully planning and executing your strategy I can't count the number of hours I spent and still spend in this game, and the maybe even greater number of hours I spent switching place if front of the computer and fighting over heated games in hot seat mode back in the time with family.