Heroes of Might and Magic® 4: Complete

I personally liked everything about the game; the storylines, the absolutely wonderful soundtrack, the gorgeous 2D graphics, the kitchen-sink fantasy atmosphere, all those small texts popping up at every corner, telling little stories. And the quite addictive gameplay

-Contains one of the most well written stories in the series. -Heroes can move on their own without any troops -Contains a variety of skills that, when combined, can augment your hero (eg Combat + Tactics = General, +1 morale to all creatures) -No creature upgrades eliminate needs for heroes to return to castle just to get an upgrade on existing units -Creatures can have choice of attack/movement/spells (eg Harpies can be ordered to just "attack" instead of "attack & return", Water elementals can cast spells such as Ice Bolt) -3DO's last involvement with the HoMM series Overall a very satisfying experience, game is highly recommended to all HoMM series lovers. I completed the whole campaign 10+ years ago and this time am looking to redo all of it by purchasing this complete series.

I will skip game advantages, and focus on shortcomings / unpopular design decisions. Top unpopular design decision is battlefield and how movement is handled, so it's basically impossible to perfectly control it. Also with some game knowledge heroes can fairly easily get extremely powerful so army tends to be less important than in previous titles. One of biggest shortcomings for singleplayer is fairly dumb AI - it can be challenging on properly designed map, or when you try to give AI better vision via extra objects near AI, tune AI priorites of some objects in map editor etc. General shortcoming for both singleplayer and multiplayer is no random map generator and no legacy modding scene so there is no advanced "HD mod" for H4 like it was done for H3. That means lack of QoL fixes and multiplayer extra features like simultaneous turns. One upside is that very recently (miracle happened wow) H4 got some modding attention, and patch to Albyx mod just got released. I did not try it yet but it apparently drastically improves AI. And it's possible to run that AI overhaul without rest of mod content if somebody doesn't like custom balance fixes etc.

This game is personally my favourite of the series, although I get the complaints about it's balance problems. Heroes actively participating in combat is one of the things it does right when it comes to gameplay, but the economy system and some of the factions are just outright better than others. The music and story are top-notch in the basegame.

excellent game with crispy graphics and great emphasis on heroes development and participation in combat . Unfortunately some people can not play in it due to their dedication to HoMM3 . they play HoMM4 but inside they still play HoMM3 . Perhaps HoMM3 has more factions to offer but it is still not as good as HoMM4 . Recruiting system is much better then in HoMM3 you can get all troops recruited in 3 clicks: C-B-done , while HoMM 3 requires 22 clicks to recruit all 7 types of troops . Anyway it is my opinion .