Posted September 05, 2009
I've only been fortunate enough to have a decent gaming PC in the past five or so years. My family, while not poor, weren't flush with cash. Spending money on things like computers, while fun, was also frivolous. So we were stuck with a couple of relics, the two candidates being a Cyrix CPU and an old 486DX/100 that had a Turbo button on the front.
I was the younger brother, and definitely the weaker one, so most of the time I got stuck with the DX/100. Luckily, it got upgraded to a P133 so I was able to play a slightly larger range of games than the old DOS ones I’d been enjoying – honest – for most of my youth.
But once I’d been “upgraded”, I only really played two extra games. One of those was Starcraft, and the other was Heroes of Might and Magic 3.
Even to this day, I still haven’t found anything wrong with the whole package or the original game. Back when it was released, Heroes 3 represented a marked improvement over its predecessor with a massive graphical upheaval. Not all fans were pleased about this: with Heroes being a primarily fantasy game, a lot missed the more varied environments and colours that inhabited Restoration of Erathia and the expansions that followed.
But the addition of adding more menacing details to the dragons and an expanded colour palette were soon ignored for the improvements 3DO reigned in. With the increased resolution, heroes were now able to expand their armies to include seven stacks instead of the previous five. This meant you no longer had to pick an army to leave at home, a chief source of frustration for many who enjoyed taking all their troops and going on a crusade across Erathia.
Structural changes were also made en-masse across the battlefield, with flying units losing the ability to fly across the field in one turn. The introduction of more spells and schools of magic, coupled with the balancing out of the units across each town, added more depth to what was essentially one half of the game.
The HoMM series was, and always will be, a primarily single-player game and while HoMM3 shipped with its customary set of entertaining campaigns, the story was never really prominent: Jon Van Caneghem, designer of the series, knew that the main selling point of Heroes was its addictiveness and thus resolved to make sure the player was never bogged down in dialogue and meaningless back-story. You’ll get smidgens of information every now and again; just enough to keep you playing, but not quite enough to bore you to death.
As a package, Heroes 3 Complete is a perfect addition to your gaming collection. The expansions that followed – Armageddon’s Blade and Shadow of Death – didn’t offer quite the same value as the original. The series suffered from some balance issues as well, with the Fortress town being considered widely useless for its slow 7th level unit and pitifully weak 2nd level shooter.
But on the whole, most of these issues have been ironed out. Shadow of Death brought deeper, more involving campaigns as well as critical balance changes. Armageddon’s Blade introduced the Conflux town (a slight disappointment from the futuristic race that 3DO had originally planned, which included one unit wielding a chainsaw) and the random map generator, all of which were essential improvements to the thoroughly addictive Heroes ensemble.
I haven’t even touched on one of the best things about the HoMM series in general – the sound. Apart from the music being top-notch and perfectly in tune with the fantasy theme, the little sounds that trigger when you go past a fountain or hop onto a boat are a beautiful touch for a game that has aged as well as anything else in its time.
If I were to name my top five favourite games of my short, twenty-two year old life, Heroes of Might and Magic 3 instantly tops the list. It might not be the best game of the lot – I know turn-based strategy isn’t for everyone or every mood – but it’s still my irrevocable favourite. I’ve never looked back on Heroes and disliked the time I spent playing this game. At $US 9.99, you won’t either.
I was the younger brother, and definitely the weaker one, so most of the time I got stuck with the DX/100. Luckily, it got upgraded to a P133 so I was able to play a slightly larger range of games than the old DOS ones I’d been enjoying – honest – for most of my youth.
But once I’d been “upgraded”, I only really played two extra games. One of those was Starcraft, and the other was Heroes of Might and Magic 3.
Even to this day, I still haven’t found anything wrong with the whole package or the original game. Back when it was released, Heroes 3 represented a marked improvement over its predecessor with a massive graphical upheaval. Not all fans were pleased about this: with Heroes being a primarily fantasy game, a lot missed the more varied environments and colours that inhabited Restoration of Erathia and the expansions that followed.
But the addition of adding more menacing details to the dragons and an expanded colour palette were soon ignored for the improvements 3DO reigned in. With the increased resolution, heroes were now able to expand their armies to include seven stacks instead of the previous five. This meant you no longer had to pick an army to leave at home, a chief source of frustration for many who enjoyed taking all their troops and going on a crusade across Erathia.
Structural changes were also made en-masse across the battlefield, with flying units losing the ability to fly across the field in one turn. The introduction of more spells and schools of magic, coupled with the balancing out of the units across each town, added more depth to what was essentially one half of the game.
The HoMM series was, and always will be, a primarily single-player game and while HoMM3 shipped with its customary set of entertaining campaigns, the story was never really prominent: Jon Van Caneghem, designer of the series, knew that the main selling point of Heroes was its addictiveness and thus resolved to make sure the player was never bogged down in dialogue and meaningless back-story. You’ll get smidgens of information every now and again; just enough to keep you playing, but not quite enough to bore you to death.
As a package, Heroes 3 Complete is a perfect addition to your gaming collection. The expansions that followed – Armageddon’s Blade and Shadow of Death – didn’t offer quite the same value as the original. The series suffered from some balance issues as well, with the Fortress town being considered widely useless for its slow 7th level unit and pitifully weak 2nd level shooter.
But on the whole, most of these issues have been ironed out. Shadow of Death brought deeper, more involving campaigns as well as critical balance changes. Armageddon’s Blade introduced the Conflux town (a slight disappointment from the futuristic race that 3DO had originally planned, which included one unit wielding a chainsaw) and the random map generator, all of which were essential improvements to the thoroughly addictive Heroes ensemble.
I haven’t even touched on one of the best things about the HoMM series in general – the sound. Apart from the music being top-notch and perfectly in tune with the fantasy theme, the little sounds that trigger when you go past a fountain or hop onto a boat are a beautiful touch for a game that has aged as well as anything else in its time.
If I were to name my top five favourite games of my short, twenty-two year old life, Heroes of Might and Magic 3 instantly tops the list. It might not be the best game of the lot – I know turn-based strategy isn’t for everyone or every mood – but it’s still my irrevocable favourite. I’ve never looked back on Heroes and disliked the time I spent playing this game. At $US 9.99, you won’t either.
