I have now discovered that version 3.1 of HOMM V, which is the only version that GOG offers, has a game-breaking problem in the very last mission of the final campaign, A Flamboyant Exit.

At one point, the game automatically switches your Hero from Zehir to Kujin, and then automatically starts the fight with Kujin's army units, and also the enemy units which she fights, being predetermined, and the player can do absolutely nothing to change the numbers so that victory becomes reasonably possible.

And, the devs clearly didn't balance this at all, as the enemy army is vastly, vastly, vastly overpowered. And not only that, but the enemy is an Inferno army, with every type of unit, and most of them have between 1,000 - 1,500 troops, and most of the units use the Gating ability on top of that in order to almost double their initial numbers.

Before I made this thread, I searched around the internet, and I found many other people complaining about this ludicrously unbalanced - and therefore game-breaking - problem.

Some of the advice on the internet is outright wrong. Like, one poster on Reddit said some nonsense like "the Kujin battle should be easy if you fought with her a lot," which to be frank, that statement is total BS.

Other advice says quickly to click on Kujin once the game automatically switches to her, and during the few seconds when she appears, but before she rushes towards the Inferno town, you can keep clicking in order to stop her from moving, and thus stop the battle from starting, and then you can have Gotai (the hero who is next to her in this scene) give his 900 Cyclops to her, with which she can then go on to win this (otherwise impossible) battle easily.

And I've also seen some people saying that by stopping Kujin, then afterwards you can simply use Gotai himself for this same battle, and use his 900 Cyclops without giving them to Kujin.

But I have read mixed commentary on the internet as to whether or not using Gotai for this battle breaks the game and makes progress after this battle become impossible. Some people say yes, and others say it's fine to use Gotai for this battle, and you can still progress through the game if you do.

But --- it's no longer possible to stop Kujin from moving with the version 3.1 of the game which GOG offers, even though it used to be possible in previous versions; but with 3.1 (or maybe earlier patches too?) the devs patched out the ability to stop her.

Except the devs somehow forgot simultaneously to patch the game so that this fight is even somewhat reasonably balanced, rather than remaining outright impossible like it currently is.

The only other advice on the internet about this problem suggests to scrap the many hours of one's progress, in order to go replay almost the whole Campaign, in order to rebuild Kujin with every skill being exactly ideal for this one particular fight that only comes up many dozens of hours later (if you do everything possible on each map, like I do), and in a totally different mission.

That's asinine advice, and I'm not going to do that. That "solution" is no solution at all.

So I'm making this thread to ask if any HOMM V experts have any real solution to this.

Is there a mod that can make Kujin stoppable again with version 3.1, before she rushes the Inferno town in the final mission of TOTE?

Failing that, can any HOMM V expert tell me exactly the version number when the devs made it become impossible to stop Kujin and to use Gotai's 900 Cyclopses to win the battle? If so, maybe I could try contacting GOG Support to see if they would somehow let me access an earlier version of the game (but maybe they won't).

And I don't know if saved games from version 3.1 would be compatible with earlier version or not, even if GOG did allow that.

This problem is not just a "me" problem, because no doubt many other customers are going to continue to have this exact same problem, for all-time.

In order to prevent that, GOG really should make the official version of this game that they offer be the final version where using Gotai's 900 Cyclopses for this battle is still possible.

Without that, then they are effectively selling a broken game in which completing it is impossible for the majority of players (and having to replay many dozens of hours in order to build every single skill on Kujin in one exact way that forums on the internet say...that doesn't qualify as making this broken game somehow not be broken).

It is possible the game is harder in 3.1 than 3.0, as the patch introduced a lot of AI improvements in battle behavior. But other than that, the campaign missions are untouched I think. So if you are having problems with the numbers, that won't fix that I'm afraid. You also don't mention the difficulty you play on, that is a VERY big factor too.

Here is the change log for 3.1:
https://www.moddb.com/games/heroes-of-might-and-magic-5/downloads/patch-3-1-1

One of the script fixes could easily be responsible for not being able to break the script now. I doubt GOG ever had any other version than 3.1, so if you wanted to use that method (script breaking instead of beating it as intended), then you are probably out of luck. 3.0 was only present in retail release and in the Collector's Editions.

But either way, I finished all the Campaigns in 3.1 on Heroic and don't remember having any issues in the last mission. Played without a guide of course. If you want to complain about balance, the 2nd Stronghold mission is by far the biggest offender (the 1st mission where you have Kujin). There really are only 2 options. Restart from Stronghold campaign and build Kujin better or admit defeat. Calling a game broken because you can't win a fight is a stretch :P

I just wanna say that I posted a topic about this very issue a few years back, although no solution came up at that time as well after doing a heroic playthrough of the game. It seems that if you don't spec Kujin exactly right then that fight is rather unwinnable. I'll copy paste my update from my previous post:

Eventually I just went ahead and attacked Talonguard with Zehir before the fight with Kujin.
I used Magnetic Golems only and spammed Armageddon. When the enemy creatures started to close in on my golems, I Puppet Mastered once of them and parked him in front of my golems. Since all the creatures are 2x2 other than the Sucubus, no one could've reached my golems while I kept spamming Armageddon.
Zehir's huge mana pool combined with the -50% mana cost artifact made sure I did not run out of mana.

So, not an ideal solution since I still didn't finish the level as was intended, but still this is not a cheat or an exploit like the 900 Cyclops thing I saw while Googling around.

Even En(or more specifically EU-Milti? Is there was en-only or us/eu only patches for TotE? As i remember there was no starting from 2.1 of HoF patch) version as i remember got hotfixed reuploaded 3.1 patch.

Localised versions im sure got more hotfixed patches without number changes as fix for fix. There is russian build i know. Im sure there was language specific fixes (by CDpl?) for PL and CZ versions.

Knowing GOG and modern digital distribution gaming storefronts, they can easily miss EN ones last patches and official DRM-free (literally making own cracks). So some issues possible which not appear on in this case Retail 3.1 TotE.

And yes. Unbalanced finale battle is game breaking issue itself... OP didnt looks like just whiny, have perfect sense.

It's really not that complicated. Should have read the description. See the attached screenshot.

You signed up for a janky, unbalanced and most likely untested experience. Either min-max accordingly or lower the difficulty. Complaining about balancing of the highest difficulty in a 15+ year old game on game specific forums won't change anything. I might as well start complaining how respawning monsters on Nightmare in Doom was an idiotic idea and should be removed.

If your ego doesn't allow dropping the difficulty, adjust, use the knowledge you now have to prepare for the fight and try again. Or complain I guess....

This description have no sense. Each difficulty should be possible. It was tested. It was post-release tested and adjusted.

I am playing on Normal difficulty, and the game is still impossible to beat anyways, given how my Kujin character was built many missions prior to the battle in question, which is several dozens of hours back in terms of real-life gameplay time, in combination with how this particular battle is ludicrously unbalanced to the point that it is, as I've said, impossible to beat unless Kujin had been built in a very specific way just for that one battle, which would needed to have been done all those many dozens of hours back.

As for the statement: "Calling a game broken because you can't win a fight is a stretch :P"

...it's not a stretch if I "can't win the fight" because it is literally impossible to win it with the skills I have on Kujin, with which it is indeed impossible (not to mention the fact that the game arbitrarily takes away many of the skills which I put on my Kujin, including all of the best ballista skills, yet they provide no ballista for her in the impossible-to-beat [unless you happened to have put the one "right" set of skills on her eons prior to the fight] final battle featuring her).

And it's not just me. As I said in the OP, I've researched this issue extensively before I've ever made the OP of this thread.

Many other players, all over the internet, have experienced this exact same problem.

And the ones who have a good version of the game (as described in the OP) can bypass the problem, because that used to be possible to do in earlier & better versions of the game, whereas those stuck with the bad version of the game - like me, with GOG's broken 3.1 version, cannot.

The clearly didn't test this at all, unless they tested it only with the Kujin's build being the one specific one that works with this battle.

But nowhere does the game give any warning that if you don't build Kujin in one exact specific way, then you will be unable to finish the game many dozens of hours later, when she reappears with a weak army over which you have no control whatsoever over what, or how many, units are in it, versus an insanely overpowered, impossible-to-beat enemy army.

The idea that players are supposed to have foreknowledge of this, and build Kujin in a way that they have somehow miraculously psychically-divined to be the one and only "right one," for a much-later-coming battle, in a totally different mission, that has nothing at all to do with Kujin's missions, is absolutely ludicrous.

GOG promises that all of their games should be unbroken to the point that they are able to be completed...well, that isn't so with this game, because GOG's version of HOMM V TOTE isn't beatable under reasonable circumstances (having to do-over many dozens of hours of gameplay in order to make a game become beatable is in no way reasonable).

As for the "solution" posted by Albarok: I appreciate you trying to help. Thanks for that post.

Unfortunately, I don't consider that to be a valid "solution" either, though (which isn't your fault at all, Alabarok), because that also would require me to replay the final mission (and maybe earlier missions too) in a specific way, in order to get the specific skills and units on Zehir that you mentioned.

So with that "solution," I'd just be swapping one type of do-over (i.e. Kujin do-over) with another (i.e. Zehir do-over), and I'd still be having to redo vast amounts of gameplay time.

But I wouldn't have to do any of that if GOG made all versions of the game available, and/or patched the game to make the 900 Cyclops swap option become available again.