Heroes of Might and Magic® 3: Complete

You know how Christopher Reeve is the quintessential Superman or how Tom Baker is THE Doctor? That's what you have here in terms of the Heroes of Might and Magic franchise. This is the entry where the formula that the previous 2 entries built up hit its peak, and where later entries tried to emulate, but couldn't quite reach. No, I'm not saying this is a perfect game. But it is the perfect HoMM game. This is the most balanced and versatile of the series. The units are entertaining, the music is never dull, and there is no wasted potential. This is quite simply a masterpiece even after 20+ years (and maybe more when you read this review). And given that this is the complete package with the expansions, you cannot really ask for more bang for the buck.

I first played homm3 around when it first came out. I didn't understand it, was terrible at it. It is mostly unforgiving of bad strategy and wasn't easy to get into even though I really liked the gameplay. Years later, I bought the Complete version of the game here on GOG and eventually played through all the included campaigns. Every couple of years I've gone back to it, but this has been the year where I've really gotten into trying to get better at the game. The reason? The Horn of the Abyss and HD+ mods and watching people stream competitive homm3 gameplay! The game is now easily among my top 3 favorites of all time. While neither mod is necessary to enjoy the game, the HD+ mod alone will reinvigorate gameplay with tons of quality of life updates. It includes menu changes including hot keys to split unit stacks and transfer armies between heroes, artifact swaps and a way to save artifact "costumes", battle speed options, auto-combat that can be replayed or canceled easily, proper graphical scaling for modern resolutions and aspect ratios, and many more useful things. HOTA adds another town faction, a number of tweaks and balances to heroes skills and gameplay and a set of very difficult campaigns as well as being oft-used for online competitive play. Even without these mods, homm3 is a masterpiece, but the GOG Complete version combined with these two mods has brought me back to the game for hundreds of hours of gameplay. The HD+ mod should probably be considered a necessity because of UI changes that I consider essential, but it's also great because if HOTA is installed one can still choose the vanilla game version as the executable in the launcher and play the original campaigns. It's absolutely brilliant.

Like many others who've reviewed this, I bought this over 20 years ago and i'm still playing it. Hands down Heroes of Might and magic 3 is a gem of a turn based strategy and in my view the best of the series. I love it but not everyone will like the look of the art and yes...compaired to modern games, it does look rather out of date in places. However if you give it a chance, you'll see there's a whole load of game play behind this, that will grab you hook line and sinker. Even though the battles look simple you can involve a lot more tactics to win a fight than it first may seem. E.g. Wait your turn so the enemy has to move first, but can't move far enough to attack you Then you can move afterwards and hit the first blow. Use magic to stop archers shooting, so they have the disadvantage to attack hand to hand. Cast a blind spell on the most dangerous unit, to give to the upperhand. And use artifacts to improve your skills or hinder his. The computer A.I. is pretty good so battles arn't always a sure thing, plus some magical items can ruin your planned tactics against them so you can be suprised as you don't know what they are holding. The musical score is original and sets the mood for the game and there's plenty of different Heroes, types of towns, monsters and little sub quests to keep the game interesting for about.. well, lets say 20 years.

King of the TBS hill. It rarely gets better, if at all, though it's not without its flaws. Some of those flaws are alleviated through mods (Horn of the Abyss would be my recommendation). Other design "flaws" that persist are essentially features you'll just have to deal with--no game is literally perfect. Age of Wonders is the only series that comes close to surpassing this, imo. The newly released Songs of Conquest is also a worthy contender. None can quite muster the strength to overcome the master, however. Not even this game's sequels. There's a reason this game is still played my many, decades after its release, and consistently holds a spot on GOG's bestseller listing.

One of my favourite games ever.