Heroes of Might and Magic® 3: Complete

I'd heard a lot of great things about this game before I purchased it and so I really expected to like it. I didn't. The game gets off to an OK start with (what I assumed was) the protagonist explaining how her father had somehow gone AWOL and she had to rescue him But then I never heard from her again. Instead the storyline (such as it is) revolved around a sets of quests to find things. You're introduced to a character, given a mission, and then you go through 3-4 stages to complete that mission. Along the way you will get little snippets of story written from the character's perspective. The missions (for me) took at least 20 hours to complete. There was minimal dialogue and only modest character development. Some of the stages were incredibly difficult. How difficult? Even the walk-throughs advised playing those stages on the easiest difficulty. Even then they were extremely challenging. I was about half-way through my fourth mission when my computer literally, physically, fell apart. I don't have it in me to start over and so this game will remain unfinished. To be fair, some of it was interesting. One of the characters, Gem, was somewhat sympathetic. And Gelu's quest was *almost* fun at times. There is also an overarching plot that was intriguing, but overall the game was difficult, time consuming and borderline tedious. I'm sorry but I can't recommend this game.

This game has an unintuitive explanation and unkindness. It's a fun game if you like it.

I cannot get this version to launch.

it wont even launch, I just get an eternal white window

I can see why it was popular when it came out. It allows a lot of freedom for a game this old. Main problem: I was pretty confused about how damage worked. I even looked up some stuff about it and still didn't really understand. It sure isn't intuitive. I don't see myself playing this again. It was a couple hours of confusion. I think the rating is mostly based on nostalgia, looking back at the comments in the reviews.