Heroes of Might and Magic® 3: Complete

Heroes of Might and Magic III is one my all-time favorites in the fantasy RTS genre. Its enormous scale (the number of campaigns, scenarios and the huge amount of player-created content, downloadable in the WWW) is overwhelming, its strategic depth allows years of fun, and the 2D-graphics with the great soundtrack creates a great atmosphere, to make you feel immersed in a realm of magic, honour, glory and fairytale. In 2003, I bought this game the first time, years after its initial release. In 2005, I bought it the second time. And now, in 2009 and although I got HoMM V some days ago via Steam (after surprisingly noticing that the fifth part runs rather well on my netbook), I purchased the HoMM III a third time it, here at GOG. Now I am really happy. :)

When Heroes 1 was released on gog, i wrote a review where i commented on the conflict between those who think HOMM 2 is the best and those who think HOMM 3 is the best. Now many people claim that this divded is based mostly on which of them you played first. And that the nostalgia of the "first" Heroes experience is what decides which you like better. In my case, its the other way around. I started off playing HOMM 2, and loved the game, even though i was too young at the time to be any real good at it. However when my Uncle got HOMM 3, I simply got addicted to it. Now there are actualy quite a few reasons i like HOMM 3 better than both its predecessors and all of its successors, and I'm not going to point to the grafics or the scale, but rather first and foremost to the balance. This game has 8 different races, and you would expect, that along the way you would get a few factors of unbalance in one or anothers faivor, as was customary in both 1 and 2. However HOMM 3 is supriseingly very balanced. The 9th race which was added in the second expansion pack, was also rather balanced, but required a more tactical finess than the others. Another area where HOMM 3 excells is in the depth of its story. HOMM 2 had a story that consists of, your brother has killed your family and taken the throne, now you have to take it back. However HOMM 2 was not a bad game, and as another added bonus, HOMM 3 takes everything that was good in HOMM 2 and takes it up a notch. All units can now be upgraded and all of the different races have an ultimate unit that is actualy worth its salt, unlike HOMM 2 and 1 where black dragons instantly owned everything no matter what you did. Also each race is more or less differenciated in style and units, so that while each race is balanced relative to eachother, they still are varried and different from eachother like in 2. And also the overpowered Ghosts of HOMM 2 are finaly gone. HOMM 3 also has a truck load of campaigns that are varried and different, and a real challenge to play, and not simply in the form of cheap impossible odds missions. but by actualy proveing a challenge. While HOMM 2 may actualy have more content in total, its content in the origional version and its first expansion were critisized for being too strait foward and not varried enough. Whereas the last one fixed that matter. In HOMM 3 they fixed this issue from the get go, learning from their mistakes. As a Final boost in HOMM 3's faivor is that it has an awsome sound track. Each castle has its own, fitting sound track that gives each individual castle and environment its own unique feel. While you will get tired of the "start of a new turn" sound after a while, you will be able to put up with it just for all the other ambient sounds and orcestrated music scores the game has to offer. All in all alot of this does come down to the budget, so really its thanks to HOMM 2 that HOMM 3 is so great, as it provided the financial foundries on which HOMM 3 was built on. But that doesn't mean that the better game is not the better game. HOMM 3 IS the best in turms of content, all accrossed the board. So if you can only afford to put out for one of them, Get Heroes of Might and Magic 3. But you should no doubt try out heroes 2 and 1 aswell if you want to explore how it all started. If you are a dedicated fan, you proubably allready own or have owned all the games allready. But hey, 10 dollars for this game, with all its expansions? Thats a deal you can't pass up!

Najgorsza gra ever! Powtarzalny gameplay! Wysoki poziom trudności! Przekazuje pogańskie treści fantasy! Wtłacza do głowy istnienie magii!!! Unikać za wszelką cenę!!!11!1!! Jeśli posiadacie jakieś obowiązki: praca, szkoła, żona, dzieci albo hobby czy życie prywatne nie kupujcie, nie instalujcie i przede wszystkim nie grajcie! Nie próbujcie sobie tłumaczyć, że to tylko na chwilę, jedną partyjkę zagram, tak by odświeżyć sobie pamięć. Potem może być za późno. Obudzicie się samotni, zarośnięci, bez pieniędzy. Za to z kolejną ukończona kampanią. W tej grze nie ma mikro transakcji, nie otwiera się paczek z kartami, nie zdobywa się waluty premium na dodatki kosmetyczne a wciąga bardziej niż największy hit free-to-play! Fenomen Hirosów (szczególnie trójki) jest nieuchwytny. To połączenie przejrzystej rozgrywki, rewelacyjnego interfejsu (najlepszy ever! Nie potrzeba instrukcji, ikony mówią wszystko a czego nie mówią, znajdziemy pod prawym przyciskiem myszy) i zwyczajnie uzależniającego gamplay’u. No i grafika nie jest zła. Niby w każdej misji wciąż robimy to samo: zaczynamy w zamku, zdobywamy kopalnie, rozbudowujemy zaplecze, rekrutujemy jednostki, walczymy z potworami. Klikamy koniec tury i patrzymy na reakcję przeciwnika. Spłucz i powtórz. A godziny mijają Chcemy dotrzeć tylko do kolejnego zamku, przejąć to jedno złoże złota, jeszcze tylko ostania, ostatniutka tura – a tu nagle znikąd pojawia się wróg – przecież nie pozwolimy się mu panoszyć. I tak przez setki godzin. Nie dość, że mamy zatrzęsienie singlowych kampanii i pojedynczych misji to jeszcze dochodzi słynny tryb gorących krzeseł oraz edytor map. I dwa oficjalne dodatki. I mody. I setki fanowskich plansz. Nieeee! Nie dajcie się w to wciągnąć. Idźcie na spacer, opalać się w ogródku, gapić na ścianę. Róbcie cokolwiek tylko nie grajcie w Hirosów 3! Ps. Najważniejsza zaleta gry? W zamku rycerza nie można rekrutować chłopów! Alleluja!

While the game by itself is a greatest classic, you could avoid pain of using 800x600 resolution on modern monitors. With mod you could set any resolution witch suits you and feel the game almost as new and modern. Don't be afraid - this "mod" changes nothing in game mechanics by default so you will have your classic gameplay but with the modern look. Developers of GOG even resolve some bugs in GOG's game version to maintain HD mode compatibility. You will love this game even more when you will see it in 1600*1200, or even Full HD if you have a big enough screen :)

One of the best games ever made in the best package you can get. No lame HD versions, no DRM, ultra cheap for what you get, thousand of hours of mind blowing tactics, exploration and stories. And after that, well, there is a map editor, million of maps and campaigns fan made and very good mods. Sounds too good to be true? but it's true. Just buy it and dont forget to use the HD mod, it also offer a lot of quality of life improvements (less clicks for the repetitive tasks): https://heroes3wog.net/homm-3-hd-download/