Heroes of Might and Magic® 4: Complete

HOMM III brough the classic formula to perfection, so the only way to make a worthy successor was to rethink the whole game. HOMM IV was a bold attempt to evolve the series and, despite all its shortcomings, for the most a succesful one. It features the best campaigns of the whole franchise, and offers the most strategic options among all the Heroes titles (which are usually quite shallow under this regard, the strategic layer being just a sort of pretext for the engaging tactical battles; unfortunately this makes also more apparent the traditional weakness of HOMM's strategic AI). Having the hero in the field makes the tactical encounters more interesting, even if there are issues with the later campaign maps as the heroes themselves becomes by then killing machines of Doom (to be honest this is a long-standing issue with HOMM, never really addressed. The possibility given by HOMM IV to go after the hero in the tactical map is probably the closest attempt to fix this "honestly"). As a long-term fan of the series, I believe that HOMM IV is a turning point and a missed opportunity (HoMM V and VI are just inferior versions of HoMMIII, even if the V is not a bad game by itself)

It is really sad the game sales were bad. It was a refreshing and intresting game. Only problem for me was less faction from heroes 3. I actually liked all the other changes like hero actually fighting or armies without heroes,... One bug though, game does not end becouse of a heroe lying dead on the ground. We should have been able to take the corpse too. It is sad that it was not recieved well

I personally liked everything about the game; the storylines, the absolutely wonderful soundtrack, the gorgeous 2D graphics, the kitchen-sink fantasy atmosphere, all those small texts popping up at every corner, telling little stories. And the quite addictive gameplay

-Contains one of the most well written stories in the series. -Heroes can move on their own without any troops -Contains a variety of skills that, when combined, can augment your hero (eg Combat + Tactics = General, +1 morale to all creatures) -No creature upgrades eliminate needs for heroes to return to castle just to get an upgrade on existing units -Creatures can have choice of attack/movement/spells (eg Harpies can be ordered to just "attack" instead of "attack & return", Water elementals can cast spells such as Ice Bolt) -3DO's last involvement with the HoMM series Overall a very satisfying experience, game is highly recommended to all HoMM series lovers. I completed the whole campaign 10+ years ago and this time am looking to redo all of it by purchasing this complete series.

I will skip game advantages, and focus on shortcomings / unpopular design decisions. Top unpopular design decision is battlefield and how movement is handled, so it's basically impossible to perfectly control it. Also with some game knowledge heroes can fairly easily get extremely powerful so army tends to be less important than in previous titles. One of biggest shortcomings for singleplayer is fairly dumb AI - it can be challenging on properly designed map, or when you try to give AI better vision via extra objects near AI, tune AI priorites of some objects in map editor etc. General shortcoming for both singleplayer and multiplayer is no random map generator and no legacy modding scene so there is no advanced "HD mod" for H4 like it was done for H3. That means lack of QoL fixes and multiplayer extra features like simultaneous turns. One upside is that very recently (miracle happened wow) H4 got some modding attention, and patch to Albyx mod just got released. I did not try it yet but it apparently drastically improves AI. And it's possible to run that AI overhaul without rest of mod content if somebody doesn't like custom balance fixes etc.