This game plays like Heroes of Might and Magic 3 with more content, a metric ton of small convenience features, and - this is arguably the biggest difference - a real-time combat that can be paused. World Map & Convenience Features The game plays so similarly to HoMM 3 on the world map, it doesn't make sense to go into details, so let's focus on what this game does different (and better!). Off the top of my head: Troops can walk around without heroes and automatically seek out the next town or hero. If you have a hero that has nothing to do, you can tell them to stay put and increase a mine's output. Leveling feels faster in a good way. There are set items to collect that change how you play, like "keep 50% of summoned creatures after battle". You can have much more troops on a hero, I haven't reached an upper limit yet. You can mix and match troops from different factions without any morale penalty like in HoMM. There is just so much less micromanaging where it doesn't matter. I keep noticing that something wasn't a pain when I expected it to be from back in the day. Real Time Combat Don't imagine combat like in Age of Empires. You don't have that much control and you don't need it. For the most part, your army charges (or defends, your choice) in a sprawling mess. You see individual units, not numbers on a hex map. You can command groups of units to go somewhere specific (e.g. attack archers, flank enemies), though the biggest impact comes probably through spell use, just like in HoMM. And just like in HoMM, 90% of the battles are decided by unit strength and numbers, your skill will skew the outcome but not decide it. I've heard there are balancing issues. I haven't played enough to judge the balance of factions etc.
