I have to say that after reading all of the reviews here, I was lead to believe the game detoured a lot from the standard HoMM formula, and I assumed everything else was just fine having seen some sparse screenshots over the years. Well, I finally played the game in 2020 for the first time and I was shocked as the intro begun as I was expecting the same quality from any Heroes and Might and Magic game being familiar with all of them except the fourth. "Mongo... great barbarian from the north", as it begins to show poorly drawn artwork. Eventually it got to "Spazz Maticus" showing a picture which has to be seen to believed, and I burst out in laughter. It didn't end there, the poorly drawn and animated 3D models as they distort across the battle field keep on giving. Has nobody seen the trolls or the peasants? They flail and distort as they walk around, it's not normal. All in all the core gameplay is basically the same as HoMM 1/2/3 but with a lot of quality of life improvements (more interactive heroes, caravans, moveable units on over world etc)--but the GRAPHICS and animations were rushed and done so poorly. And the last expansion intro sequence??? WHAT WAS THAT!!! I could barely believe this was a Heroes game. Apparently all of the people in the office were sacked except two, so the two expansions were done by two people and a bunch of contractors which explains "Mongo" and "Spazz Maticus". Rob King of course did top notch work and the impending bankruptcy had nothing to do to affect the quality of the OST. The game is fine but the graphics and story are RIDICULOUS, I can't believe nobody has mentioned this. SPAZZ MATICUS, REALLY??? This is one of the biggest meme games I've ever played that masquerades as a HoMM.
Sadly there's no option for AI opponents in skirmish; and in fact it's very primitive in that regard. The game is based purely around pre-built campaigns with non-existent AI -- or skirmish with exclusively human players on the LAN. If you've enjoyed 'Myth' this would probably be up your alley--but sadly Myth itself suffers from the same issue that this game does. The game itself looks alright on a CRT with scanline smoothing and sharp pixels / but few probably play it that way, so if you're going to try it on an LCD stay far far away.
