This game is for those already familiar with it. I understand why people like its graphics and music. While the game mechanics are clearly fun, the more frequent and annoying experiences make it hard to give it a good score. --- Warning: From the next paragraph onward, I have written negative reviews that destroy other people's beautiful memories. --- Many games teach you the basics through the early missions of the campaign, but this one doesn't. Even when playing the first mission for the first time, the game assumes the player is somewhat skilled. It's as if it expects you've played HoMM1. So, starting with Archibald's first mission, it's quite tough and requires significant time and save-scumming to beat, which already had me exhausted. Most missions demand some special, underhanded strategy. There's little strategic diversity—it's all about relying on luck until you can use certain magic skills or exploiting the AI's stupid flaws. Missions aren't about leisurely exploration, developing soldiers and castles, and gradually crushing enemies through snowballing. You must aggressively attack enemies quickly, and some missions require relying on luck. In the 90s, reading manuals, repeating missions until you mastered them, and checking strategy guides on forums might have been fun, but that's not the case in 2025. These things just aren't fun for me. What I hated most while playing was not being able to gauge whether my troops could easily crush a group of monsters. I have to save the game, test it, watch a forced defeat in battle, and then reload. Based on my experience, I wouldn't recommend starting the series with this game. It seems better to enjoy the game with HoMM3, which is more forgiving to beginners, and then move on to HoMM2.
With the exception of gamers who really love the series, most casual gamers won't be able to adapt to this older game, don't get me wrong. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the game itself, it's just that the inherent unkindness of old games makes it difficult to play. If you leave the game in fullscreen and use alt+tab to come back in, the graphics are ruined. Otherwise, you have to utilize a utility like DxWnd, which honestly doesn't make for a smooth experience. Also, the game's difficulty is left to the gamer to achieve through a lot of trial and error without any help. From the first campaign, I found it too difficult and it took a lot of retries to get through.
Really, the mechanics of the game are fun. They know how to make a fun game. The trick is to force the gamer to make constant choices. But this is what I consider game fatigue. There is no free time in a game, there is constantly some kind of trial. Most of those trials are negative events, not positive ones. I pay money to play this game, but there are more irritations and trials than positives in the game, so while the game mechanics are enjoyable, the game scenarios are not. The trials are endured and the town develops, but the citizens don't know contentment. The game lacks positive feedback. It's becoming more of a chore than my life and I'm not enjoying it because there's no reward for solving so many problems. Why should I get involved in something that is more trouble than my life in the name of a game?
