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!
Back when i was little there was a game called kings bounty, but i never played that game cause i was 2. so my first encounter with New World computeing (and for the most part with video games at all) was ye ol' Heroes of Might and Magic. At the time i was just a 5 yearold learning how to press buttons on my computer, but being the natural born game nerd that i am, i soon grasped the basics of the game. At the time i was pretty satisfied with anything that made noises and moved, so i overlooked any and all of its flaws and enjoyed the game for its sheerh entertainment, much like i did with the likes of Starwars rebellion. But i am a man grown now (fire emblem refference... ha ha) and i took a fresh look at the game rather recently. Here is my take. So lets start with the good stuff. The game was pretty deep overall for a game at the time. It actualy has a plotline, for example, though im sure the vast majority will just ignore it. Basicly you are a prince of some far off land, and you go through a portal to escape being killed by your psychotic brother. It happens in royal families sometimes, your brother kills your father and brother and tries to kill you and stuff like that, its just tradition, at least in video games and fairy tales. Anyways you end up in some far off country where there is no supream ruler, but rather a conflict between 3 other waring factions, vieing for controll over the land. Being the noble prince you are, you slaughter everyone else and counquer the land for yourself. Unless of course you chose one of the other three factions. But then you will be at a loss as to how Ironfist (the prince) managed to conquer the land before Heroes of might and magic II came out. The game also has 4 rather unique, if not a little bland factions. But at the time im sure they were pretty distinct compared to normal standards. You have the Knight, which has a force of humans that are pretty well balanced, but cheap, plentyful and weak. with an added bonus of having peasents that kick but in large numbers and paladins that can double attack. The Barbarian, which is somewhat more powerful than humans but more expensive and not really all that special. But they have cyclopses though which is a novelty in itsself. Next up is the sorceress, which leads the fairy people. Sprites, evles and unicorns oh my! Their specialty is more in having fast units, double attacking super archers and their hero's spells, aswell as the interesting abillity to blind people with unicorns... ouch. Finaly we have the Warlock, which, if you can afford his units, is too inbalanced, i can't belive they let this slide, Dragons are imune to magic and insanely powerful. Their secondary unit, Hydras are more powerful than the humans ultimate unit! It cant double attack but it can attack multiple units! anyone who dares say that Warlocks are balanced should try takeing on a hord of dragons. You will die! The next good tidbit is the abillity to upgrade some of your units, which was pretty cool at the time. Seeing the feather in your swordsmans helmet change to blue was allways a cool effect. And watching dragons "fade to black" was allways an awsome feat. Cause then you knew, "I'm gonna win now" Cause yeah, dragons were unbalanced, but they are like a signature unit! The rest of the series they have allways been and allways should be the ultimate player controlled unit. I don't know if V has them or not, but i'm not playing that game at the moment, so who cares. So now to have a little fun pointing out the wrongs this game has done to me. One: The Ai is bloody cheap! The Ai knows how much of the map you have seen, and will hide just outside the fog of war and sneek into your castle if you turn your back to them. If you head off, they will suddenly sneek up on your castle while you are out. Another Ai bugger to pick is their tendency to line up heroes outside the castle, only to cast some overpowered spell on you and run away. This isnt just a Heroes one problem, this is like a heroes tradition. Every game has this, and its so damn cheap and cowardly. Two: The Campaign is rather uninspireing and bland. The game is more about just skirmishing and fighting, preferably with some human budies who arn't cheap, looking at your screen and hideing just outside your fog of war while you head off to war. But as a multiplayer game (which i have only rarely been able to appreciate) its pretty cool. Third: the game is not balanced, Heroes of might and magic III is balanced, but heroes I, or "A strategic quest" for those care for the prefix. Heroes one suffers from those overpowered dragons. Everyone wants to play as warlock, i wounder why. Yeah you can say, "you have to take him out early while he is weak" but on larger maps you may not even make it there on time, pluss you have sneaky ai heroes stealing your castle. Even in one on one, it can be hard to take a castle early on, you don't have enough forces, and by the time you do, the warlock allready has dragons! a good player knows how to build the dragon building early, or at leas hydras. Even a human rush(the pre-evolved form of the zerg rush) can't stop a good warlock player. But as you can see, I only really have 3 problems with the game, so overall this game is pretty good, and look at the awsomely quirky sprites! You just don't see that anymore, unless you play disgea, which rocks by the way. But my all time faivorate Heroes game is unfortunately a sequel, heroes of might and magic III. Now let the war between II and III fans begin anew! Have a battle on Heroes of might and magic one to settle the score once and for all! (use warlocks btw) Review by: Justin (other gamer) - an up and comming video game reviewer and critque
