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[lavenders2]

I searched for Heroes of Might and Magic III on these forums after playing it for a little while. What I found shocked me: the thread died.

Don't worry. I'm fixing it. Now.

HoMM3 is highly regarded as many to be one of the best TBS games ever created, some still playing it to this day, some claiming it is the best game of all time. Reviewers and players praised its balance, replayability and unit diversity, as well as enjoyability and grand strategy > gigantic unit ball of death. But you all know that.

What's that? "I have never played HoMM3" I hear 1% of the forum screaming? Your actually reading this now? This is madness! You will all be educated you sick minded pheasants!

HoMM3 is simply a game where you start with a single town (or possibly more) and your job is to win the game by completing the scenario objectives. There is your classic kill the other dude, but there is also capturing artifacts, destroying a certain NPC within a certain amount of turns, or whatever the mission asks you to do. Strategies are endless, potential is unlimited!
After selecting a map and faction, you are thrown into the land of Might and Magic, where there is Magic and... Might. You tend to start with your hero plus a basic starting army. Your army is created in your city, by training more troops at the end of a week (7 turns) and by upgrading your city, you can increase the diversity of your troops, giving you plenty of ways to mix and match unit combos to suit your needs and playstyle.

And here the Magic begins (errr... and Might). Your hero can have artifacts/items that he can use throughout his lifespan, and he will also level up and gain stats. A powerful hero is a good hero, one good hero can wipe the floor with a weak hero backed by a strong army. As such, leveling your hero is of utmost importance, and defending him is just as important.
When a hero does level up, he gains a point in a stat (out of 4), and then gets to choose between either upgrading a secondary stat (like increased map movement, magic power etc) or gaining a new one entirely, eventually maxing out at a certain number or secondary skills. This allows skillful and thoughtful, although random, customization. Yes, it may seem like luck, but often you will find that when you hire heroes (cause having just 1 isn't fun enough) they will have the starting stats you want, so you can just upgrade them all day long.



Combat in the game takes place in battlegrounds where two entities meet, as shown above. Each player takes turns using the units depending on speed ratings, and there are many options as to what you can do with those units. You can get them to defend, wait (so they can be used later in the turn, which is actually very useful) or you can attack with them. Alternatively, you can use a hero spell. These spells are battlechangers, tipping the tides in even battles and giving you the upper hand. Magic spells have various effects, dealing damage or buffing a friendly unit are the most common. Some are not used in battle however.

Maybe I should stop writing now. Maybe you should start playing. Go grab it on GOG and maybe we could get a bay 12 game/tourney going (If that is even still possible with this game. It would be pretty fun. This game was also very highly praised for the multiplayer)

[Dutchling]

Best. Game. Ever.

[alexandertnt]

I remember playing one of them (it wasnt III though). I remember me and my friends turtling away until he had ridiculous stacks of units. Unfortunetly it led to the fact that the first person to attack, regardless of whether they win or lose would have most/all of their army lost. Which would mean the victor would be picked off by someone else. So attacking, regardless of outcome, was suicide. This led to positive feedback turtling and we never finished a game.

Also, There is an open source engine out there (but im pretty sure you still need the game data). Might be useful if the game has issues on newer Windows's or Linux.

[revo]

This game was so good! but i never got to play it agianst other people just AI i was to young when it came out.

[Dutchling]

I actually made a tabletop version of this with my cousins.

@Alexandertnt, you should pick a larger map and expand. The one who can both expand the quickest and keep his castles safe will win instead of the one who wins that one single battle.

[Un67]

I would love to play this again, but my disk has been lost somewhere in between moves. Maybe, just maybe, I might get it on GoG, but I can't be too sure.

[Naryar]

I liked both HoMM III and IV. I played HoMM I, II (barely), III and IV.

Yes I like IV, mostly because "heroes" could actually BE heroes (aka kick ass) rather than just lead armies. Also the overall combat and leveling system was pretty cool. In the previous versions it was just jarring that supposedly warrior heroes like barbarians and knights did nothing but tactics, moving their armies and spellcasting.

Too bad they ruined III's creature, artifact, and faction diversity for IV.

[Dariush]

Count me in. IIRC playing over internet was borked, so are we going to do it through something like Hamachi?

[kingfisher1112]

Pretty awesome game bro.

[Crazy Cow]

I prefer V, myself. All the various races feel a lot more natural than they did in III.
pleasedontkillme

[Errol]

III, V and VI also all have their individual merits. V has some really neat systems such as the skill system and quite unique units/factions. Basically every unit in V has some special property, where in III there were a lot of generic units. Also, the city screen, particularily for Haven, is just great.
On the other hand, III simply has more stuff. More maps including classics such as Realm of Chaos, great map editor, more artifacts and each of them had a backstory. The art style, and general style, also is definitely something. Or perhaps that's nostalgia speaking, but I don't care. Additionally, In The Wake Of Gods. I think that should say everything.
VI is exceptionally polished, which is quite something to look at, and the factions turned out rather great. It has more style than H5. Ultimately there seems to be less character customization, though - or, rather, different faction's heroes are a bit too similar to each other for my tastes and/or every hero basically is already pinned down by his choice of faction, might/magic and blood/tears. The game needs more spells and such. On the other hand, I like some of the re-imagined systems such as Core/Elite/Champion, they definitely hit some nerves in just the right way.

Tl;dr: I love every damn Heroes game, to death. Even IV is not bad.

[gogis]

If you like genre you must to try new Kings Bounty installments as well.

[Dutchling]

Or the old one. Or try this browser game base on V. And with ' based on'  I mean all units are the same but have different names.

[Sonlirain]

Ok so my viwe on the series.

HoMM 1 - "worst" game. It was the first so it obviously was the most primitive. The spell system was different then the rest tho more based on D&D than mana so popular nowdays.

HoMM 2 - Pretty much everything HoMM is about. Different heroes/skills castles and magical items. I also remember "haunt mine" being stupidly powerful basically taking out a mine from the game because no sane person would try taking a mine from a army of 1400 ghosts. Also i think Humans were somewhat underpowered/zerging instead of the powerhouses they are in HOMM3.

HoMM 3 - Pretty much the culmination of the series. Every gamer who likes turn based strategies should play it at least once.
Gameplay wise it's HoMM2 with added content. The graphics got a minor upgrade but i think i liked the more "cartoony" style of HoMM2.

HoMM4 - At this point the series got (gameplay and storywise) shattered and rebuilt anew.
Some liked the new features some didn't.
Neutral monsters moving about. Hero on the battlefield (both good and bad since the poor sod could get sniped out by ranged troops) troops walking around  without heroes. Fog of war ETC.

HoMM5 - I guess they decided that HoMM 4 didn't happened and based it off HoMM3. Basically it's HoMM3 with more of everything (skills spells armies army upgrades)and 3D graphics. They seemed pretty keen on literally giving more of everything.
Armies san upgrade to 2 units (Attack oriented or defense oriented.) Hero skill trees were more robust and instead of the simple progression Basic-Advanced-Master we also get subskills for every learnable ability.
And the game has dwarves as a Faction making this game the best one of them all.

[Dutchling]

I didn't really like H5. The only things which were really better than H3 were the way skills worked (Really liked this) and the graphics. And the graphics only slowed the game down.

I think I buccaneered H6 a while back as I remember something about a guy who fell in love with an orc (the cinematics in H6 are just as horrible as H5, there is like one nice 'movie' and the rest are just game models with unmoving mouths/etc). I stopped playing it pretty soon though so I guess I wasn't impressed.