6 ms·

Never played any of the Heroes games - what's the draw to 3 specifically, above 4, 5 etc?

by cacois 3y ago

iammjm 3y ago
Fun and balanced castles, expansions and mods, playable and bug-free on modern systems. It's a great game, or actually several games in one: town-building, map exploration, RPG, chess-like strategy battles
suoduandao2 3y ago
never played 4 or 5, but from reviews at the time it sounded like 4 and 5 were just lower effort games coasting on the reputation of 2 and 3
- hydrok9 3y ago
  Actually 4 was supposed to be a better game than 3, but there was a huge backlash against the introduction of a technologically based faction. They scrapped this idea and the game was rushed out. 3d0 went bankrupt right after.
  - bluefirebrand 3y ago
    I had never known they were planning a technology faction for HOMM4, that's interesting to hear. Might and Magic is a fun setting because it's secretly SciFi and you would never know it from the Heroes games as far as I've ever seen. But a bunch of the Might and Magic RPG games start with sword and sorcery and end with laser guns.
    - hydrok9 3y ago
      Looks like I had my games confused. The Forge was supposed to be a faction for Armageddon's Blade, but was cancelled. 3do did rush heroes 4 though, and one of the biggest complaints about it is how bland and lifeless it feels compared to 3. If you haven't already, you should try the Horn of the Abyss mod for Heroes 3. It's great! Adds tons of qol stuff and has a new campaign and faction.
      - bluefirebrand 3y ago
        I may do that, thanks for the recommendation! I loved Heroes 3 growing up and it's been a long time since I've played it. Might be a great time to boot it up again.
        hydrok9 3y ago
        www.hota.acidcave.net
    - bombcar 3y ago
      The lore for HOMM 3 is absolutely insane if you find some of the developer documents; everything is robots and aliens and spaceships and such. That got mostly cut during development and they never went further down that route. Horn of the Abyss is attempting to bring that faction back to life with Forge.
- thriftwy 3y ago
  HoMM5 is actually pretty good, but it aged worse than HoMM3 with its low end 3D graphics. 3D UI is also not as snappy as 2D sprites (also true for recent Master of Magic remaster). But the content is quite solid.
dspillett 3y ago
I think 3 was the series' peak. IIRC 4+ didn't add much, if anything at all, apart from superficial improvements, and there were more good game options out there too. Also: nostalgia. There are many who were gaming during those peak times who spent a lot of time on these games.
plorkyeran 3y ago
HoMM 1-3 were fairly straightforward iterations on the formula. Most of the changes in the second and third games was just adding more stuff and filling in some obvious holes in the previous game. HoMM 3 was the point where the game was sufficiently complete that doing this another time was no longer a viable strategy, and HoMM 4 had to figure out how to make itself stand out as a new game. They didn't really succeed at that, and while it's a good game it's not really a better game than 3. 360 running out of money while developing HoMM 4 was unsurprisingly a big problem for the game. HoMM 5 was a much more successful rethinking of the formula, and while the game as originally shipped had some major problems, with the expansion packs it's arguably the best game in the series. It's a meaningfully different game from 3, though. Many of the changes made the game different moreso than better or worse, so some people prefer 3 and some prefer 5. I never played 6, but what I heard was that it had a similar problem to some of the Civilization games where HoMM 5 plus expansion packs was just a much more complete game than 6 with no expansion packs, and then it didn't sell well enough to justify continuing development to "finish" it.

Never played any of the Heroes games - what's the draw to 3 specifically, above 4, 5 etc?

by cacois 3y ago

Never played any of the Heroes games - what's the draw to 3 specifically, above 4, 5 etc?

Fun and balanced castles, expansions and mods, playable and bug-free on modern systems. It's a great game, or actually several games in one: town-building, map exploration, RPG, chess-like strategy battles

suoduandao2 3y ago

never played 4 or 5, but from reviews at the time it sounded like 4 and 5 were just lower effort games coasting on the reputation of 2 and 3

hydrok9 3y ago
Actually 4 was supposed to be a better game than 3, but there was a huge backlash against the introduction of a technologically based faction. They scrapped this idea and the game was rushed out. 3d0 went bankrupt right after.
- bluefirebrand 3y ago
  I had never known they were planning a technology faction for HOMM4, that's interesting to hear. Might and Magic is a fun setting because it's secretly SciFi and you would never know it from the Heroes games as far as I've ever seen. But a bunch of the Might and Magic RPG games start with sword and sorcery and end with laser guns.
  - hydrok9 3y ago
    Looks like I had my games confused. The Forge was supposed to be a faction for Armageddon's Blade, but was cancelled. 3do did rush heroes 4 though, and one of the biggest complaints about it is how bland and lifeless it feels compared to 3. If you haven't already, you should try the Horn of the Abyss mod for Heroes 3. It's great! Adds tons of qol stuff and has a new campaign and faction.
    - bluefirebrand 3y ago
      I may do that, thanks for the recommendation! I loved Heroes 3 growing up and it's been a long time since I've played it. Might be a great time to boot it up again.
      - hydrok9 3y ago
        www.hota.acidcave.net
  - bombcar 3y ago
    The lore for HOMM 3 is absolutely insane if you find some of the developer documents; everything is robots and aliens and spaceships and such. That got mostly cut during development and they never went further down that route. Horn of the Abyss is attempting to bring that faction back to life with Forge.
thriftwy 3y ago
HoMM5 is actually pretty good, but it aged worse than HoMM3 with its low end 3D graphics. 3D UI is also not as snappy as 2D sprites (also true for recent Master of Magic remaster). But the content is quite solid.

dspillett 3y ago

I think 3 was the series' peak. IIRC 4+ didn't add much, if anything at all, apart from superficial improvements, and there were more good game options out there too. Also: nostalgia. There are many who were gaming during those peak times who spent a lot of time on these games.

plorkyeran 3y ago

HoMM 1-3 were fairly straightforward iterations on the formula. Most of the changes in the second and third games was just adding more stuff and filling in some obvious holes in the previous game. HoMM 3 was the point where the game was sufficiently complete that doing this another time was no longer a viable strategy, and HoMM 4 had to figure out how to make itself stand out as a new game. They didn't really succeed at that, and while it's a good game it's not really a better game than 3. 360 running out of money while developing HoMM 4 was unsurprisingly a big problem for the game. HoMM 5 was a much more successful rethinking of the formula, and while the game as originally shipped had some major problems, with the expansion packs it's arguably the best game in the series. It's a meaningfully different game from 3, though. Many of the changes made the game different moreso than better or worse, so some people prefer 3 and some prefer 5. I never played 6, but what I heard was that it had a similar problem to some of the Civilization games where HoMM 5 plus expansion packs was just a much more complete game than 6 with no expansion packs, and then it didn't sell well enough to justify continuing development to "finish" it.