Yes, start with H1 if you can stand really old and basic gameplay, and some ugly art.
Start with H2 if you want to start with the really good games (H2/H3/H5).
Piracy or GOG, no one that made the games gets paid, other than a bunch of slimy frenchmen.
There is also an open source version of H2 ala OpenRA if you want an even harder version of it.
The company that made that game ceased to exist before you were born, you dumb moron. Ubisoft literally bought for cheap dormant rights. Paying them is the dumbest thing imaginable, especially since their re-release of the game is working worse than the original, especially on Steam, which further fricked shit up.
>Be zoomer >Be born into a world with internet >Be born into a world with streaming >Be born into a world with social media >Be born into a world with smartphones >Be born into a world with live services >Be born into a world with subscriptions >Be born into a world with omnipresent DRM >Be born into a world with endless commercials >Be born into a world that sells competence as a hassle
... and they literally don't know anything else
I would agree with you, but my brother in christ, it's on sale for 2.49 .
7 months ago
Anonymous
suo, Yves?
5 months ago
Anonymous
V is pretty good if you go online, the story is so simple and dumb that you should only play it to see the basics of the game for each faction.
My only advice is to NOT be passive and wait since every turn counts.
People like you disgust me for supporting the predatorial practice of holding rights to a work past the original creator's, grandkid's lifespan. Do you seriously believe you are supporting any developers or otherwise giving a positive contribution by paying rights holders that have frick all to do with the original game?
>piracy
1) It’s unfiting term
2) Nothing gets stolen by copying files
3) The supposed loss of profit is pure mental gymnastics based on many assumptions and ‘what if’s’ not to forget the completely arbitrary cost of the product itself.
You forgot the most crucial part of this specific case:
4) The company responsible for making the game was dissolved 20 years ago, and profits nothing; the copyright is owned by a third party corporation that did frick-all to ever make those games and just bought copyright once the original holders went bankrupt
So it's an extra level of mental gymnastics of "providing for the makers", when the makers retired from the industry 15-20 years ago and are denied any profit the game is making to its current owner. It's like that old Czech joke, where the guy sells a single brick and then demands full rent to be paid to him once the house is build.
The company that currently owns the IP (and to whom your money will go to if you buy the game) is Ubisoft. They didn't make the game. They bought the series, and they fricked it up. I'd argue that giving them money for this is a lot more imoral than piracy
GOG is your only choice. Most classic HoMM titles aren't even available on Steam, and the HD version of HoMM3 on Steam is a disaster; it's missing expansions and is not compatible with mods.
Yes I have. They tried to be original for once instead of just doing what everyone else did, and I appreciate that.
Besides, they don't even look that bad.
You have to specify the Black person unit, because there are multiple that you can classify as Black folk in the game. E.g barbarian faction had green goblins (those looked funny), ogres, and cyclopses, but any of those can be classified as any brownoids, from abos to amerimutts. Or if you meant pikemen from the knight faction, which can be written off as dirt. Or if you meant the centaur from warlock faction, but it had a native americanish vibe to it.
Purple dragon was an odd choice, but it wasn't that bad. Gargoyle actually looked great in blue. Griffin looked great. Hydra looked great. Minotaurs looked funny.
Firebird looked amazing. Rest of the faction looked great. Pixie was a bit out of place, like a bawd with wings.
Human faction was great, except the pikeman.
Barbarian could be sold as either australian faction with abos, or american faction with Black folk. Goblin as squatemalans (or asians in Australia), pig orks as zogbots (keep in mind Duke Nukem 3d was came out at that era, and had boars as LAPD zogbots), wolf as doge maniacs (or dingos in Australia), ogres as sportsball Black folk, especially baseball for americans, purple trolls are trannies, cyclopses on top are semites, israelites with the lasers.
Sorceress was obviously the token female faction. Feminists, bawds, treehuggers, and unicorns that c**ts like.
Knight was the good boy faction. Warlock was the bad boy faction.
My favourite unit in the game was the Paladin in golden armor. Swordsman with big mustache was also great. Old archer was also great. Even liked the peasants looks, too bad they were near useless. Did not like the cavalry though, but I guess every faction needed at least one long unit.
3 easily looked the best, but the one thing 5 did better was the town screens. I used to spend hours just looking around when the game came out, they looked so fricking pretty with the HDR lightning and free 3d rotation.
5 months ago
Anonymous
3's towns looked like pleasant wallpapers, with good town music. 5's are just cheapo early 3d slop.
The only ones really matter are the 2d ones, because 3d is gay. All 2d by default are better than all 3d entries. The ranking though. 1 or 3 is both acceptable for best. I lean toward 3, because it was more refined, but I did appreciate the colorfullness of 1 as well.
1-3 are the only one really good, and 3 is considered the "full experience"
4 had good ideas, but the company went under half-way through
5 is "what if 3, but shit and made by Russians"
Everything after that is just Ubisoft preying on brand recognition
If you plan to get into 3, DO NOT buy the "HD version". It's a shitty done reskin of the BASELINE game. You are literally scammed out of your money.
Any gay that tells you to try mods right off the bat is a moron, anyone pushing HotA right from the start is a homosexual and a moron
4 started out as some MMO thing that they had to convert to a Heroes game halfway through because the company was about to go bankrupt.
5 was the first decent new sequel to it and TRIED to stay close to the old games, but it didn't quite managed to. It also had this horrible WoW unit design that every later game also did.
It's the best of the modern games and has the most content. If he's not going to play through all of them because old games, that's the best entry point. If you can't see that, you might be a sycophant.
5 is pretty good, but 3 is hands down the best. If you want to get 5, get ToE stand alone and install the 5.5 mod. Been playing that recently and it's pretty fun.
The fact the only guy capable of coding in the entire team died, run by a car?
The fact two of the members of the team fled country from conscription?
The fact third got sent do a front?
If you can't think of another reason, you should at least try HOMM3 because it is a legendary game
I have been playing it since 1998, and I have run into so many random people from all over the world who have played this game. If a person is a gamer, and from Russia or Eastern Europe, they probably have heard of HOMM. And there are tons of memes
I think recently, World of Warships was doing a HoMM3 collab. Not Might and Magic as a whole, no, just specifically HoMM3, the game from 20 years ago. Everyone I know who heard about it just said "why are they doing this, who cares?" but that specific game really is a fricking pillar of former Soviet culture.
And just like with everything Russians love, there's a massive amount of gachi memes.
3&5 are the best series has to offer.
4&6 are novelties you can play after finishing 3 and 5.
1&2 are for pulling epeen rank online, there really are many better games now.
7 is just low budget trash.
>4&6 are novelties you can play after finishing 3 and 5.
You just told me that you never played 6 without outright telling me that you never played 6. OP, if you're reading this, don't bother with that dumpster fire. It's one of the worst games ever made
I actually finished "most" of the campaigns.
The amount of skills on units leads to neat combos and tactics. No RNG in leveling allows you to actually plan out your character growth.
But then it started to bug out on even simplest scripts and all you do is convert all the cities and lairs to your own.
4 is still simply better than 6.
>1&2 are for pulling epeen rank online
2 is basically 3, Its a great game
Maybe, but from perspective of someone uninitiated (guessing from the fact that OP is even asking), playing 3 is more than enough when there are so many other games.
>t. started with 5 and only ever checked 3 for memes, but got filtered
Not only 3 is not that hard of a game, it is mostly solved by this point. You literally can not be filtered by it.
>You literally can not be filtered by it.
You'd be surprised. And I mean really fricking surprised.
This is particularly apparent when you have people who play it as the other anon described: started with (modded) 5, then checked the "legendary" 3 and are completely overwhelmed by the game, even if they read the Tribute and similar. Then there are also gays who read those, but go directly for HotA and their get asses whooped due to the amount of shit HotA changes and thus invalidating their knowledge about the game.
So it's not a hard game, true. And it is mostly solved, too. But that doesn't mean it can't filter people out.
Start from 1. >I: Very basic gameplay, easy to learn, very pretty art, not very fun, but it's ok to screw around with. >II: Better gameplay, slightly more complex, art devolved though, but it's kind of fun in it's own way. >III: Good gameplay, slightly more complex, great art, good music, and it's fun, AI will be the limiting factor of game enjoyment. >IV: Ok gameplay, plenty of new ideas for the game, some for the worse, great music, 3d is meh, it's ok to play with, AI is fricking moronic. >V: It was a chore to play, most ideas reverted from IV, some shouldn't have been, 3d is bad, ok music, play it once and be done with it. >VI: Dumbed down, streamlined, mediocre mass produced, art is ok, ok music, never finished it. >VII: Never even tried it.
>>II: Better gameplay, slightly more complex, art devolved though, but it's kind of fun in it's own way. >>IV: Ok gameplay, plenty of new ideas for the game, some for the worse, great music, 3d is meh, it's ok to play with, AI is fricking moronic. >>V: It was a chore to play, most ideas reverted from IV, some shouldn't have been, 3d is bad, ok music, play it once and be done with it.
What a frickign contrarian
II was straight upgrade of the first game in everything from music to art and gameplay.
IV was far from ok from gameplay perspective.
V was straight improvement of the III and IV, managed to find a way to resolve issues of III without ending up as mess like IV
>If you aren't parroting 20 yo memes, you are contrarian >t. zoomer who played none of those games and was born around the time V was made
Lol quite opposite I was born 2 years before first HoMM came out.
II: I did mean 2 was straight improvement in everything but art. I disliked the tiny undetailed creatures, instead of well drawn ones that 1 had. As to music, I played both of those titles without music mostly. Used to play 1 and 2 when they were current, used to be moved between people on many floppy disks, and music was edited out of them to save space. Only heard their music in replays after they came out on GoG decades later, and by then I wasn't very interested. But the art, as in how creatures look was a massive downgrade from 1.
IV: played it when it was new, I liked the heroes moving alone, I liked them participating in battle, I enjoyed playing sneaky hero solo defeating armies, using potion of immortaly in every round, and taking out most of the enemy just with retalliation. I liked being able to use units to pick up resources, instead of using my limited number of heroes, I liked that creature recruiting sites collected creatures once flagged, and didn't have to farm them every week. I liked caravans. I liked single tier I creatures picking up a resource and before dying. I liked hero being able to flee and does not need to be paid for to be recruited again. I liked the idea of jails (though execution of heroes would have been better). Things that I did not like is 3d combat, the shitty creature manned towers in cities, and the AI being unable to handle a tough hero, and jumping on and off towers. I did not like that I had to pick between different creatures to recruit, instead of having all of them. It was an ok game, until I figured out the essentially immortal hero, and every game got extremely one sided, boring and repetitive.
V: I played it as an adult, and cringed so hard at the new goblin design, and them talking to the hero in a campaign that from there I hated the whole thing. That and liking the wizard factions (floating city) town music are the only specific things that I remember from the game, despite completing all the campaigns.
>i: very pretty art >ii: art devolved though
well, I kinda like the second one better, it's more detailed and less cartoonish >iii: great art
oh I see, you're just moronic
>HoMM III >great art
Who are these people, and what's their disability called? HoMM III's art is ugly as sin prerendered sprites that don't even fit together.
If you want to meme with eastern euros, start with 3(+HotA)
If you only care about gameplay play 5.
If you care about lore, play the might and magic RPGs (1 trough 5) then play homm1 and 2 then mm6 then homm3 RoE and SoD, then MM7, then homm3 AB, then MM8, then homm4, and finally MM9
If you really wanna explore the series, you can play campaigns 1-3.
If you just wanna see if you can get into the game play 3.
If you like it but want something different try 2.
My favourite in the series is 2, but I only slightly prefer it over 3, and I recognize that 3 is much more palatable to most people.
I consider 2 a straight upgrade from 1, and 3 a sidegrade from 2.
Post 3 is irrelevant.
The main selling point of 3 is pretty simple: really solid random map generator combined with hot-seat option. This made the game literally timeless. 2 has the same problem as AoW had - it is a better gameplay, but it has very low replayability on its own and just sucks in MP.
>and just sucks in MP.
I play more homm2 than homm3, but if I were to play homm against other people 3 would easily be my pick.
The rehiring spell spam just gets moronic in homm2.
Theoretically addressed in the fheroes2 version, since spell points and movement points don't get reset when rehiring, but nothing I'd bank on really.
Even very casually though, long before you'd get into mp and random maps, I think for most people homm3 is gonna be more comfortable to get into than homm2, because of the way the economy is structured.
You can make a lot more mistakes with how you're spending your money in homm2, the difference between weekly dwelling cost, and your weekly income has a huge disparity in homm2, and even getting the structure itself could be a huge mistake in homm2.
Meanwhile 3, at least in the release form (but the sentiment remains to this day, see: people shitting on Fortress), suffered from very poorly balanced factions. Not a big deal in campaigns, a total deal-breaker in MP. Hence the various "no faction X" restrictions people self-impose (when playing with friends, we have "No Bastion", because frick skellington spam, when Bastion has absurd income). So who cares if you are good, if you are playing as some unplayable faction or get eclipsed by a guy who might be objectively worse than you, but has stronger units, heroes and/or economy. Ever saw anyone voluntarily playing as Inferno?
Oh, right, the classic Polish brain-fart.
I meant Rampart.
It's the constant mental gymnastic to remember which one is which, especially since in Polish release, Fortress was turned into a Citadel, and Tower became Fortress. ENDLESS confusion.
>suffered from very poorly balanced factions
That was an issue in 2 as well. Alongside much weaker gold economy than 3, and the 6 units/5 army slots thing.
Second game was the most interesting to explore, third suffers from everything to begin looking the same (each castle have warrior and caster heroes, everyone have at least 1 flying unit etc).
Also, levelling and spellbook in third was absolute trash. You have enough space to grab all needed perks every campaign (Logistics, Earth magic, Wind magic).
>QoL changes? BEGONE, THOT!
Let me guess - WoG offering an option for the witch to ask if you really want to learn Eagle Eye is also wrong and against the spirit of the game?
Nah, but the point still stands. HoMM 3 doesn't have any meaningful variety of heroes builds, you always have space to grab all must-have perk and roll over the map
>the point still stands >HoMM 3 doesn't have any meaningful variety of heroes builds
Oh, so you were baiting the whole time? Or never played 2 and 3, but try to discuss both, which is just embarrassing
I've never understood the rampant fanboyism for 3. Is it just because it was all your first game? Like it's good sure, but it's no better than a handful of the other games in the series. They're all basically the same thing.
4 is the worst game of all time.
5 is fine, but uninspired, a lesser version of 3.
6 and later games are alright.
2 is great, but not very accessible.
1 is a lesser version of 2.
What makes 3 any better? I wouldn't say the art is any better than any of the others except maybe 1 and 6 onwards. They all look pleasant and have their own art styles. The gameplay is the same as most of the other games. The story is barely there. I just don't see that much difference between these games except when you played them and the ones that are inherently broken or unfinished.
The armor is pretty impractical. It exposes a lot of the mail, it's made out of too many pieces, the shoulderplates are too big, which would lead to a lot of hits bouncing and hitting the head and the wings on the helm are just dumb, someone could just take his helm off, unless it's also supported by the chin, in which case he can be strangled
Noone mentioned Heroes III Chronicles so far in this thread. Official made, all canon, 8 separate campaigns, with separate launchers, avaible from GoG.
To the guy who said he was filtered by the base game, these ones seem even easier.
because those are not worth mentioning.
The "game" is 8 piss-easy maps and you are locked out of all standard heroes 3 content.
No single maps. No hotseat and multiplayer. No RMG. only said 8 maps. paid "story" DLC as it is.
https://heroes.thelazy.net/index.php/Random_Map
i like playing with random maps, but ive only played for a week, so i cant tell you about seeing the same layout or not with much accuracy.
if by "entry" you mean "an experience so discouraging and shit you decide the entire genre is worthless trash", sure, songs of conquest is a great entry title.
If you're on android you can extract the data files from the installer by doing this >install termux >install innoextract >setup storage >use innoextract on the GOG installer
When you have done all that, there should be a data folder inside the app folder
Key features of this release are: >Support for simultaneous turns >Support for turn timers >Quick selection of starting heroes and towns >High Scores screen and tracking of completed campaigns >Improvements for Map Editor >As well as over a hundred of various bugfixes and minor improvements.
>(Note: update on Google Play will be available in a few hours)
Playing through the campaigns with nullkiller ai and motherfricker just plain rushes at me with few dozens of champions and hundreds of ranged units from emptied garrisons in Steadwick's Fall, gladly i have berserk and mass slow spells to abuse. Steadwick itself stays occupied and i haven't yet tried to bait its hero out.
No, it's missing the expansions, random map generator, and so forth. Get Heroes of Might and Magic 3 Complete from GOG and install the HD mod and the SoD_SP plugin and you are set for a long time.
>and the SoD_SP
I wouldn't reccomend it to a first-time player since it comes with a lot of shit that you should turn off. I'd recomend trying it after completing RoE(assuming that's the first campaign that you play) since that's around when you get a feel for what each thing does.
If you complete RoE, AB and SoD and you want more content, you should check out HotA
Man, I want zombies buffed so bad for the next patch, they're so fricking shit. Like seriously, give them a corpse explosion on click ability or something when you got a stack of them dead and damage everything nearby, that'd make them so much more tactical.
Another idea I had is making animated facial pictures for every hero, that'd give them so much character. The way I imagine it'd be is that they'll stay mostly static, but then occasionally come into life before returning to their initial position and staying static again. Oh, and give them unique horse graphics too, it's been long overdue.
Can you play og campaigns with HotA balance? If not, I guess that's where SoD_SP becomes handy.
1 - Hammer of the Gods, King's Bounty reskin - totally outdated, even back then
2 - the peak of the series, albeit with some mechanics you can abuse
3 - souless 3d renders, shitshow of a story, more balanced mechanics but crapload of new redudant units, meant only to mask the lack of progress, creative void "i heard you like dragons, so how about black dragons, red dragons, gold dragons, flaming dragons"
4, 5 - no one cared
i'd recommend the 3rd one to the more autistically inclined people, because it has the longest tables with stats and whatnot, but for story, campaigns, comfiness i liked the 2nd one more.
does the formula still hold in 2023? kinda, if it's your first contact with "rts, but turn based", you're going to have a blast. for me the novelty wore off, lots of it is just fluff that adds little, like the only reason to go into tactic battles is to cheese the AI. Wesnoth distilled the essence, even Warords 2&3 respect the player's time and attention more.
What is it with zoomers going all "lul, WOW grafix" when talking about 5? Evil Islands and Etherlords 1 (made by the same dev as 5) predate it by nearly 4 years.
Because I'm still fricking seething that's why. And it's not a zoomer thing, a lot of people at the time thought it didn't fit the franchise. And it really didn't, shit was unnecessary.
That was the big hype of the time, M&M also moved towards that style. It's like how everyone nowadays uses that stupid "realistic" glossy UE5 look.
If anything, HoMM3 still managed to maintain good aesthetic, its sharp looks and crispiness despite going >3d, but it obviously lost a lot of soul, its magical fantasy feel by doing that. It still gets carried a lot with its music and visual design though.
Ah shit, didn't notice it was towards 5, lol. Then I agree, shit looks like a mobile game, I don't even hate on models, it's the UI and those terrible free use fonts. UI took a massive nosedive in 4 already with its terrible coloring, it just looks so cheap and placeholder'y.
Oh well, might as well discuss 3's transition to 3d, the consequence of which we're suffering through to this day.
>play warlock >get barbarian main >fight other warlocks
something very satisfying about it, rolling up on a high level warlock, who's got like 1 attack skill and 5 defense skill.
14 spell power which won't help him at all.
That's how I've won the Dragon Island mission in Archibald's campaign. I was supposed to rush to the dragon and ignore the other players, but I had none of that. I started as a barbarian and made use of the nearby hill fort to capture a warlock castle. I did it on day 7, so I got his new units to defend against his hero. I then built and upgraded the dragon tower in it and used the dragons on my barb hero to capture the other warlock castle.
Barbarian heroes in homm2 are severely underrated, the only problem is that they have a very low chance to learn wisdom, the chance is about the same as learning necromancy on a warlock and if you've played homm2 you'll know that's not a good chance.
The more I play, the more I feel like wisdom isn't really that key anyway.
I still always want it, but it doesn't matter most of the time.
Dimension Door and Town Portal are amazing spells, but even on big maps they're not guaranteed to make it into play in time.
Having a spell book can be pretty important tho.
Like not having cure/dispel magic when they can blind you can be game ending.
A blind at the right time even when it only lasts 1-2 turns can be great, same with slow/haste.
My last game my two main heroes ended up being a barbarian and a knight.
They went separate ways on the map with titans, the knight managed to get basic wisdom, so he could open every fight with Anti-Magic which made his advance super safe.
Later on I did get a sorceress with dimension door, and it maybe made me close out the game a few days faster.
A few years ago I decided to try playing without spell books at all and it ended up going pretty smooth.
That was before I got into fheroes2 tho.
In my copy of Shadow of Death I got heroes3.vid and video.vid archives inside the data folder. I think these are in Bink and Smacker video formats, so you would also need relevant dlls too to play them.
Ah yeah, tried an install from a different mirror and now they work, files must've been missing from the one I used first.
In my copy of Shadow of Death I got heroes3.vid and video.vid archives inside the data folder. I think these are in Bink and Smacker video formats, so you would also need relevant dlls too to play them.
Anyone have the actual CDs from back in the day? Homm2 has such a legit instruction book it was a borderline strategy guide for each unit and a walkthrough for the tutorial.
Was 3 like that?
homm1 manual had a lot of story explaining the gameplay iirc >homm1
https://archive.org/details/Heroes_of_Might_and_Magic_I_Manual >homm2
https://www.oldgames.sk/en/game/heroes-of-might-and-magic-2-the-succession-wars/download/3816/ >homm3
https://heroes3wog.net/download/[Heroes%203]%20Restoration%20of%20Erathia%20Manual.pdf
How does Heroes 1 tie in with M&M4/5? That bit was always unclear to me. Heroes 2 takes place before M&M6, Heroes 3 takes place after 6 and before 7 and 8, but the relation between the first one and Xeen was always somewhat nebulous to me.
H1 doesn't tie with 4/5. It ties with MM1. Morglin's father was Lord Ironfist, ruling in Castle Whiteshield in VARN4 of CRON2. Morglin's father was then killed by his uncle who then became Lord Ironfist. When he died, his cousing Ragnar became Lord Ironfist. Morglin hired a wizard named Guthbert to kill him, but Guthbert was caught. Morglin than left on a "hunting expedition", where he accidentally found a portal to Enroth, trough which he could not go back. If you want to know more, read the letters from H1's manual.
Also, M&M4/5 don't really tie with any later games. There's even a theory that they take place after MM9, but imo that theory doesn't really make sense since it is stated in Corak's logs in MM5 that the trip from Terra to XEEN was a quick one and that he saw the adventurers from MM3 just before his ship crashed in XEEN. This implies the fact that the adventurer's ship went trough the atmosphere of XEEN, but it didn't actually hit XEEN, and the ship continued it's course, in which it eventually reached the planet of Enroth and the adventurers took part in MM7.
>Expand Battle Only mode with saving functionality and updated UI >Add Town and Ocean objects placement in the Editor, and implement base file format for maps (accessible only for developers at the moment) >Improve the logic of AI defensive tactics >Rework multiple dialogs, fix and speed up several rendering issues >Over 30 issues have been closed since the 1.0.10 release
kek, before realizing it is a christmas theme I saw the boar, recalled the authors added some unnecessary oc units to the roster and was like >horned boar, what the frick is that upgrade supposed to be
>VCMI release 1.4.2 is now available. This is one of our largest hotfixes we ever released, with over 60 changes in total.
>Download links can be found here: https://github.com/vcmi/vcmi/releases/tag/1.4.2
>Main changes:
>Restored support for Windows 7 and 32-bit systems >Fixed crash on macOS arm and on iOS devices >Improvements to random map generator >Implemented quick backpack window, activated via mouse wheel / finger swipe >Implemented spell search function in spellbook >Multiple fixes for turn timers functionality >As well as multiple fixes for various bugs and crashes
Decided to play homm2
Seven Lakes
but
going after the neutral cities first, and only using one hero(except for getting rid of items)
Got a shit score, Crusader, 107 days
compared to the usual like 40 days, Black Dragon.
The Solo game took less than 2 hours, while those other games take 3-4, so was kinda fun and chill.
Was a lil' worried about not getting Wisdom for dimension door, like I'd get trapped in an endless whackamole, but it wasn't so bad.
Of these skills, in this particular game, I'd rate them this in order of importance
Pathfinding>Logistics>Diplomacy=Archery>Navigation>Leadership>Ballistics=Scouting.
Navigation might even be above Archery/Diplo.
Scouting I got so late, but early on it could've been helpful.
If you just reload an earlier save you're still on the same RNG seed, so you'll get the same skills.
Need to take different skills leading up to that point, use witch huts/universities or restart the map entirely.
Yes, start with H1 if you can stand really old and basic gameplay, and some ugly art.
Start with H2 if you want to start with the really good games (H2/H3/H5).
Should I get the Steam versions?
Piracy or GOG, no one that made the games gets paid, other than a bunch of slimy frenchmen.
There is also an open source version of H2 ala OpenRA if you want an even harder version of it.
>Piracy
Frick off.
>Paying frogs for ~~*licenses*~~ for 20 year old games that they didn't even make.
It is your money to flush down the drain.
The company that made that game ceased to exist before you were born, you dumb moron. Ubisoft literally bought for cheap dormant rights. Paying them is the dumbest thing imaginable, especially since their re-release of the game is working worse than the original, especially on Steam, which further fricked shit up.
Why do zoomers fear the torrent, how did they grow up to be such absolute cattle?
>Be zoomer
>Be born into a world with internet
>Be born into a world with streaming
>Be born into a world with social media
>Be born into a world with smartphones
>Be born into a world with live services
>Be born into a world with subscriptions
>Be born into a world with omnipresent DRM
>Be born into a world with endless commercials
>Be born into a world that sells competence as a hassle
... and they literally don't know anything else
I would agree with you, but my brother in christ, it's on sale for 2.49 .
suo, Yves?
V is pretty good if you go online, the story is so simple and dumb that you should only play it to see the basics of the game for each faction.
My only advice is to NOT be passive and wait since every turn counts.
People like you disgust me for supporting the predatorial practice of holding rights to a work past the original creator's, grandkid's lifespan. Do you seriously believe you are supporting any developers or otherwise giving a positive contribution by paying rights holders that have frick all to do with the original game?
>piracy
1) It’s unfiting term
2) Nothing gets stolen by copying files
3) The supposed loss of profit is pure mental gymnastics based on many assumptions and ‘what if’s’ not to forget the completely arbitrary cost of the product itself.
You forgot the most crucial part of this specific case:
4) The company responsible for making the game was dissolved 20 years ago, and profits nothing; the copyright is owned by a third party corporation that did frick-all to ever make those games and just bought copyright once the original holders went bankrupt
So it's an extra level of mental gymnastics of "providing for the makers", when the makers retired from the industry 15-20 years ago and are denied any profit the game is making to its current owner. It's like that old Czech joke, where the guy sells a single brick and then demands full rent to be paid to him once the house is build.
The company that currently owns the IP (and to whom your money will go to if you buy the game) is Ubisoft. They didn't make the game. They bought the series, and they fricked it up. I'd argue that giving them money for this is a lot more imoral than piracy
Holy cattle
>I MUST pay for product
Pathetic paypig.
GOG is your only choice. Most classic HoMM titles aren't even available on Steam, and the HD version of HoMM3 on Steam is a disaster; it's missing expansions and is not compatible with mods.
NO
HoMM1's art is better than the later entries thoughever, it's charming and colourful
HoMM3 has great gameplay but looks like a muddy mess
Get your eyes checked.
He's right tho.
Graphics wise, 1>2>5>7>6>3>4
Have you seen the fricking dragons in that game, or the gargoyle, or the firebird, or the Black person!?
Yes I have. They tried to be original for once instead of just doing what everyone else did, and I appreciate that.
Besides, they don't even look that bad.
You have to specify the Black person unit, because there are multiple that you can classify as Black folk in the game. E.g barbarian faction had green goblins (those looked funny), ogres, and cyclopses, but any of those can be classified as any brownoids, from abos to amerimutts. Or if you meant pikemen from the knight faction, which can be written off as dirt. Or if you meant the centaur from warlock faction, but it had a native americanish vibe to it.
Purple dragon was an odd choice, but it wasn't that bad. Gargoyle actually looked great in blue. Griffin looked great. Hydra looked great. Minotaurs looked funny.
Firebird looked amazing. Rest of the faction looked great. Pixie was a bit out of place, like a bawd with wings.
Human faction was great, except the pikeman.
Barbarian could be sold as either australian faction with abos, or american faction with Black folk. Goblin as squatemalans (or asians in Australia), pig orks as zogbots (keep in mind Duke Nukem 3d was came out at that era, and had boars as LAPD zogbots), wolf as doge maniacs (or dingos in Australia), ogres as sportsball Black folk, especially baseball for americans, purple trolls are trannies, cyclopses on top are semites, israelites with the lasers.
Sorceress was obviously the token female faction. Feminists, bawds, treehuggers, and unicorns that c**ts like.
Knight was the good boy faction. Warlock was the bad boy faction.
My favourite unit in the game was the Paladin in golden armor. Swordsman with big mustache was also great. Old archer was also great. Even liked the peasants looks, too bad they were near useless. Did not like the cavalry though, but I guess every faction needed at least one long unit.
>5 looking better than 3
Opinion discarded
3 easily looked the best, but the one thing 5 did better was the town screens. I used to spend hours just looking around when the game came out, they looked so fricking pretty with the HDR lightning and free 3d rotation.
3's towns looked like pleasant wallpapers, with good town music. 5's are just cheapo early 3d slop.
The only ones really matter are the 2d ones, because 3d is gay. All 2d by default are better than all 3d entries. The ranking though. 1 or 3 is both acceptable for best. I lean toward 3, because it was more refined, but I did appreciate the colorfullness of 1 as well.
So mine is graphics wise:
3>1>2
>2d is inherently better than 2d
by that logic, 3 should be at the bottom since it just uses 3d models pre-rendered into 2d sprites
Don't know the tech behind it, but it works, and the all that they player sees (aside from intro videos) is 2d.
The intro videos are no more 3d than the rest of the game since they are also pre-rendered
1-3 are the only one really good, and 3 is considered the "full experience"
4 had good ideas, but the company went under half-way through
5 is "what if 3, but shit and made by Russians"
Everything after that is just Ubisoft preying on brand recognition
If you plan to get into 3, DO NOT buy the "HD version". It's a shitty done reskin of the BASELINE game. You are literally scammed out of your money.
Any gay that tells you to try mods right off the bat is a moron, anyone pushing HotA right from the start is a homosexual and a moron
>5 is "what if 3, but shit and made by Russians"
Maaaan, frick you pidor!
Frick YOU, leatherman
4 started out as some MMO thing that they had to convert to a Heroes game halfway through because the company was about to go bankrupt.
5 was the first decent new sequel to it and TRIED to stay close to the old games, but it didn't quite managed to. It also had this horrible WoW unit design that every later game also did.
If you want a fun historical experience, just play them all. If I could only pick one to recommend though, it'd be 5.
>it'd be 5.
I can get 2 vs 3 arguments. I can get people pushing 1, for the very essence of the game.
But (You)? Come on, anon.
It's the best of the modern games and has the most content. If he's not going to play through all of them because old games, that's the best entry point. If you can't see that, you might be a sycophant.
5 is a brilliant game but it's not the best introduction to the series.
Silly anon, clearly the best introduction would be Might and Magic: Heroes Kingdoms
>closed 2 years ago
Rip
huh, thought it got shut down almost 10 years ago
>It's the best of the modern games
Being least awful of three shitty games made by other companies doesn't make you good, you know.
5 is pretty good, but 3 is hands down the best. If you want to get 5, get ToE stand alone and install the 5.5 mod. Been playing that recently and it's pretty fun.
HoMM 3
Also Factory never ever.
I don't understand whats so hard about modding a new faction in
The fact the only guy capable of coding in the entire team died, run by a car?
The fact two of the members of the team fled country from conscription?
The fact third got sent do a front?
If you can't think of another reason, you should at least try HOMM3 because it is a legendary game
I have been playing it since 1998, and I have run into so many random people from all over the world who have played this game. If a person is a gamer, and from Russia or Eastern Europe, they probably have heard of HOMM. And there are tons of memes
I think recently, World of Warships was doing a HoMM3 collab. Not Might and Magic as a whole, no, just specifically HoMM3, the game from 20 years ago. Everyone I know who heard about it just said "why are they doing this, who cares?" but that specific game really is a fricking pillar of former Soviet culture.
And just like with everything Russians love, there's a massive amount of gachi memes.
That's a good set of white teeth for a skeleton.
3 is the perfection.
4 is near good. Campaign stories are written very good.
Everything past that is utterly shit.
3&5 are the best series has to offer.
4&6 are novelties you can play after finishing 3 and 5.
1&2 are for pulling epeen rank online, there really are many better games now.
7 is just low budget trash.
>1&2 are for pulling epeen rank online
2 is basically 3, Its a great game
>t. started with 5 and only ever checked 3 for memes, but got filtered
>4&6 are novelties you can play after finishing 3 and 5.
You just told me that you never played 6 without outright telling me that you never played 6. OP, if you're reading this, don't bother with that dumpster fire. It's one of the worst games ever made
I actually finished "most" of the campaigns.
The amount of skills on units leads to neat combos and tactics. No RNG in leveling allows you to actually plan out your character growth.
But then it started to bug out on even simplest scripts and all you do is convert all the cities and lairs to your own.
4 is still simply better than 6.
Maybe, but from perspective of someone uninitiated (guessing from the fact that OP is even asking), playing 3 is more than enough when there are so many other games.
Not only 3 is not that hard of a game, it is mostly solved by this point. You literally can not be filtered by it.
>4 is simply better than 6
I never said that it wasn't. My post was about 6.
>You literally can not be filtered by it.
You'd be surprised. And I mean really fricking surprised.
This is particularly apparent when you have people who play it as the other anon described: started with (modded) 5, then checked the "legendary" 3 and are completely overwhelmed by the game, even if they read the Tribute and similar. Then there are also gays who read those, but go directly for HotA and their get asses whooped due to the amount of shit HotA changes and thus invalidating their knowledge about the game.
So it's not a hard game, true. And it is mostly solved, too. But that doesn't mean it can't filter people out.
Start from 1.
>I: Very basic gameplay, easy to learn, very pretty art, not very fun, but it's ok to screw around with.
>II: Better gameplay, slightly more complex, art devolved though, but it's kind of fun in it's own way.
>III: Good gameplay, slightly more complex, great art, good music, and it's fun, AI will be the limiting factor of game enjoyment.
>IV: Ok gameplay, plenty of new ideas for the game, some for the worse, great music, 3d is meh, it's ok to play with, AI is fricking moronic.
>V: It was a chore to play, most ideas reverted from IV, some shouldn't have been, 3d is bad, ok music, play it once and be done with it.
>VI: Dumbed down, streamlined, mediocre mass produced, art is ok, ok music, never finished it.
>VII: Never even tried it.
>>II: Better gameplay, slightly more complex, art devolved though, but it's kind of fun in it's own way.
>>IV: Ok gameplay, plenty of new ideas for the game, some for the worse, great music, 3d is meh, it's ok to play with, AI is fricking moronic.
>>V: It was a chore to play, most ideas reverted from IV, some shouldn't have been, 3d is bad, ok music, play it once and be done with it.
What a frickign contrarian
You gotta be more specific about your complaint.
II was straight upgrade of the first game in everything from music to art and gameplay.
IV was far from ok from gameplay perspective.
V was straight improvement of the III and IV, managed to find a way to resolve issues of III without ending up as mess like IV
Lol quite opposite I was born 2 years before first HoMM came out.
II: I did mean 2 was straight improvement in everything but art. I disliked the tiny undetailed creatures, instead of well drawn ones that 1 had. As to music, I played both of those titles without music mostly. Used to play 1 and 2 when they were current, used to be moved between people on many floppy disks, and music was edited out of them to save space. Only heard their music in replays after they came out on GoG decades later, and by then I wasn't very interested. But the art, as in how creatures look was a massive downgrade from 1.
IV: played it when it was new, I liked the heroes moving alone, I liked them participating in battle, I enjoyed playing sneaky hero solo defeating armies, using potion of immortaly in every round, and taking out most of the enemy just with retalliation. I liked being able to use units to pick up resources, instead of using my limited number of heroes, I liked that creature recruiting sites collected creatures once flagged, and didn't have to farm them every week. I liked caravans. I liked single tier I creatures picking up a resource and before dying. I liked hero being able to flee and does not need to be paid for to be recruited again. I liked the idea of jails (though execution of heroes would have been better). Things that I did not like is 3d combat, the shitty creature manned towers in cities, and the AI being unable to handle a tough hero, and jumping on and off towers. I did not like that I had to pick between different creatures to recruit, instead of having all of them. It was an ok game, until I figured out the essentially immortal hero, and every game got extremely one sided, boring and repetitive.
V: I played it as an adult, and cringed so hard at the new goblin design, and them talking to the hero in a campaign that from there I hated the whole thing. That and liking the wizard factions (floating city) town music are the only specific things that I remember from the game, despite completing all the campaigns.
>If you aren't parroting 20 yo memes, you are contrarian
>t. zoomer who played none of those games and was born around the time V was made
>i: very pretty art
>ii: art devolved though
well, I kinda like the second one better, it's more detailed and less cartoonish
>iii: great art
oh I see, you're just moronic
>HoMM III
>great art
Who are these people, and what's their disability called? HoMM III's art is ugly as sin prerendered sprites that don't even fit together.
It's 2d, pleasant to look at, both units and towns are great.
now if only they were made in the same art style
You're blind.
the best HOMM is CoH
If you want to meme with eastern euros, start with 3(+HotA)
If you only care about gameplay play 5.
If you care about lore, play the might and magic RPGs (1 trough 5) then play homm1 and 2 then mm6 then homm3 RoE and SoD, then MM7, then homm3 AB, then MM8, then homm4, and finally MM9
If you really wanna explore the series, you can play campaigns 1-3.
If you just wanna see if you can get into the game play 3.
If you like it but want something different try 2.
My favourite in the series is 2, but I only slightly prefer it over 3, and I recognize that 3 is much more palatable to most people.
I consider 2 a straight upgrade from 1, and 3 a sidegrade from 2.
Post 3 is irrelevant.
The main selling point of 3 is pretty simple: really solid random map generator combined with hot-seat option. This made the game literally timeless. 2 has the same problem as AoW had - it is a better gameplay, but it has very low replayability on its own and just sucks in MP.
>and just sucks in MP.
I play more homm2 than homm3, but if I were to play homm against other people 3 would easily be my pick.
The rehiring spell spam just gets moronic in homm2.
Theoretically addressed in the fheroes2 version, since spell points and movement points don't get reset when rehiring, but nothing I'd bank on really.
Even very casually though, long before you'd get into mp and random maps, I think for most people homm3 is gonna be more comfortable to get into than homm2, because of the way the economy is structured.
You can make a lot more mistakes with how you're spending your money in homm2, the difference between weekly dwelling cost, and your weekly income has a huge disparity in homm2, and even getting the structure itself could be a huge mistake in homm2.
Meanwhile 3, at least in the release form (but the sentiment remains to this day, see: people shitting on Fortress), suffered from very poorly balanced factions. Not a big deal in campaigns, a total deal-breaker in MP. Hence the various "no faction X" restrictions people self-impose (when playing with friends, we have "No Bastion", because frick skellington spam, when Bastion has absurd income). So who cares if you are good, if you are playing as some unplayable faction or get eclipsed by a guy who might be objectively worse than you, but has stronger units, heroes and/or economy. Ever saw anyone voluntarily playing as Inferno?
>Bastion
Oh, right, the classic Polish brain-fart.
I meant Rampart.
It's the constant mental gymnastic to remember which one is which, especially since in Polish release, Fortress was turned into a Citadel, and Tower became Fortress. ENDLESS confusion.
>suffered from very poorly balanced factions
That was an issue in 2 as well. Alongside much weaker gold economy than 3, and the 6 units/5 army slots thing.
Second game was the most interesting to explore, third suffers from everything to begin looking the same (each castle have warrior and caster heroes, everyone have at least 1 flying unit etc).
Also, levelling and spellbook in third was absolute trash. You have enough space to grab all needed perks every campaign (Logistics, Earth magic, Wind magic).
>QoL changes? BEGONE, THOT!
Let me guess - WoG offering an option for the witch to ask if you really want to learn Eagle Eye is also wrong and against the spirit of the game?
Nah, but the point still stands. HoMM 3 doesn't have any meaningful variety of heroes builds, you always have space to grab all must-have perk and roll over the map
>the point still stands
>HoMM 3 doesn't have any meaningful variety of heroes builds
Oh, so you were baiting the whole time? Or never played 2 and 3, but try to discuss both, which is just embarrassing
Anyway to play the original HoMMV and HoF campaigns in proper widescreen? They didn't add proper widescreen support until ToE
The 5.5 fanpatch maybe?
HEROES 3
ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES
I've never understood the rampant fanboyism for 3. Is it just because it was all your first game? Like it's good sure, but it's no better than a handful of the other games in the series. They're all basically the same thing.
4 is the worst game of all time.
5 is fine, but uninspired, a lesser version of 3.
6 and later games are alright.
2 is great, but not very accessible.
1 is a lesser version of 2.
What makes 3 any better? I wouldn't say the art is any better than any of the others except maybe 1 and 6 onwards. They all look pleasant and have their own art styles. The gameplay is the same as most of the other games. The story is barely there. I just don't see that much difference between these games except when you played them and the ones that are inherently broken or unfinished.
i like the 4th game the most
embarrassing
>6
>alright
>4 is the worst game of all time.
>6 and later games are alright.
2 is great, but not very accessible.
>2 is great, but not very accessible.
Yeah that's true, it's great
>Shark
That is clearly a Killer Whale/Orca
4 has a very interesting premise that rarely gets to shine in fantasy. Also a beautiful soundtrack... too bad playing the game is a total chore
That is sweet as armor, but the worldbuilding is pretty shit.
>Stag Duchy
>Unicorn Duchy
>Greyhound Duchy
>Bull Duchy
>Wolf Duchy
>Raven Duchy
Many fricks were given.
The armor is pretty impractical. It exposes a lot of the mail, it's made out of too many pieces, the shoulderplates are too big, which would lead to a lot of hits bouncing and hitting the head and the wings on the helm are just dumb, someone could just take his helm off, unless it's also supported by the chin, in which case he can be strangled
>i just read ASOIAF
>That is sweet as armor, but the worldbuilding is pretty shit.
It's utilitarian. And carried only by some concept arts and city-screen
cant play homm5 graphic looks embarrassing bad, people often say its like warcraft 3 but its much worse than wc3
HEROES3
E
R
O
E
S
3
No, not really
V is decent i guess
III is good if you are a nostalgia gay or want to seem quirky and cultured
>You are not allowed to like things, you can only do so ironically
Hipsters and zoomers were a mistake. Both should be removed
Noone mentioned Heroes III Chronicles so far in this thread. Official made, all canon, 8 separate campaigns, with separate launchers, avaible from GoG.
To the guy who said he was filtered by the base game, these ones seem even easier.
because those are not worth mentioning.
The "game" is 8 piss-easy maps and you are locked out of all standard heroes 3 content.
No single maps. No hotseat and multiplayer. No RMG. only said 8 maps. paid "story" DLC as it is.
It's free if you torrent it (or download it from a gog sharing site). Also could serve as extended tutorial for zoomers.
Also wanted to add, that it's 8 maps per campaign.
And wanted to ask what RMG is?
random map generator
Are random maps any good? How random are they? As in never seeing the same layout twice? Or preset semi-random elements puzzled together?
https://heroes.thelazy.net/index.php/Random_Map
i like playing with random maps, but ive only played for a week, so i cant tell you about seeing the same layout or not with much accuracy.
Songs of Conquest would probably be the best zoomer entry to the 'genre'
kys
Has nice sprites, but the game itself is pretty trash and I doubt it's out of "early access" anyway
>Game that is nothing like actual HoMM should be best way to gate-keep zoomers
ftfy
I need to pick it up during a sale.
Seemed better than homm2+3 in some respects, but it's gonna be hard to get past my nostalgia.
if by "entry" you mean "an experience so discouraging and shit you decide the entire genre is worthless trash", sure, songs of conquest is a great entry title.
It's too SJW-y for me.
?
i didnt read any of this thread but the only real heroes games were made by NWC and his excellence JVC. the rest is just fake slavshit or ubishit
>and his excellence JVC
so h4 is not a real heroes then?
that is correct
I've only played 5 but I enjoyed it, human cities with a giant angel monument with human OSTs was pretty kino
Anyone has a link for game files needed for vcmi?
GOG Games
Any torrent site worth it's salt has h3 complete.
You need to install those on pc first, which I can't do right now. I did find a portable version, will try it.
If you're on android you can extract the data files from the installer by doing this
>install termux
>install innoextract
>setup storage
>use innoextract on the GOG installer
When you have done all that, there should be a data folder inside the app folder
Oh, thanks, I'll try that!
VCMI 1.4 is out!
Key features of this release are:
>Support for simultaneous turns
>Support for turn timers
>Quick selection of starting heroes and towns
>High Scores screen and tracking of completed campaigns
>Improvements for Map Editor
>As well as over a hundred of various bugfixes and minor improvements.
>(Note: update on Google Play will be available in a few hours)
Playing through the campaigns with nullkiller ai and motherfricker just plain rushes at me with few dozens of champions and hundreds of ranged units from emptied garrisons in Steadwick's Fall, gladly i have berserk and mass slow spells to abuse. Steadwick itself stays occupied and i haven't yet tried to bait its hero out.
There is an HD version of homm3 on steam
Is it worth getting over the normal one?
Never played any of the games btw
No, it's missing the expansions, random map generator, and so forth. Get Heroes of Might and Magic 3 Complete from GOG and install the HD mod and the SoD_SP plugin and you are set for a long time.
>and the SoD_SP
I wouldn't reccomend it to a first-time player since it comes with a lot of shit that you should turn off. I'd recomend trying it after completing RoE(assuming that's the first campaign that you play) since that's around when you get a feel for what each thing does.
If you complete RoE, AB and SoD and you want more content, you should check out HotA
Man, I want zombies buffed so bad for the next patch, they're so fricking shit. Like seriously, give them a corpse explosion on click ability or something when you got a stack of them dead and damage everything nearby, that'd make them so much more tactical.
Another idea I had is making animated facial pictures for every hero, that'd give them so much character. The way I imagine it'd be is that they'll stay mostly static, but then occasionally come into life before returning to their initial position and staying static again. Oh, and give them unique horse graphics too, it's been long overdue.
Can you play og campaigns with HotA balance? If not, I guess that's where SoD_SP becomes handy.
>Thread mentions half a dozen times to not buy the HD version from Steam
>sHoUlD i BuY hD oN sTeAm?
if you wanna laugh/gouge your eyes out look up the Era of Chaos mobile game
1 - Hammer of the Gods, King's Bounty reskin - totally outdated, even back then
2 - the peak of the series, albeit with some mechanics you can abuse
3 - souless 3d renders, shitshow of a story, more balanced mechanics but crapload of new redudant units, meant only to mask the lack of progress, creative void "i heard you like dragons, so how about black dragons, red dragons, gold dragons, flaming dragons"
4, 5 - no one cared
i'd recommend the 3rd one to the more autistically inclined people, because it has the longest tables with stats and whatnot, but for story, campaigns, comfiness i liked the 2nd one more.
does the formula still hold in 2023? kinda, if it's your first contact with "rts, but turn based", you're going to have a blast. for me the novelty wore off, lots of it is just fluff that adds little, like the only reason to go into tactic battles is to cheese the AI. Wesnoth distilled the essence, even Warords 2&3 respect the player's time and attention more.
Here is the (You)
What is it with zoomers going all "lul, WOW grafix" when talking about 5? Evil Islands and Etherlords 1 (made by the same dev as 5) predate it by nearly 4 years.
Because zoomers don't know nothing outside of list "top 100 old games!"
HoMM3 purist only play 3 so they don't know those games existed.
Evil Islands is one of the most profoundly ugly games I've ever played.
Because I'm still fricking seething that's why. And it's not a zoomer thing, a lot of people at the time thought it didn't fit the franchise. And it really didn't, shit was unnecessary.
That was the big hype of the time, M&M also moved towards that style. It's like how everyone nowadays uses that stupid "realistic" glossy UE5 look.
If anything, HoMM3 still managed to maintain good aesthetic, its sharp looks and crispiness despite going >3d, but it obviously lost a lot of soul, its magical fantasy feel by doing that. It still gets carried a lot with its music and visual design though.
Ah shit, didn't notice it was towards 5, lol. Then I agree, shit looks like a mobile game, I don't even hate on models, it's the UI and those terrible free use fonts. UI took a massive nosedive in 4 already with its terrible coloring, it just looks so cheap and placeholder'y.
Oh well, might as well discuss 3's transition to 3d, the consequence of which we're suffering through to this day.
>play warlock
>get barbarian main
>fight other warlocks
something very satisfying about it, rolling up on a high level warlock, who's got like 1 attack skill and 5 defense skill.
14 spell power which won't help him at all.
nice
my ancestor..
Spellcasting in Heroes 1 was so weird. Dunno why they went with that pseudo-D&D thing.
That's how I've won the Dragon Island mission in Archibald's campaign. I was supposed to rush to the dragon and ignore the other players, but I had none of that. I started as a barbarian and made use of the nearby hill fort to capture a warlock castle. I did it on day 7, so I got his new units to defend against his hero. I then built and upgraded the dragon tower in it and used the dragons on my barb hero to capture the other warlock castle.
Barbarian heroes in homm2 are severely underrated, the only problem is that they have a very low chance to learn wisdom, the chance is about the same as learning necromancy on a warlock and if you've played homm2 you'll know that's not a good chance.
The more I play, the more I feel like wisdom isn't really that key anyway.
I still always want it, but it doesn't matter most of the time.
Dimension Door and Town Portal are amazing spells, but even on big maps they're not guaranteed to make it into play in time.
Having a spell book can be pretty important tho.
Like not having cure/dispel magic when they can blind you can be game ending.
A blind at the right time even when it only lasts 1-2 turns can be great, same with slow/haste.
My last game my two main heroes ended up being a barbarian and a knight.
They went separate ways on the map with titans, the knight managed to get basic wisdom, so he could open every fight with Anti-Magic which made his advance super safe.
Later on I did get a sorceress with dimension door, and it maybe made me close out the game a few days faster.
A few years ago I decided to try playing without spell books at all and it ended up going pretty smooth.
That was before I got into fheroes2 tho.
Grabbed Heroes 3 Complete off gog-games and HD mod and am playing campaign, but all the cutscenes seem to be broken/missing, any Anons know a fix?
Botched installer? I got HD and everything works fine.
Ah yeah, tried an install from a different mirror and now they work, files must've been missing from the one I used first.
In my copy of Shadow of Death I got heroes3.vid and video.vid archives inside the data folder. I think these are in Bink and Smacker video formats, so you would also need relevant dlls too to play them.
>HD mod and am playing campaign
You might also want to install this plugin:
https://heroes3wog.net/sod_sp-plugin-v1-18-0-for-hd-mod/
Why are cyclopes in HOMM3 not a unit that people seem to make much use of even though they are so scary to face?
Weren't they gigahomie expensive or something?
Usually you only have enough tiberium for either bears or clopses.
If we need an expensive gigashooter, might as well just go for TITANU instead.
Because they require a shit-ton of crystals
Anyone have the actual CDs from back in the day? Homm2 has such a legit instruction book it was a borderline strategy guide for each unit and a walkthrough for the tutorial.
Was 3 like that?
idk man, I never bothered to read manuals
homm1 manual had a lot of story explaining the gameplay iirc
>homm1
https://archive.org/details/Heroes_of_Might_and_Magic_I_Manual
>homm2
https://www.oldgames.sk/en/game/heroes-of-might-and-magic-2-the-succession-wars/download/3816/
>homm3
https://heroes3wog.net/download/[Heroes%203]%20Restoration%20of%20Erathia%20Manual.pdf
huh, didn't know this demoniac lore
The story of HoMM1 boils down to Morglin Ironfist finding himself in a new world through a portal and crushing everyone in his path.
You left out the part where he's a wanted fugitive for attempted regicide on VARN4
Morglin did nothing wrong.
How does Heroes 1 tie in with M&M4/5? That bit was always unclear to me. Heroes 2 takes place before M&M6, Heroes 3 takes place after 6 and before 7 and 8, but the relation between the first one and Xeen was always somewhat nebulous to me.
H1 doesn't tie with 4/5. It ties with MM1. Morglin's father was Lord Ironfist, ruling in Castle Whiteshield in VARN4 of CRON2. Morglin's father was then killed by his uncle who then became Lord Ironfist. When he died, his cousing Ragnar became Lord Ironfist. Morglin hired a wizard named Guthbert to kill him, but Guthbert was caught. Morglin than left on a "hunting expedition", where he accidentally found a portal to Enroth, trough which he could not go back. If you want to know more, read the letters from H1's manual.
Also, M&M4/5 don't really tie with any later games. There's even a theory that they take place after MM9, but imo that theory doesn't really make sense since it is stated in Corak's logs in MM5 that the trip from Terra to XEEN was a quick one and that he saw the adventurers from MM3 just before his ship crashed in XEEN. This implies the fact that the adventurer's ship went trough the atmosphere of XEEN, but it didn't actually hit XEEN, and the ship continued it's course, in which it eventually reached the planet of Enroth and the adventurers took part in MM7.
fheroes2 version 1.0.11 is out:
https://github.com/ihhub/fheroes2/releases/tag/1.0.11
>Expand Battle Only mode with saving functionality and updated UI
>Add Town and Ocean objects placement in the Editor, and implement base file format for maps (accessible only for developers at the moment)
>Improve the logic of AI defensive tactics
>Rework multiple dialogs, fix and speed up several rendering issues
>Over 30 issues have been closed since the 1.0.10 release
Merry Christmas, bros!
kek, before realizing it is a christmas theme I saw the boar, recalled the authors added some unnecessary oc units to the roster and was like
>horned boar, what the frick is that upgrade supposed to be
is it hard to export the sprites and change them in fheroes2?
It doesn't support modding (yet), so I think it's just as difficult as editing the original game.
>VCMI release 1.4.2 is now available. This is one of our largest hotfixes we ever released, with over 60 changes in total.
>Download links can be found here: https://github.com/vcmi/vcmi/releases/tag/1.4.2
>Main changes:
>Restored support for Windows 7 and 32-bit systems
>Fixed crash on macOS arm and on iOS devices
>Improvements to random map generator
>Implemented quick backpack window, activated via mouse wheel / finger swipe
>Implemented spell search function in spellbook
>Multiple fixes for turn timers functionality
>As well as multiple fixes for various bugs and crashes
Jews tried to take away Win 7 support for Heroes III? Don't give any money to that project.
Have you read what he wrote? He said that this version RESTORED w7 and 32bit support.
Also, the project doesn't even accept donations
"Restored" means they had it removed prior. This is a win95 era game, everything more modern should be fine forever.
>This is a win95 era game
VCMI is a recreation of the HoMM3 engine. It's basically a different game tries to behave as close as possible to HoMM3.
Decided to play homm2
Seven Lakes
but
going after the neutral cities first, and only using one hero(except for getting rid of items)
Got a shit score, Crusader, 107 days
compared to the usual like 40 days, Black Dragon.
The Solo game took less than 2 hours, while those other games take 3-4, so was kinda fun and chill.
Was a lil' worried about not getting Wisdom for dimension door, like I'd get trapped in an endless whackamole, but it wasn't so bad.
Of these skills, in this particular game, I'd rate them this in order of importance
Pathfinding>Logistics>Diplomacy=Archery>Navigation>Leadership>Ballistics=Scouting.
Navigation might even be above Archery/Diplo.
Scouting I got so late, but early on it could've been helpful.
nO Frick this bullshit game it fricking happened again
but also yes
If you just reload an earlier save you're still on the same RNG seed, so you'll get the same skills.
Need to take different skills leading up to that point, use witch huts/universities or restart the map entirely.
Bro I hope you got intelligence at least.
This is why you always take new skills over improving existing ones whenever you have the option