Wtf bros, I'm playing this and it's absolutely fricking kino
>cool progression with your heroes. You can turn them from wimps who can get one-shot by low tier range units into absolute demi-gods that can btfo entire armies with awesome spells
>can pretty much play it like a party based RPG if you want to since heroes can complement different roles (tank, healer, etc.)
>comfy campaigns with nice in-game stories that pop up from time to time that actually read like a nice fantasy novel
>caravan system is a godsend that pretty much lets you muster armies to reinforce your heroes with a few clicks
>magic system is god tier with lots of spells to use that actually aren't useless
>god tier music
>good art design
>unit building system that makes you make realistic strategic choices since you can only pick between two options in each tier
>pure game just screams soul
I'm playing the first Haven campaign and 10 hours literally flew by
Do people hate it because it's not HoMM III and tried to do it's own thing?
>it's absolutely fricking kino
It's unfinished yet it's still this great. I can only imagine what would proper development entail.
Pretty good black-pill on publicly traded companies though.
Anyone knows about what the original team members are doing currently?
Forgot to add, my favorite campaign in it was about Gauldoth, the Half-Dead. I hope you will not forgot to give it a try as well.
it's fricking ironic that my top3 strategy games are all unfinished. And Heroes 4 is one of them.
Whar are the other two?
Original War and Battle Realms
>Anyone knows about what the original team members are doing currently?
Most of them either quit gaming dev completely or went into mobile, depressing I know. The story of the main designer Jon Van Caneghem isn't much more cheerful, he went on to make a MMO, but he left the studio before the game release and his designs got changed (check Rift or previously Heroes of Telara). Later he tried to make a new C&C and that game also didn't see the light. It's been nothing but suffering since 2002.
>Most of them either quit gaming dev completely or went into mobile, depressing I know
>It's been nothing but suffering since 2002
So many studious under the water. Big corpo must hang.
I agree with your post but they butchered the factions hard, there's too little creature variety, and the creature designs are a lot worse.
>bros
>kino
>btfo entire armies
>MMO references
>comfy
>god-tier
>realistic strategic choice
>pure
>soul
Friendly reminder >>>Ganker is that way.
>realistic strategic choice
QRD? Why is this considered a buzzword?
>image
Halo came out over 20 years ago. You are older than you think.
this is absolutely true, let me tell you why everybody had shitted on it. Ready? Its actually difficult. The campaigns are difficult, the gold is limited, the heroes die. And this game was being aimed at casuals. Ofc they are gonna hate it. Some of those campaigns (the pirate one the most) required abusing the AI and other mechanism of the game.
>Its actually difficult.
HoM&M 3 also had some difficult campaign missions, particularly those with a time limit and few troop resupply points.
The pirate campaign was so hard I just cheated through it in the end.
It feels blasphemous, but I sort of enjoy HoMM 4 more than HoMM 3 sometimes. Less creatures, but they're more unique. Less creatures, but only because youre forced to choose between which creates you will build for which strategy. Heroes change drastically according to which main skills you pick. I remember that someone proficient in life and Death magic became a Dark Priest with life steal on attack. Pretty cool stuff.
Oh yeah, the advanced classes made by combining two basic classes (three for archmage) which provide different bonuses. I liked trying to skill into each of those but eventually resorted to using the editor to see all of them. Turns out these bonuses vary greatly in terms of usefulness.
>vary greatly in terms of usefulness
Demonologist gave 50% boost in summoned minions... Noice.
Haha you chose death magic and tactics? Congratulations Reaver, enjoy your melee damage buff
I can get the logic behind it, necromancy is heavily debuff oriented, so you drop your debuffs on the enemy and proceed to brawl it out after or something. In practice it kind of suck without a combat class though.
To be fair, if you follow the table heroesofmightandmagic com/ heroes4/heroclasses.shtml you should be fine.
I remember doing that solo hero style. One of the useless skill trees had stealth perks, and upgraded enough it made my hero completely invisible on the strategic map so I just ignored the game and went to the objective.
The only thing that makes it unplayable is the lack of serviceable enemy AI.
Unless you make a map with one way teleporters right under your town, the AI will never be able to leave the starting town and often will just die to neutrals.
I'd pay full AAA pricing for a functioning AI like Homm 3,the game is just great, heroes feel like real heroes, the retaliation system makes much more sense and both music and art are gorgeous.
>the AI will never be able to leave the starting town and often will just die to neutrals
This has never happened to me. Either I'm lucky or yer exaggerating.
SPAZZ
>Do people hate it because it's not HoMM III and tried to do it's own thing?
My two cents: ad one, the game borrowed a lot from the Warlords series and built on that and ad two, Heroes 3 was a massive normie magnet around here which hooked in people who didn't play video games, much less strategy games before. I think Heroes 4 was harder to take for them.
It was always the best HoMM for me, shame that it went through development hell
>shame that it went through development hell
It didn't.
3DO simply went bankrupt, and befitting the bunch of morons they were, they've dragged all their contractors with them, just to stave the bankruptcy by a single year quarter and pay the board a final bonus before going down.
>3DO
According to Wikipedia - it was founded by a guy from EA, so everything checks out.
R.I.P. New World Computing. ;(
Easily favorite in the series, the game of my fricking childhood
>god tier music
only true point in that list
Love this game. So much that I'm writing my thesis about it. Please fill my survey about the game's campaigns anons forms gle/ZD4UkdButCQL6G2U8
>So much that I'm writing my thesis about it
Based.
I don't have a common sense of the internet dweller, how do I use that link?
just replace the space between forms and gle with a dot
>Do people hate it because it's not HoMM III and tried to do it's own thing?
Nobody hates HoMM4. It's ok, but appears mediocre next to 3.
>magic system is god tier with lots of spells to use that actually aren't useless
I struggle to think of a single spell different from 3.
>god tier music
Half of which is stolen. For example, here's the original of the sea theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsL4Y2qXDl4
>good art design
No HoMM game has good art design. Also, pic.
>unit building system that makes you make realistic strategic choices since you can only pick between two options in each tier
No. This is the game's biggest flaw. In almost every case one choice is clearly better than the other. The only time I have a hard time deciding is magi vs golems.
>pure game just screams soul
If you struggle so much to say positive things about this game then why make this thread?
>stolen
Celtic soundbank has always been public domain.
If you don't explicitly say "hey, I didn't compose it, just made an arrangement" I consider it stolen.
When did Romero ever did that?
There is a working widescreen mod, that is not widely known for some reason. It is from the same guy who did widescreen mod for Disciples 2. It works perfectly, highly recommend. Also there is Equilibris rebalance mod, that was resurrected recently.
i was never a big fan of equilibris, i felt like some changes were pushing it too far.
>cool progression with your heroes.
Yeah it's so good haha except when the game just decides that you're fricking taking the skills it wants you to take.
I turned down basic summoning on my first level up because i didn't want to be dealing with wolves and leprechauns popping up in my undead army every day for the rest of the campaign and for the next eight levels I've been offered nothing but necromancy and combat, even when I reload, even when I take one of the skills to see if it offers me something else next level.
And you know what it'll offer me after I hit Grandmaster Death?
>basic necromancy
>basic summoning
>basic combat
I'm fricking FUMING what the frick kind of RNG is this because it obviously is anything but random
forgot pic because i'm seriously fricking mad
>it obviously is anything but random
Duh! It was made nonrandom for a reason. How about instead of being mad you go read about the order the skills are offered to you?
>t. clueless, yet mad zoomer
Each time, every time
broken frickin piece of shit game
In all the years of playing the game i have never had an issue like this, even though i will avoid skills like summoning/charm every time they pop up. I guess it's time to educate myself on the skill tree a bit
>Do people hate it because it's not HoMM III and tried to do it's own thing?
yes, normies can't stand change even if it's for the better
IV is the best in the series, even with it's flaws
it is kino, I had a blast playing through campaigns some years ago. the only HEROES of might and magic game of the series.
I wish AI wasnt moronic and NWC didnt rush it out.
I wonder if the AI could be improved with mods. As well as the occasional frame drops that seem to happen for no reason.
People hate HoMM IV only because it's too different
feels like a homm clone game
>see thread
>get vivid memories of a campaign map i once made with pages of story and tens of hours poured into mapmaking
>all that wiped with my hdd
>now i feel like remaking it
Should i?
>Should i?
nope. Its not coming back anon
Maybe I'll make a new one instead. Give me a faction to build a story around.
Give Kreegan some justice
Fine, see you in a year
>a year
yeah, I totally trust you will deliver.
>Wtf bros, I'm playing this and it's absolutely fricking kino
>>cool progression with your heroes. You can turn them from wimps who can get one-shot by low tier range units into absolute demi-gods that can btfo entire armies with awesome spells
>>can pretty much play it like a party based RPG if you want to since heroes can complement different roles (tank, healer, etc.)
campaigns with nice in-game stories that pop up from time to time that actually read like a nice fantasy novel
system is a godsend that pretty much lets you muster armies to reinforce your heroes with a few clicks
system is god tier with lots of spells to use that actually aren't useless
>>god tier music
>>good art design
>>unit building system that makes you make realistic strategic choices since you can only pick between two options in each tier
>>pure game just screams soul
>I'm playing the first Haven campaign and 10 hours literally flew by
>Do people hate it because it's not HoMM III and tried to do it's own thing?
HoMM 4 is awesome and is only hated by try hard HoMM3 "fans" who hate everything that is not HoMM3. And they then go on to tell you that the only way to play HoMM3 is via the Horn of the Abyss mod. morons. All of them. These are also the same guys who refuse to play as or against Necro because "muh balance".
>Facing inferno irl
>Can't be bothered to stop playing
Truly HoMM IV Chads know what's best
Forgot the link bbc com/news/world-europe-62574732
That's God's punishment for shitty electricity prices.
RIDE NEVER ENDS
>RIDE NEVER ENDS
Outlive EVERYTHING!!!
Anyone knows a book or chink novel where there's a necro bro like Gaudoth?
I wish. There are surprisingly few stories that feature necromancers as the main character, and even less of them are good. I was on a search for anything similar to Gauldoth for a while and I'm yet to find a story that scratches this itch.
what about that equilibrium mod, does it make the AI put up a fight