Heroes of Might and Magic III. Disappointment in the legend

I recently returned to my hometown to visit my parents. An old friend was waiting for me in my room – a computer that was given to me in 2009. As soon as I opened it, I felt a taste of childhood and decided to spend the weekend playing old games, namely, my favorite Heroes of Might and Magic.

This is the story of how I became disillusioned with the cult third part and remained in the fan club of the controversial “four”.

I'm a fan of Heroes of Might and Magic IV and I'm not ashamed

I want to start my story about disappointment in the third part with the backstory. I got acquainted with the legendary series of games in childhood, at about 8-10 years old. My older and younger brothers and I came to our grandmother's dacha. We had a laptop with the fourth “Heroes” with us. Honestly, I don't know why my older brother downloaded this part, but that's how our fate turned out. That's how I got acquainted with this game, which is still one of my favorites.

I fell in love with her from the first skating rink. I was immersed in the world of the Middle Ages with masterpiece music. We played all day long and did almost nothing else. It was a wonderful time.

At first it was hard to play and it seemed to me that there were strong castles and there were worthless weaklings. In order not to lose, I tried to choose “Chaos” and build black dragons faster.

My hero was always a mage, and my main goal was to level up as quickly as possible and collect as many spells as possible to definitely get “Disintegration”.

It was a wild imba if the hero was good. I bought immortality potions and went to destroy other people's armies.

My older brother was born four years earlier, so he was smarter and played with different castles. However, I was unable to absorb his experience, as he quickly stopped going to the dacha and playing with me and my younger brother. My second brother joked around with the “Death” castle, but he was bad at playing it, so he followed me and switched to “Chaos”.

So more than 10 years passed and I still played “Heroes” with my younger brother every summer. We would come to the dacha without grandma and play for days, stocking up on Doshirk, sausage and kvass.

Over this decade, our skills have grown a lot, and the style of play has changed. I fell in love with randomness, because I realized that all castles, although different, can be played well for all of them.

Why Heroes of Might and Magic IV Is Disliked by Many, but Not Me

When I was about 20, I met another Heroes fan, only he had been playing the third games his whole life and had never even tried the fourth, since they were branded the worst game in the series.

He told me that many people's dislike of the fourth part is connected with the change in the mechanics of the hero's game and unequal castles. So I learned that in the third the hero is not independent, he only leads the army and cannot move without it, he does not move on the battlefield, but only uses spells. I was surprised, but I did not feel any particular desire to play the third. I sincerely did not understand what was wrong with an independent hero and what was wrong with the castles, but without practice it was impossible to find out.

For me, the hero has always been the most interesting thing in the whole game. You spend hours pumping him up until he can replace most of your army. In my opinion, this approach was a great feature.

So I had a period of love for the “Strength” castle. The armies there are useless, which is strange for such a name of the castle. However, the hero is a real force. This castle has no mages, so they fight in close and ranged combat. At 16, I played for this castle for several days and learned how to work with a weak army and a killer hero. My hero took out several black dragons and survived their attacks without much loss of health. As soon as he pumped up to such a level, I stopped buying him an army and went to destroy the entire continent alone.

“Death” came to replace “Strength”. I couldn't learn to play it until I was 18. Since childhood, I had the feeling that both the hero and the army were weak, except for the vampires, they hit hard and healed. However, I got the idea that the necromancer was great at reviving skeletons and hoarding them by the thousands. At that moment, I defeated death.

The other castles were easier to figure out and I loved each of them. For me, their differences became a unique feature and a great interest in development and strategy.

Here they are, the legendary “Heroes of Might and Magic III”

Let's go back to the beginning of the story and my old computer. I decided to finally try to play the third part, since I couldn't download the fourth. My friend gave me a disk and off we went.

Two days were successfully spent on 3-4 rinks. I immersed myself and studied the mechanics. It was interesting, but it did not prevent me from being disappointed and wanting to play in the fourth again.

That's what upset me.

Caravanserai

It's not there and it's sad. Driving an army between castles is terribly tedious and only the “Castle Gate” in “Inferno” saves you.

Music

The third part has good music, but in the fourth it is more versatile and warlike.

Hero

The hero here is boring. The army develops mostly due to buildings in the castle. The hero uses magic a little and gives buffs to the army, but nothing more. Reconnaissance is expensive, since the army cannot move without a hero, and he costs a lot. Fourthly, I sent one weak creature and learned the terrain. Also, the hero can only be bought from two proposed options. Fourthly, you can choose a hero from any castle and decide for yourself – a mage or a warrior.

Locks

The castles are equally strong and it doesn't really matter who you play as. You do everything as standard and you get the same result. There is no imbalanced creature or weak army. Of course, there is a difference in creatures, but it is not as noticeable as in the fourth. It was cool that there is an improvement of creatures, but it got boring on the third rink, since you had to pump up the creatures collected along the way in the castle.

Purchase

There is no button to buy the entire available army. This is inconvenient. If I'm just a fool and didn't find it, then tell me in the comments.

Habit is a great power

After comparing Heroes of Might and Magic IV and Heroes of Might and Magic III, I realized why people don't like IV. It's all about habit and standard.

If you grow up on III, then IV will be strange and unusual, which will give you a feeling of wrongness. For me, it worked the other way around. So I remained a fan of IV. Now I need to get a version for Mac OS or buy a Windows computer on Avito and be happy.