Why is Heroes of Might and Magic III so great?

[Maryring]

I've played several of the HoMM games, but as much as I may enjoy the various games, I constantly come back to the third game being the best in the series. And this has left me with a question of... why? Why after so many years and so many sequels has no game captured the greatness of the third game in the series? It's not for a lack of trying. We're up to... what, the seventh game in the series now?

And the truth is, I have a hard time specifying exactly what it is that makes the game so awesome, so much better than the other games. So I ask my fellow fans of the game and the series, what is it that makes Heroes III better than the games following it?

[veti]

It's a vague and probably not very satisfying answer... But for me, HOMM3 hits a sweet spot where the game has matured nicely, but hasn't yet jumped the shark.

The graphics and the music are "good enough" - it looks a bit dated now, but not hopelessly so. The out-of-the-box scenarios offer a decent range of challenges for all skill levels. And the gameplay has reached a point where it's reasonably well balanced. In particular, flying units - which were broken in the first two games - have been moderated (by giving them limited movement range).

Personally, my favourite of the series is HOMM4 - which lessens the emphasis on the armies, and makes the hero more individually important. But that's not everyone's cup of tasty caffeinated beverage, and I can see why 3 appeals more to so many people.

But HOMM5 was a big disappointment. All the frickin' eyecandy animations (which I could never figure out how to speed up or skip entirely) took forever. I loathed it. Never got beyond the first scenario of the campaign, because it was just so boring to watch. (Yes, "watch" is the word, I never felt like I was "playing" it. It wasn't so much a game, as a marginally interactive home video.)

[ufo]

The game is surprisingly accesible for it's age. Even for those who are not nostalgic about the game, it's relatively easy to get used to the interface and game mechanics, making it perfect for a "pick up and play" experience where you don't have to spend a lot of time getting used to the game, unlike strategy games that may offer a deeper experience but are generally complicated.

As Veti said (wrote?), the game is also interesting for people of different skill levels, meaning that it's easy to tailor your playing experience - the game can both be light-hearted and quick, or challenging and long. The difficulty levels scale intuitively, so that when you begin to find the game easy, moving to a higher difficulty means that you will be challenged but not steamrolled, resulting in high replayability. As also mentioned, old and popular games tend to benefit from many years of patching and balancing meaning that every faction and playstyle can be effective and interesting.

That said, for the game to be enjoyable you have to buy into the feel and mechanics of more old-school games. HoMM3 gives very little feedback about what is going on in the game, how abilities and objects in the world work etc. So while the mechanics are quite simple, you need to actively explore how the game works, since it's not really explained.

[factotum]

HoMM4 is considered worse than the others mainly because it's different, IMHO--it's the only one in the series where the hero of an army can actually fight and be killed, for one. (Believe me, doing a HoMM4 mission where the hero must survive, then running into a bunch of Medusas with their instant-kill random chance, is a royal PITA). HoMM3 is definitely an improvement over the previous two games--it's more refined, looks better, and has more options of town and creature combos to try out.

Then we come to the new ones (HoMM5 onwards). I've only played 5, but the impression I got while playing it is that the AI cheats. In previous HoMM games the AI got their troops exactly the same way you did, so as you took out their towns the game got gradually easier, because the AI had fewer troops while you had more. Whereas I'd actually blockaded the only AI town in an early HoMM5 mission and was waiting a few weeks to build up my forces for the final assault, whereupon a hero with a massive army appeared from literally nowhere and attacked my town. I won that mission, but the experience left a bad taste in my mouth and I didn't proceed much further in the game.

[Winthur]

Although I consider HoMM2 a close contender, it also has much less friendly gameplay (really difficult to set up a co-op match or play online).

As someone from Eastern Europe, where HoMM is a thing that everyone knows - from your parents to your friends from round the block, the ones that nowadays are only occupying stairways, doing competitive squatting and hard drugs - everyone played HoMM. Has a lot to do with that HoMM3 was one of the first real, actual, big-name, proper translated and released games in Poland (or Russia, for that matter). Same reason for the popularity of Gothic and Baldur's Gate. The longevity of the game is even more pronounced when you consider how, no matter how behind you were on upgrading your PC, a HoMM game was always accessible and everyone could go to a friend and play it hot seat for long sessions.

HoMM3 is also a very obvious, direct sequel to HoMM2. A lot of the themes and units check out - Titans, for instance, are unchanged from HoMM2, all the way down to their insane building requirements and resource costs. Even the spells and the way they scale with spellpower is relatively unchanged (which introduces some problems with the things that did get changed, like the overall massive HP bloat on part of the units, but oh well).

But yeah, overall, it seems like HoMM3 was the plateau for the series and still crazily accessible, also for MP games. I liked 4, it had some great strengths, but it changed the formula up too much. Now with HoMM5, it's basically an improved (in some respects) HoMM3; I personally don't think it carries the same value, as the game is too clumped and feels less inspired (an entire town devoted to different subtypes of dwarves is meh, and the town UI was not intuitive to me at all). Also the hot seat appeal is kinda ruined because it just feels so sluggish in comparison.

[Psyren]

It's the greatest TBS game I've ever played. But I agree, I just can't put my finger on why.

It has it's flaws, certainly. Man, you thought caster/martial disparity was bad in D&D... and some towns are just plain unbalanced (looking at you Conflux.)

But the graphics and sounds aged exceptionally well, and the ability to play both online, via LAN and via hotseat gave it considerable longevity, never mind all the game modes and mods.

[Forum Explorer]

I'd put 5th as the best, but only because it was basically 3rd with better graphics. It didn't feel sluggish on my computer so that never bothered me.

Though I have a special place in my heart for Fortress which they never really made an equivalent to.

[Maryring]

Yeah. The third game is horribly balanced. It's still fun despite the lack of balance. I do think that the simplicity of the game might be what makes it so fun. That is an interesting point that I did fail to consider. The game is so much more streamlined than the later games. The 5th game suffers everything being slow as molasses. I spent more time waiting on my turn than I did playing my turn. But I also didn't like the skill system. The ultimate skills were too powerful if you could access them, or nonexistent if you couldn't access them. And they made only one class for each town, meaning that all Castle heroes were might for example. I always found that lack of choice annoying.

I actually did enjoy the fourth game myself, but I did not like the monster units. You could pick one of two monsters for every city, but it really felt like a nonchoice. You'd always pick one or the other. Also, you'd need a ton of creatures to match a decently levelled hero with some equipment. Might as well save your gold for artifacts and potions.

[veti]

I actually did enjoy the fourth game myself, but I did not like the monster units. You could pick one of two monsters for every city, but it really felt like a nonchoice. You'd always pick one or the other. Also, you'd need a ton of creatures to match a decently levelled hero with some equipment. Might as well save your gold for artifacts and potions.

Really? I often varied my building trees in those towns. Efreet and nightmares, crusaders/monks, genie/naga, unicorn/griffin - all have things going for them.

A high-levelled hero could become personally almost invincible, but the key word is "almost". You'd be stretched to bring more than one hero up to that kind of level, and they'd still be vulnerable to a sufficiently-large enemy army. In the single-player Might campaign, I'd really enjoy my hero soloing whole armies and castles - but it was always slightly risky. Every other hero type worked much better with a decent army.

I think the worst thing about it was, every hero had to take "Combat" as one of their skill slots - you couldn't try to play a pure caster, because it was hopelessly squishy.

[factotum]

A high-levelled hero could become personally almost invincible, but the key word is "almost". You'd be stretched to bring more than one hero up to that kind of level, and they'd still be vulnerable to a sufficiently-large enemy army.

They'd even be vulnerable to a small enemy army with the right monsters in it--the Medusas I mentioned earlier had a chance to instant kill some of the stack they were attacking, and since a hero is essentially a single-unit stack, Medusas could take them out really, really easily even in small numbers. Didn't matter what level the hero was or how powerful they were, either.

[Deatch]

HoMMIII is my favorite of the series and I think the brokeness is one of the reasons.

I like the magic schools of V. The way the four schools buffing/nerfing/damaging/summoning were well defined and assigned to the castles in such way that by simply looking at the magic guild you saw what kind of game you were going to play. light/dark in castle? Big armies are what's important, spells will only support. Destruction/dark? With high level hero, who needs an army... just get some hydras and go to town. You get the idea.

I can also appreciate the changes in VI. Spells no longer being found in guilds but learnt as skills. Necromancy turned from per-enemy resource into per-week resource.

I can also see why V and VI have no good enough town portal or dimensional door. Those things make the game a rocket tag, kinda. And, if they are inaccessible to some strategies or some players purely by chance, unbalanced.

All of these changes are good for multiplayer. But I (and I suspect very many other players) play single player exclusively. And there is nothing more fun than starting at a great disadvantage and beating a greatly lopsided match by exploiting each and every dirty trick imaginable. To this day I remember how I encountered a stack of nagas and attacked it without checking the numbers. I almost got a heart attack, when I saw there was 3500 of them (in comparison I had a Tower army with around 13 titans). And then... I wan with deliberate use of master berserker, master slow and around 400 mana points. In V or VI no spell would save me.

[Winthur]

It has it's flaws, certainly. Man, you thought caster/martial disparity was bad in D&D... and some towns are just plain unbalanced (looking at you Conflux.)
I'd say a lot of the imbalances are simply due to the meta. Someone above mentions Town Portal as a big deal in MP, but chaining strategies evolved in high level MP to the point where it's a fairly redundant spell; in huge XL maps with tons of towns to manage, not having it, on the other hand, can be a chore. Conflux is great on smaller maps with early confrontations when you can abuse Sprites and rush with double growth Phoenixes, but happens to be a pretty bad SP town on any map that goes particularly high level simply because you can't Ressurect most units, so you can't really stick around with them for long.

One can argue that SP is an art of beating up an 8 year old in chess who has queens instead of pawns, but I can name a whole load of maps off the top of my head that not only provide great stories, but also great tactical/strategical/logistical challenges. In those, Intelligence becomes a top tier skill; you need the mana for prolonged engagements and spell combos.

And as for the martial/caster disparity, well, casters still win. One forgets that the "might" and "magic" monikers only signify the way heroes develop, mostly, but a properly developed might hero is an AD&D 2E Fighter/Mage, not a 3.5E 20 Barbarian. I remember reading lots of discussions on forums that "a might hero has a ton of stats but the magic hero will just implode/ressurect/blind/paralyze/berserk everything", such assertions coming from less experienced players; but in practice, not using magic puts you at a huge disadvantage. Well, unless Orb of Inhibition is in play.

When it comes to balance, though, H3 still improved on its precedessors, where Warlock was the best faction by far.

On that note, if anyone needs a decent list of good H3 maps to play, I can provide some in my next post. Not now, I'm hungover.

[Deatch]

On that note, if anyone needs a decent list of good H3 maps to play, I can provide some in my next post. Not now, I'm hungover.

I'm always on the lookout for good maps. Share away.

[Cespenar]

It's tactical yet accessible, the 2D graphic design is IMHO more aesthetically appealing than most 3D graphics lately, and the musics are pretty great.

If it were hard to get into, or had bad graphics, it would likely still be a cult classic. But now, it's just plain classic.

[Winthur]

I'm always on the lookout for good maps. Share away.

Most of those are gonna be long single player treks that follow a certain hero and have a lot of flag events and heroes set up along the way, and AIs May require WoG or ERA (but only for their asset-enhancing capabilities and expanded editor, rather than the silly units of WoG), if you google the maps you will find what they require. ERA, BTW, to HoMM3, is a lot what CEP is for NWN, just so we're clear.

Lord of War
To Kill for Power
A Wizard's Tale (<--- interesting experiment where you are an Eagle Eye wizard on a map with no mage guilds)
2 Friends (a co-op map with a lot of puzzles, tough choices)
The Empire of the World I-IV (massive series started by a genius mapmaker and continued by another, story is decent if written by someone with a fairly basic grasp of English, III and IV require ERA, if you only can play one of them, try TEWII)
Fall and Rise of Sharai (Fortress fans rejoice)
Unleashing the Bloodthirsty
Titanic / Angelic / Demonic Pride series (mostly notable for being one of the firsts of the maps that really pump the HoMM3 editor while still being playable today; it's a good step from the classic maps from the CD, like Myth & Legend and A Viking We Shall Go)
Sander's Folly

They should be good for expert HoMM3 players (who know how to use Blind, use proper spells, get the right units, do some slight AI exploitation, do not lose any forces unnecessarily when creeping etc.) but without any of the tedious micro that pervades some of the most insane maps (Wayfarer, Limes Inferior, to name a few). Though they may require save/loading.

[Maryring]

Conflux is powerful because Sprites and Storm Elementals provide such a huge early advantage. You're not gonna have resurrection for quite a while, but with those two units you can creep very well with very few losses. Also the Magic University is fantastic.

When I say that HoMM 3 is broken, I personally think of how Earth Magic stomps Fire Magic so badly. Or how Intelligence is pretty much always better than Mysticism. Or how Learning is just the worst. There's a ton of trap choices unfortunately.

[Winthur]

Conflux is powerful because Sprites and Storm Elementals provide such a huge early advantage. You're not gonna have resurrection for quite a while, but with those two units you can creep very well with very few losses. Also the Magic University is fantastic.
Yes, I know. I acknowledge Conflux is amazing in MP. The early advantage is, indeed, fantastic. It's just that most expertly made huge SP maps kinda assume that at some point you stop losing units, ever, by Expert Ressurecting them. Or Cloning Archangels to do so. And at that point you kinda don't wanna be Conflux anymore.

Yes, it's a fairly niche thing, but still. And you can, of course, just conquer yourself a better late game town, like Castle, for that matter, using your Conf forces. It's only really a concern on long-going maps that go past Month 1.



When I say that HoMM 3 is broken, I personally think of how Earth Magic stomps Fire Magic so badly. Or how Intelligence is pretty much always better than Mysticism. Or how Learning is just the worst. There's a ton of trap choices unfortunately.

I don't think necessarily that some magic schools being stronger than others is necessarily a "broken" thing. Sure, it's a balance flaw. But think of maps that downright require you to rely on Expert Berserk (kind of a dumb thing, given that the AI is actually not programmed to counter Berserk in any way). And the other three magic schools still provide enough discussion to warrant some decision making rather than always blindly going Earth/Air. Water, for instance, is so much stronger on the aforementioned long campaign maps than Air is, but Air trounces MP games and short maps, and can still flourish on maps that don't ban or limit travel spells. I've seen situations making cool use of spells like Fire Shield, Fire Wall (Luna rocks) and Sacrifice, and the Dracageddon is always fun, so it's not like Fire is a total stinker, like Earth Magic is in Might & Magic 6.

I wouldn't call it downright "broken". What I might call broken is that mass spells are super-cheap, anyone can get them (unlike in HoMM2, where Mass Slow was a level 4 spell) and completely dominate battlefields. That makes magic heroes only good for Magic Arrow spam in week 1 (on an open multiplayer map, where other players aren't landlocked into their area with a strong, level 7 guardian, I'd rather pick a magic hero, because Magic Arrow/Ice Bolt/Lightning Bolt still trounces early encounters and if you meet the enemy early, the ability to deal 60-150 HP in damage is huge).

Yes, Learning sucks. It's the only skill in the game that I'd vote to be dreadfully useless and the absolute worst. It really ruins Loynis, for a crying shame.

And yeah, Intelligence trumps Mysticism, but I can imagine a map designed in such a way to make playing around Mysticism a fun mechanic. Not that it will be useful in an ordinary game, but still, HoMM3 can get some mileage squeezed even out of the stinkers.

I really like Scholar and Scouting, for instance.

[Maryring]

Ah, didn't mean to argue against you, so much as agree with you and elaborate on why Conflux is generally considered strong to the point of broken-ness. It's a strong early game advantage, but the early game advantage doesn't stack up that well to armies of a hundred cloned archangels. :smallbiggrin:

The big problem with the magic schools is though that fire lacks a lot of easily accessible power. Sure it's got a couple strong damage spells, but damage spells aren't that hot when armies get sufficiently large. Except Implosion. Which is Earth. Sacrifice is nice, Blind is nice. Berserk is nice. But generally you don't get that much more power out of those spells as get better with Fire Magic. I fully agree though. If you could only pick one school, you could make arguments for Air and Water, as well as Earth.

I find that Mysticism is better than Intelligence only if you're on a special map that lacks Mage Guilds and Mana Wells. Or if there's a severe scarcity of them anyhow. Ultimately, you should be able to feel good about picking a skill.

And yeah. Scholar can be fantastic. Not having to go back to base to learn a new spell can save you so much time and get you that much more loot.

[Psyren]

On most maps though, an early game advantage can easily hand you the win. Oh look, I got out of my starting area first and found 5 obelisks to your 2. Oh look, I have 2 of every resource farm (including the loose stacks piled up outside), and by the time you take over some of mine I've already teched up to T5 and have my Capitol to boot. I already nabbed every treasure chest that wasn't guarded by dragons. My scout is also able to easily hit up every Windmill each Monday and be home for dinner because he's blindingly fast.

And that's just the Sprites. Conflux also has two ranged units, two AoE units (nova and line), 3 other fliers, 4 buffers, 2 that are lightning immune...

[veti]

They'd even be vulnerable to a small enemy army with the right monsters in it--the Medusas I mentioned earlier had a chance to instant kill some of the stack they were attacking, and since a hero is essentially a single-unit stack, Medusas could take them out really, really easily even in small numbers. Didn't matter what level the hero was or how powerful they were, either.

Not quite true, there's no shortage of defences against medusas.

A barbarian has magic resistance - get that up to 100%, and laugh them off. An Order mage has 'Forgetfulness', probably my favourite spell in the entire game. A Chaos mage can Berserk them. Can't offhand remember the spell lists of the other classes, but I'm sure they have options.

[Winthur]

Guys, wtf am I looking at? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOoeuFDEyTA)

[Maryring]

HoMM III for mobile phone? Uhm... hoookay then.

[Siosilvar]

HoMM III for mobile phone? Uhm... hoookay then.

That's already a thing. (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=is.xyz.vcmi) Never got it working myself, though, it always crashed when I tried to start a game.

An official one will certainly be interesting.

[Winthur]

I'm still extremely confused about this though. Nobody seems to be talking about it, the animation was outsourced by Ubi to some guys who barely pull a couple thousand views per trailer, and the whole thing looks... fishy, like a cheap Chinese microtransaction fest for mobiles, akin to Game of War or something. And that artstyle looks weird.

[Cespenar]

Berserk is nice. But generally you don't get that much more power out of those spells as get better with Fire Magic. I fully agree though. If you could only pick one school, you could make arguments for Air and Water, as well as Earth.

In my experience, one Berserk spell tips battles on its own, and with better Fire Magic it only gets more broken.

[Starwulf]

Has anyone here played with the Horn of the Abyss fan-made expansion? It adds SOOOOOO much to the game, including two new map sizes(Huge and Giant) a ton of new maps itself, a new town(pirates!!) a host of new artifacts, some new neutral creatures. It's absolutely fantastic and I would absolutely recommend it to anyone that is a fan of HoMM 3.

[Divayth Fyr]

Guys, wtf am I looking at? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOoeuFDEyTA)
Something we could live without. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIxSw22W_PE)

[Psyren]

Something we could live without. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIxSw22W_PE)

Eww, is that the gameplay? Hard pass.

[Dusso]

It's still so good because it has interesting choices in it and interesting factions which are fun to play even when they're not the best.

[Kish]

Eww, is that the gameplay? Hard pass.
Full of hostile frost giants?

[Dusso]

Full of hostile frost giants?

Would still be a better hard pass than that :smallbiggrin: