Heroes of Might and Magic III

[adam_grif]

So I was cleaning up some piles of old stuff when I came across my HoMM3 discs. I was nearly knocked over by the powerful wave of nostalgia that came out of it. I installed it again and have once again fallen in love.

Did any of you play it / still play it today?

[loomer]

I play it from time to time. It is, in my opinion, the absolute peak of the HoMM games.

[adam_grif]

Agreed. My first experience with it was playing the demo on my old computer. I never had the full game until years later, when I picked up the HoMM millennium edition, which had the first 3 + all expansions. Campaigns drag on a bit, but I still love some of the scenarios. Due to demo exposure, Dead and Buried is still my favorite scenario.

Also, Tower ftw.

[Edi]

I've got it installed, but it doesn't transition well to a 1900x1220 display. On a smaller screen it would be great. It had some really infuriating quirks in setting up a Hotseat game and especially when loading a hotseat save, but I have good memories. I did get the millennium edition later for all the expansions and I also have a copy of the H3 and H4 Complete sets on the same disk.

My favorite towns were Dungeon, Necropolis and Stronghold, but Rampart wasn't bad either. I never liked Tower much. One of the most legendary games I had was a hotseat game with a friend where we played a Tower/Stronghold alliance with Solmyr and Crag Hack as the main heroes. In that game we learned that there was a hard cap of 99 on all stats when Solmyr hit that for spell power. Seeing implosion do somewhere on the order of 30k to 50k damage was damn impressive.

[adam_grif]

Haha, oh wow.

When I first got the full version I went level editor crazy and would give myself super OP characters, but it's always nowhere near as satisfying as leveling manually.

Stronghold is great because Cyclops are awesome, but I like Tower because they have three ranged units, including their level 7 creature. Inferno was cool too though, Arch Devils are badasses.

[bobalot]

I remember the swamp town really sucked with the exception of the Gorgon. Damn, now I got to go find my old cds.

The story of HOMM3 was epic. The expansions and HOMM4 were retarded in terms of the campaigns and storyline.

"The old world blew up and everybody went to a new world"...

[adam_grif]

Yes, Swamp people ("Fortress" was it?) were probably my least favorite. Gnolls are uninteresting, Lizardmen are boring, Serpent Flies are annoying as frack to face but unsatisfying to use, and so on. They were like they had a bunch of leftover monsters that they didn't put into factions, and just thought "hell, why not stick them all together?"

[The Jester]

The cool thing about Fortress was that you could get Hydras extremely quickly (faster than any other faction could get to their own level 7 troops). Of course the advantage diminishes rapidly, but it was cool to start out aggressive with the big units.

I also remember a game where I got Red/Black Dragons and a magic user with Armageddon. That was incredibly degenerate, especially considering that Armageddon was a level 4 spell but wrecked shit far better than Implosion when dealing with multiple stacks.

[AniThyng]

I was always fond of undead armies and "infinite" skeletons

[Steel]

Despite some serious mechanics issues and some pacing issues in the campaigns, this game really has something about it.

There are some really nice sprites in this which hold up unless you blow them up to stupid sizes. The gameplay is sort of like taking a JRPG and eliminating some grind etc and making it not shit.

HoMM 4 was toss, and looked worse to boot.

[Oskuro]

Skeletons, Skeletons, Skeletons, Skeletons.
Archangel? SKELETIFY!
Black Dragon? -> SKELETIFY! -> Bone Dragon -> SKELETIFY! -> Skeleton!

Oh, and Sandro, Sandro, Sandro, Sandro!

Really, Homm3 had the best multiplayer balance of the Homm series, even when Homm2 had some very nice quirks that made it more interesting for single play. I must point out that Homm5 isn't half bad as a Homm game, unlike 4 wich was almost a different game altogether (almost literally, they based the game engine on some other popular game at the time), and even when Necros were unstoppable in 4, I hated it.

By the way, I own this set:



Got it for about 20€

[Edi]

Necromancy got ridiculous in the Shadow of Death expansion if you managed to get one of the combo artifacts that made you reanimate liches instead of skeletons with expert necro. If you also had the other combo artifact, it was game over for everyone else.

[Stark]

Isnt HOMM5 just 3 with actual graphics and fixed mechanics? It plays the same way and inherits the same structural weaknesses, but the skill system seems much more meaningful.

Fun until you work out how broken it is.

[Oskuro]

Indeed to both Edi and Stark.

Our Homm3:SoD parties back at the college dorm usually ended up as Necro-fests of the highest order, with some hapless Angel player trying to go unnoticed. And, of course, we had to agree on certain starter rules, like no I-WIN-REGARDLESS artifacts, no hiring Solmyr at low level or other glaring weaknesses (Solmyr had Chain Lightning at level 1, making it trivial to slaughter low level encounters, even if you could only cast it once or twice before running out of mana).

As for Homm5, yeah, it inherits weaknesses, and some of the new mechanics (like the Dark Elves' elemental chains) end up seeing little to no use. But hey, it's fun to play and the unit designs are gorgeous, so whatever. And in the second expansion, Cyclops can eat your own goblins to heal themselves up (too bad those same golbins have a tendency to defect mid-battle), and that is awesome.

[Stark]

Hah, I figured it was just me that couldn't use that elemental shit.

HoMM5 does still have some of the older cheese (and I never really played HoMM3 proper multi) but the skills/heroes generally seem better. It seems more viable to go 'random hero', although some are still unbalanced. The undead is still megacrazy and fun, but seem like less of a steamroller.

I'm not a huge fan of the build-tree planning, lose-one-fight-you-lose-game aspect, but I liked the 3/5 hero system. If they changed the 'growth' systems (which obviously they can't) I think it'd be awesome.

[adam_grif]

I also remember a game where I got Red/Black Dragons and a magic user with Armageddon. That was incredibly degenerate, especially considering that Armageddon was a level 4 spell but wrecked shit far better than Implosion when dealing with multiple stacks.

I made this custom scenario where there's one of those standard "Reward Island" type places. The idea is that you can either push through to it, or attack one of the other players in about the same amount of time. It's risky because if someone attacks you, you don't have enough soldiers to defend your base since you need them all to kill the Faerie dragons guarding the island. But if you get through without getting your base destroyed, it's a huge reward, because you get the Dragon armor set and the 4 magic tomes.

Of course, it turned out that this was HORRIBLY unbalanced, because little to my knowledge the Dragon Armor set gives you +20 to every stat (the description says 6, but it turns out that it's 6 in addition to hte bonuses conferred by the individual artifacts that make it up), and makes your units immune to level 4 spells and lower. Armageddon is a level 4 spell. So all your units are immune to Armageddon and you have 26 spell power and 240 spell points or so.

It delivered 1700 damage to every enemy unit on the battlefield, but all of yours were unharmed. The only enemy unit that survived was when they cast protection from fire on 5 archangels, and there were still only 2 left. Oh and Efreet, because they're immune to fire. But yeah.

Had to edit that scenario pretty fast

[Oskuro]

Oh, good old Armagedon. I love what the old HoMM1 CPU players used to do, they'd send a Hero with a single stack of the best magic resistant unit they had (usually ogres, who had a certain % of resisting all magic, and, of course, the magic-immune purple fat dragons if they had them) and an Armageddon spell. We used to call those Hero-bombs, and they were horribly effective.


Although the most day ruining move I remember is when a Barbarian player lured an Angel player into an ultimate siege fight, and only when opening his spellbook did the Angel player realize the Barbarian had the Magic Negating Orb and the Handcuffs. No magic and no retreating, aganist a Barbarian hiding behind his own castle walls. It didn't go well for the Angel player.

And, agreeing with Stark, the suckiest part of the HoMM games is that, once your main Hero and its army is defeated, you might just as well surrender, 'cause you're done for.

[adam_grif]

I've never really experimented with it, but yes, the optimal tactic seems to be concentration of force and getting one hero to become uber powerful as quickly as possible. Late game armies can take endless swarms of "one week garrison" forces with only a few casualties on the side of the uber-hero.

I also hate that there are a LOT of units that can just fly straight over castle walls. I find the most enjoyable sieges are when all the fliers are grounded and the ground pounders are trying to breach the walls, then the defenders are trying to trap them in moats so they take extra losses each round.

[Argosh]

Ah, Heroes 3 ... once I had a 6-player hotseat game that took half a day to finish.
Good game & memories.

[Tiriol]

I remember this game well. I was never good at it, but boy did I love it neverethless. I especially liked the Necropolis (and HoMM3 had an interesting backstory to boot).

I never got to play with the expansions, though. A shame, really.

[Steel]

I remember this game well. I was never good at it, but boy did I love it neverethless. I especially liked the Necropolis (and HoMM3 had an interesting backstory to boot).

I never got to play with the expansions, though. A shame, really.

Its on gog.com for $5 including the expansions.

HOMM4 was rubbish, is 5 better and actually worthwhile getting now?