Same here. It’s also worth not having to dig out the disks.
Aaand bought.
Looking forward to playing this old gem!
It’s worth it to pay for having it diskless and always available, and also to help keep the service going.
But I guess I Should spend it on hookers and blow instead.
I’m curious about Homm4 myself. I remember hearing the AI was lacking back when the game was initially released. I wonder, did the two expansions and any subsequent patching help out in that regard? Never really kept up with the game.
Talorc
3926
Unless you are packing some serious tiger blood, $9.99 doesn’t go very far in the hookers and blow stakes. Stick to DRM free PC classics :-)
Tyjenks
3927
I would settle for just the hooker then. What can I get for $10 ma’am? Which reminds me:
Chris Rock: How much is a soda?
Bartender: A dollar
Chris Rock: Aw come on man…be easy on a brother
okay, I’m make a deal with ya, just pour it into a
glass and I’ll take a lil’ sip for 15 cents.
Bartender:…my glasses cost more than 15 cents…
Chris Rock: Okay, fuck the cup, pour it into my
hand for a dime
Bartender: LISTEN YOU LITTLE GEASY-HAIR JERI CURL,
YOU PAY ME AND GET THE HELL OUTTA MY BAR
Chris Rock: Got change for a hundred?
I bought it a while back and played it maybe once or twice, then went back to III. Don’t remember about the AI, but I do remember the incredibly bland graphics, blander than III and even II.
Hahaha, I loved those Chris Rock bits.
Tyjenks
3931
Wow. I had completely forgotten about Heroes Chronicles. A sort of dumbed down, smaller and cheaper version of HoMM III that was supposed to broaden the audience, but was unsuccessful. Did anyone ever get any of the episodes? I wonder if Gus worked on any of these.
I enjoyed HoMM4 at the time, there were aspects of the design I thought were pretty cool… but in retrospect, the critics were probably right. Still, if you like the series overall, I doubt you’d absolutely hate it.
Tyjenks
3933
The thing I most enjoy about the series was still in four. Roaming around uncovering the map and picking up treasure and trinkets.
Loaded up III yesterday and did not really get up until I had finished the first, 3-part campaign. Still great.
For people not in the know, here is now Heroes IV changed the series mechanics:
-
Towns were less elaborate than in 3. A twist, however, was in the creature buildings. Each town type offers up 8 possible creature types, 2 in each tier from 1 to 4. But you can only build one building for the tier. This often made for interesting gameplay choices, as the choices could definately be taylor fit to a strategy the player was going for. This change was a positive, IMO. I wouldn’t say it was better than the approach in either 2 (slightly elaborate town building) or 3 (incredibly elaborate town building), just different and interesting in it’s own way.
-
Heroes on the battlefield. This was a controversial change and a lot of people didn’t like it. I did (and again I didn’t like it better than anything else; it was just different an interesting in its own way), but it caused some problems because if you lost a key scenario hero it was game over (that needed changing). Also, invincibility potions were too easy to acquire because of this.
But you could run multiple heroes in a party and basically run around with a group of powerful adventureres. There’s no substitute for a stack of 50 black dragons or titans, but heroes could be very powerful.
- Revamped skill system. I never cared for the insane randomness in Heroes 3, since some of the skills were so unbalancingly good. There’s still randomness here, but the mechanics are different. Each hero gets, IIRC, 5 primary skills (but maybe it was 6). Each primary skill has 3 secondary skills. The relationship between the two is slightly quirky; everything goes from basic to grand master (1 to 5). I can’t recall the specific details but I seem to recall that the gating here was slightly odd. Maybe it’s just memory failing.
Some examples: each magic school got it’s own primary skill, which governed the spells you had access to (they were also tiered 1 to 5). Secondary skills included school-specific skills (like fire or chaos or hwatever it was got a skill that boosted damage), and some skills that had analogues in other schools (each magic school has a skill that increases available mana and mana regen).
As I said the system was still random and a level up might present a choice between a minor skill upgrade and a major skill upgrade. I’m not sure there wouldn’t be a better way to do it. But it was an interesting system and I think one could do some cool things with this as a starting point.
Among the complains was the AI being problematic (it was). Also, I seem to recall in some scenarios you could get stuck because the goal was to kill an enemy hero, and they could get themselves killed fighting neutrals. Also, I want to say that creacher growth felt a little weird to me in this one, but it has been awhile.
The AI in the Heroes series was never particularly brilliant, but in IV was really awful. The level design was also a bit meh, and it was an important point in III. And in II and III art design was a a strong point, while in IV was more… on the ugly side.
So yeah, IV wasn’t a good game.
Nice summary peacedog. I also dug a lot of the changes made in Heroes IV. I also enjoyed the art style of the game.
However, I have to agree that the borked AI killed the game for me. Playing for hours and hours in a scenario fighting neutral armies, to finally reach the other side of the map to fight the opposing AI player only to discover that the AI player had been getting its ass kicked by neutral armies the whole time was just disheartening. To spend so many hours on a scenario and then discover that it was a waste of time because the AI wasn’t even competent. Ugh. I just couldn’t keep playing after it happened a couple of times.
I only tried scenarios though, since that’s my favorite way of playing Heroes games, so perhaps there was a Heroes IV campaign that didn’t have the AI problem? Perhaps if the AI in the campaign was scripted? Does anyone know?
Miramon
3937
I recall the AI in the campaign in IV not being quite that dumb, possibly due to scripting, but it was still so much worse than the previous games that the game was less fun to play as a result. While I enjoyed the campaigns in I, II, and III (especially Armageddon’s Blade), I really liked some of the innovative player-made maps and campaigns for III. There was nothing like that for IV and of course V.
I forgot an important new feature:
- Army management was pretty different for the first time in the series. Firstly, creatures could be moved around in stacks without heroes. This was the lesser change.
Secondly, one could “ship” troops between towns. This effectively removed the troops from play while they traveled, with distance between towns affecting travel times. Further, if there was no clear path on the map between the sender/receiver, you couldn’t do it. You could also get troops from independant troop buildings delivered this way. While the UI for doing this could maybe have used a little tweaking, it was a really nice feature.
Also, if memory serves, you no longer needed to go around visiting water mills et al to collect stuff every week. This was also a positive change.
I think Heroes IV was a solid, albeit unspectacular, addition to the series. Both the artwork and music were generally excellent and IMO managed to maintain the classic Heroes IV feel despite the many changes to its core. The downside was definitely its AI and some of the changes just didn’t feel right (like creature growth). In fact, I’d go so far as to say I hated creature growth because it created too much micro-management since creatures grew daily rather than weekly.
New release: Battle Isle Platinum
Contains full versions of the following strategy games in one package:
•Battle Isle 1 including Data Disk 1 & Battle Isle ‘93 & Historyline: 1914-1918
•Battle Isle 2 including Scenery CD “Titan’s Legacy”
•Battle Isle 3 along with extensive video sequences
•Incubation and the wilderness missions,
Tyjenks
3941
INCUBATION!!! Still have my CDs though.
