Giaddon
5082
@Relayer - Go forward. Heroes 2 is Heroes 3, with less stuff. Heroes 4, while flawed, mixes it up in interesting ways.
@Scrax - No. (I mean, unless you are an extreme 3D graphics obsessive. Look at the screenshots). Heroes 3 is excellent. Also consider Disciples 2, which is on sale at GamersGate.
It holds up really well as far as interface and graphics and the music is fantastic.
Brilliant! I grabbed M&M1-8 and HOMM3, the discs for which I lost a long time ago. I’m looking forward to giving HOMM3 HD a try, as this will be my first play through in a couple of years. At this point, my backlog is growing at a rate which my actual playing can never match. Better than buying stocks, I suppose.
7 is awesome. It’s like 6 but with some extra features (including building your own castle…well, renovating anyway).
8 got bad reviews because it used the same engine and didn’t evolve the series much (but it did add monster character races). I plan to buy 8 this weekend. It’s still good, IMO, but 7 is probably the best of the series from today’s perspective. Xeen is still awesome, but it’s graphics and UI are tougher to deal with today.
Tyjenks
5087
My mind boggles every time I here “love TBS” and “haven’t played HoMM 3” are in the same sentence. It could just be that these people were babies when it was released. Ugh. I wish I had not thought of that.
For anyone who loved HOMM3 I highly recommend Heroes Chronicles which is $6 during the sale this weekend. The package is all 8 chapters of the individually released Heroes of Might and Magic Chronicles, which were a series of campaigns released by NWC between HOMM3 and HOMM4. They are nearly impossible to find anymore in the original retail packages.
Essentially they are DLC from before there was any such thing as DLC. They were made by NWC, and when put all together they tell the story of Tarnum, a Barbarian who tries to liberate his homeland. They’re shorter campaigns than what was included with the original HOMM3, but all 8 of them together is a whole heck of a lot of HOMM gaming fun, especially for $6.
HEh, I have a short attention span, so I rarely finish games, I just play them enough to experience some of the joy they have to off…SQUIRREL! I’m also something of a collector.
This, this, many times this.
Hahaha, totally. HOMM3 is a must have for any TBS fan.
Scrax
5090
Let’s see, 1999, yup, I was 12 and busy playing Everquest ;).
What about the Might and Magic games? Are they still worth playing these days?
I’ve been told they still hold up. Can’t wait to find out for myself, I bet they still do. Even though the graphics are crude, the stories and gameplay were always top notch.
Get off my god damned lawn and go play HOMM3, you whipper snapper.
Perhaps Robert Sharp could weigh in since he earlier posted:
Those three games (but especially VI, since VII and VIII were kind of similar) were some of my favorite RPG experiences of all time.
To which I ask Mr. Sharp: what is it about VI that prompts you to single that one out? Was is simply that it was the first of these three?
I’ve had a jewel case with M&M VI sitting in a backlog pile for years. Every once in a while I install it but never get beyond that because of shinier new things.
I really ought to give VI (and, if that works for me, VII and VIII) another chance sometime, but VI was really, really offputting after the amazing experience that was the combined IV and V. Gorgeous 2D graphics replaced by the serious fugliness of VI. Dedicated turn-based, tile-based play replaced by an awkward hybrid engine that allowed play in either real time or turn-based but worked well (for me at least) in neither, partly due to the free movement. Ugh.
VI is when they made the switch to the newer engine. It was still a bit fugly, even for its time. I remember that I almost quit because I thought it looked awful. However, it gives you a huge world to explore, still very reminiscent of the earlier games in the series. But this time it uses a 3d engine (with 2d sprites in it, so not fully 3d) that allows you to turn fully (and not in 90 degree increments) unlike Xeen. This makes the world come a live a bit more, IMO. VI is a more modern game. VII and VIII use the same engine, so yes that is why I link those three together.
Having just replayed them a few years back (and planning to play 8 again thanks to this sale!) I can say that they play just fine. You’ll have some graphics/UI shock at first, as with any older game, but it eases quickly, IMO. However, I did play them back in the day, so that might help me adjust.
Note that in SOME ways, the previous games (especially Xeen) might look better because they are fully 2d. But for me they always felt like corridor crawls, even when outside. VI doesn’t feel like that, and thus I like it more.
The free movement interacts really peculiarly with the turn-based combat mode, and the real-time was pretty much unplayable for me at the time (not because of technical issues, it was just that the combat really didn’t seem like it was designed for real-time.)
Real-time worked best when you had your whole party trained in bows and could just hold down the attack key.
Reading this and this should help you decide about M&M 1 and 2.
He hasn’t gotten to any of the others yet.
Correct. Use real time for weak enemies and TB for stronger ones. I never had any problem with switching between them and never found it awkward. However, obviously some people do, so YMMV.
You forgot to add:
… but with better art, music and a resulting overall better feel.
I’d say go back and try HoMM2. I think you’ll dig it. Plus it has some nice scenarios and campaigns too. Some of the scenarios let you play as any of the different sides on the map, and the game plays out very differently depending on your starting position.
