Line #63 YMMV/HeroesOfMightAndMagic


1	* AbridgedArenaArray: The vast, ''vast'' majority of ''III'' competitive games are played on either the "Jebus Cross" template or one of its variants. Since players gain a boatload of power very quickly in the central "treasure" area, games usually boil down to one or two battles where a player's entire army is either annihilated or victorious, and JC multiplayer games typically end in a few in-game weeks.
2	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: In the third game, is the faction seeking independence for the Contested Lands right that this is necessary to prevent war between Erathia and [=AvLee=]? Or are they opportunistic and self-serving, not to mention blind to how they're ''causing'' a war?
3	* AntiClimaxBoss:
4	** The final mission of the first game's campaign has you taking a Dragon City, which is guarded by 20 Dragons, split up into five stacks of four. While Dragons are the most powerful units in the first game, the group you face isn't as strong as the garrisons of the other faction strongholds in the preceding three missions; Lord Alamar will likely have at least twice as many Dragons by the time you face him, as well as dozens of [[MightyGlacier Hydras, Minotaurs]], [[LightningBruiser Griffins]] and [[FragileSpeedster Gargoyles]].
5	** In the first mission of the "Dungeons and Devils" campaign of ''III'', you're tasked with killing the Gold Dragon Queen. Does that sound difficult? Not when you consider that she's just a single Gold Dragon, who won't pose much of a threat to you if you've fought your way through the dozens of Green Dragons in her lair.
6	** This is repeated again in the expansion pack's campaign ''Dragon Slayer'' where the final mission is to slay the Azure Dragon king. Before you're allowed to fight the king, you gotta get through his royal guard, which is a stack of ''100 Azure Dragons''. To top it all off, the King doesn't have any unique stats himself; he's completely identical to any one of the 100 Azure Dragons you just destroyed, meaning that you should have no problem dealing with him if you got past his guards.
7	** "For King and Country," the final campaign mission of the third game, is this. Despite being set to Expert difficulty, the two Necropolis towns you face are easy to defeat if you rush them at the first opportunity with Queen Catherine. Even more so if she has Dimension Door.
8	** "Independence", the last mission of the third game's secret campaign, requires you to build a Capitol in your home city. This is harder than it sounds, since wood and gold are frequently stolen from you, but if you think carefully and plan ahead, you can finish the scenario in eight days at minimum.[[labelnote:explanation]]You only need to build the Marketplace, Blacksmith, Mage Guild, Citadel, Castle, Town Hall and City Hall before saving up enough gold for the Capitol.[[/labelnote]]
9	** You can do this to yourself - in fact, if you like winning the game it's recommended - in the second last scenario of "The Pirate Queen" in ''IV''. If you know [[spoiler:Pete Girly is going to betray you]], you can make sure to give him as many abilities that don't have anything to do with combat when he levels up as possible, like Scouting and Pathfinding, so that he's a pushover during the final battle. That's him ''personally'', mind you - he'll still have a gigantic army with 100 Hydras in it, but those Hydras are a lot easier if they're not backed by [[spoiler:Pete]] with Grandmaster Chaos Magic. His army is also not supported by any towns and just stays still in the middle of the sea throughout the scenario, meaning that you can just build up your forces at your own leisure before crushing him with overwhelming force.
10	* AssPull: ''V'' has quite a few that pretty much pull apart the entire premise at the seams upon rewatching:
11	** The idea of the Demon Messiah within the game's narrative. A demon hybrid that can walk on Ashan freely without having to worry about being sent back to Sheogh is indeed terrifying, so that's why Kha-Beleth started the events of the game for a half-human and half-demon hybrid. Only one problem. He already succeeded with Agrael, a dark elf demon cultist who can freely walk the earth and bringing in demons freely while being immune from being banished back to Sheogh as demonstrated with his battle with Nicolai. All Kha-Beleth needed to do is to repeat the same method as he did with Agrael and he will have demons walking all over Ashan in no time. [[AchievementsInIgnorance Kha-Beleth already won without even realizing it.]] This seems to have been noted as of ''Dark Messiah'', where it is revealed that the real purpose of the Demon Messiah is that he will be capable of freeing all demons from their prison permanently. Agrael is definitely not capable of that.
12	** TheReveal that after being rescued in the base game's finale, Queen Isabel is with Raelag in ''Hammers of Fate'' while half of her soul is stored in another city in ''Tribes of the East'' at the ''same time''. Not only it doesn't make any sense narrative-wise, it also destroys any sympathy for her as even if she is ignorant of Biara masquerading as her, she is effectively knowingly neglecting her duties as queen, the same duties that she fought tooth and nail for while resorting to employing Markal in the base game. There's a reason she is considered TheScrappy for quite a while on this very list.
13	*** While the former was supposed to be [[https://www.celestialheavens.com/viewpage.php?id=1286190845 explained]] by WordOfGod that the switch was only noticed by Raelag who set free the real Isabel after the battle with Kha-Beleth and [[PrisonDimension Sheogh]] isn't exactly a place you can just walk to on the map meaning that returning to the Holy Griffin Empire isn't going to be easy, this explanation wound up being a VoodooShark to most people as it raised the question as to why Raelag didn't just ''tell'' the other heroes that they were bringing back an imposter after the battle with Kha-Beleth. Meanwhile, the purpose of the soul splitting is to make Biara be able to disguise herself as Isabel on a spiritual level, which allowed her to fool everyone else except for Raelag. However, it's noted that both of these explanations are not stated or shown properly in-game and are from looking up interviews and wikis, making players wonders why weren't they added in the script itself.
14	* BestLevelEver:
15	** "Colossal Caverns", from the second game. You have a year to get a million gold by exploring a large dungeon, capturing towns, claiming gold mines and acquiring resources and treasures to fund your way to the goal. It's a very long mission, but it's also quite well-designed.
16	** In addition to "Colossal Caverns", the second game in general deserves credit for shipping with a lot of fantastically creative maps with tons of WorldBuilding and attention to detail - "Ghost Planet", "Plains of Aekon", "Gates of Hell", "Slayer Legacy", "THUNK" and more. The fact that ''Heroes II'''s developers did this ''before'' the advent of [[GameMod Game Mods]] allowing scripted events really shows the extent of how well these scenarios were planned out.
17	** "The Mandate of Heaven", in the third game, is a replica of the eponymous sixth ''VideoGame/MightAndMagic''. It features all sorts of references to the RPG, from towns and dungeons to the monsters you might find in the various regions of the game, and includes impressive attention to detail. This led to several other scenarios paying homage to the RPG series, such as the Xeen scenario in ''VI''.
18	** "Myth and Legend" from ''III'' pays homage to Greek Myth/ClassicalMythology, where the player controls Heracles, Perseus, and many other heroes in a large, detailed map of ancient Greece plus the underworld. It received a sequel in ''Armageddon's Blade'' called "Pandora's Box".
19	* BrokenBase:
20	** There's a large sect of fans who despise anything that's even slightly different from ''Heroes II'' and ''Heroes III''.
21	** Even the overall well-liked third game gets this occasionally for its ArtShift from the more fairy-talish visuals of the first two games(more the first than the second) to a RealIsBrown palette.
22	** Fans still debate whether [[WhatCouldHaveBeen the Forge]] (a cancelled town replaced by the Conflux for ''Heroes III: Armageddon's Blade'') was a good idea or not. Supporters think the genre clash could've been fun, while detractors don't want unfitting sci-fi elements in the game. There's also a third group that like the sci-fi stuff in general, but hate the {{Narm}}-y idea of, say, robots with laser guns guarding a lumber mill.
23	** When it comes to ''III'', there was a ''three''-way split: playing it vanilla, playing ''[=WoG/ERA=]'' or playing ''[[VideoGame/HornOfTheAbyss HotA]]'' mods. Over time, a fourth group splintered off, using ''[=WoG=]'' solely for quality-of-life changes, but otherwise sticking to vanilla rules, units and their stats. Over two decades after its premiere, there is a rift the size of Great Canyon when it comes to any discussion on how to "properly" play ''III''.
24	** ''Heroes IV'': An interesting unorthodox take or an AudienceAlienatingEra best forgotten?
25	** ''Heroes V'': A breath of fresh air or a buggy and unoriginal remake of ''III'' in 3D? ''Heroes VI'': Is it going to be the best or worst installment ever? Ashan: a valiant effort to clean up the ContinuitySnarl of the NWC era, or a bland and generic fantasy world? Practically every mention of Ubisoft or Nival is bound to have split opinions among the fanbase.
26	** With the release of ''Heroes VI'', the broken base has been shifted to "Is it irredeemable, or can it become a good game with sufficient patching and feature-adding via expansions?". With support for ''VI'' discontinued since Sept 2013, we'll never know...
27	** The reception to the Shadow Council element for the ''Heroes VII'' blog has been rather venomous, as they were forced to choose between two factions from the previous games, with only one having a chance of being added. Later on, fans also voted for the lineups for factions as well as their town and creature design, with lots of vote-stuffing. The Fortress faction, which lost to Sylvan, was later added in the ''Trial by Fire'' expansion.
28	* ComplacentGamingSyndrome: "Glove/Shoe switching", named after the Equestrian Gloves and Boots of Speed in ''III''. The bonus given by movement boosting artifacts is determined whether or not the hero(es) has them equipped at the end of the previous day, so keeping them on at the expense of the combat artifacts during your turn is an idiot move. So players who know this mechanic equip the movement boosters at the end of the day and change them for combat ones at the start of the next day. The downside to this is that it would nerf your hero if he got attacked during the enemy turn, which is why it is not fully considered a GameBreaker. A variation of this "artifact juggling" is swapping artifacts to gain as much Knowledge as possible before interacting with spell point replenishers and boosters, changing back after obtaining the (extra) spell points.
29	* CompleteMonster:
30	** ''Heroes of Might and Magic IV'': [[FallenHero Kalibarr]], once TheMentor to Gauldoth, got separated from him, but Gauldoth frees Kalibarr from prison years later. Having all his previous good qualities gone, Kalibarr starts with sending his old apprentice on dangerous missions in hopes of getting rid of him. Later, Gauldoth learns that Kalibarr was worshiping a GodOfEvil and under his orders, he wanted to [[OmnicidalManiac destroy the whole world]]. He also [[WouldHurtAChild kidnapped many children]] from the kingdom, fully intending to use them as {{human sacrifice}}s to his God.
31	** ''[[VideoGame/HeroesOfMightAndMagicAshan Heroes of Might and Magic V]]'':
32	*** [[ObviouslyEvil Kha-Beleth]], the [[SatanicArchetype Demon Sovereign]], is the BigBad of this game, the GreaterScopeVillain in the expansions, and the secret antagonist of ''VideoGame/DarkMessiah of Might and Magic''. Kha-Beleth's main aim during the game is to kidnap Queen Isabel and force her to bear a child that is half human and half demon. Kha-Beleth [[TheChessmaster initiates a war]] with the Griffin Empire to accomplish this objective. When the Demon Lord Agrael, who has betrayed the Sovereign, defeats Erasial, Kha-Beleth executes him. Kha-Beleth sends Biara to join forces with the purged Agrael, now Raelag, and infiltrate his ranks. Kha-Beleth sends reinforcements to the Soulscar Clan, [[WeHaveReserves expecting them to be slaughtered]]. Kha-Beleth then takes advantage of Markal's invasion of Irollan to send Biara to get the scroll and kill Tieru, wanting revenge on the Dragon Knight for interfering. When Godric, Raelag, Zehir, and Findan attempt to perform the Rite of True Nature, Biara summons Kha-Beleth and kidnaps Isabel, taking her to Sheogh. Once Isabel is secured, he [[MedicalRapeAndImpregnate rapes her]], and uses his magic to age the child up to force her to deliver it early. When Raelag arrives, Kha-Beleth reveals he raped Isabel and [[EvilGloating gloats to him]] about it. Upon being defeated, Kha-Beleth flees, and needing time for his son to escape tells Biara to create a distraction that the factions will have to spend time fighting her, and when Biara and most of the armies of Sheogh are destroyed, Kha-Beleth writes it all off as acceptable losses. Years later when Sareth is knocked unconscious, Kha-Beleth reveals his lineage and orders him to release him. Should Sareth choose to imprison him for eternity, Kha-Beleth will scream and curse him. Evil, smug, and a {{sadist}}, Kha-Beleth will do anything to escape his prison and destroy the world, even if it means starting a war just to rape a woman to bear a child.
33	*** [[EvilSorcerer Markal]], who also appears in ''[[VideoGame/MightAndMagicClashOfHeroes Clash of Heroes]]'', is an evil {{necromancer}} who, learning that King Nicolai is dead, schemes to gain the trust of his grieving love, Queen Isabel, and raise Nicolai as a vampire lord. Marching to the Griffin Empire, he defeats a rebel army and [[ManipulativeBastard persuades Isabel]] that he can resurrect Nicolai, knowing fully well what the result will be, and persuades her to attack the Wizards. Slaughtering the wizards who stand in his way, Markal restores the citadel of Lorekeep and ransacks the town of Hikm to gain the Amulet of Necromancy. Vowing to reunite the Vampire's Garment, Markal storms into the Silver Cities, turning the Wizard cities into Necropolises and converting the citizens--[[WouldHurtAChild including children]]--into undead puppets for him to throw away as he sees fit. After killing Cyrus to gain the Ring of the Unrepentant, Markal kidnaps Freyda, Godric's daughter, when he rebels. Once Nicolai is resurrected as a Vampire, Markal decides to take [[TyrantTakesTheHelm command of the Griffin Empire]], and he immediately orders Nicolai to [[KickTheDog attack Irollan]], leading to the deaths of thousands of Elves, including their king Alaron. After Zehir breaks Godric out of prison, they attack Markal at his citadel and, after a close battle with the necromancer, defeat him. He tells them that killing him will ensure he can return, [[EvilLaugh laughing all the while]]. When Zehir burns his corpse to ensure that cannot happen, Markal decides to get revenge on Zehir and lures him into the Ring of the Unrepentant, hoping [[GrandTheftMe to take control of his body]]. [[AmbitionIsEvil Ambitious]], power-hungry and vengeful, Markal will do anything to further his desire for power and gain revenge on those who wrong him.
34	*** ''Hammers of Fate'' & ''Tribes of the East'' add-ons: Alaric is the new [[SinisterMinister Archbishop of the Griffin Empire]], the leader of the Red Church, and The Dragon to Biara disguised as Queen Isabel. "Isabel" appoints Alaric as Archbishop and the leader of the Red Church, and he very rapidly shows himself to be [[TheFundamentalist an absolute fanatic]]. Ruining negotiations with rebel leaders when they [[PsychoSupporter disrespected his "Saint"]], Alaric endorsed a policy proposed by Laszlo to burn and kill off entire villages simply because some of them were helping the rebellion. He nearly orders the rebel leader Duncan executed for mocking Isabel, and is only stopped because killing him will make him a martyr. Upon recovering Prince Andrei, Alaric abandons their allies to be slaughtered by the rebellion, and orders anyone who disrespects Isabel to be executed. After killing Andrei, Alaric routs the Orcs and kills their Warchief, but then departs the battle when he is ordered to meet with "Isabel", leaving his soldiers to be slaughtered. When Biara is exposed as a demon, Alaric goes completely insane and kills anything he encounters, believing it to be a demon. A fanatical KnightTemplar, Alaric shows that even a follower of Elrath can be an irredeemable monster.
35	*** ''Hammers of Fate'' (primarily): [[InsaneAdmiral Laszlo]] is the new commander of the troops of the Griffin Empire appointed by Biara disguised as Isabel. When first introduced, he demands the rebel leaders surrender, and when one of the peasants informs him that the peasants are supporting the rebels and their Elven allies, Laszlo burns him and his entire village alive. Laszlo then tortures an old war comrade to get Prince Andrei's location, and is envious and disgusted that Freyda will be commander, as he sees her as not understanding his version of war. When Freyda goes to negotiate with the dwarves for Andrei's return, Laszlo attacks the dwarves in the hope that the dwarves will kill Freyda, and also simply to fulfill his bloodlust, only stopping when Biara-as-Isabel [[PragmaticVillainy negotiates a peace]]. When Laszlo discovers Freyda has rebelled, he orders Godric to be executed while he engages the rebel leaders in battle. A sadistic BloodKnight, Laszlo shows that even a knight of the Griffin Empire can be a complete and remorseless sociopath.
36	* DemonicSpiders:
37	** Phoenixes in V. Fast, powerful, and a permanent fire shield that damages any unit that attacks it. Even worse, when the stack is destroyed, it ''resurrects on the spot'' (because, you know, phoenix).
38	*** The spell version can be even worse, though without the resurrect part.
39	** Ghosts in I and II. Not only are they strong, every time a stack of ghosts kills a creature, it adds a ghost to the stack. These are especially difficult early in the game, as a half dozen ghosts can hit a bunch of peasants (the weakest and most populous of all creatures), kill 20, and suddenly you're up against triple the number of ghosts you started with. Because of ''II'''s "flying enemies have no movement restriction" mechanic, it was impossible to protect yourself from ghosts. You just had to wait until you had a high level army that could take the ghosts with no casualties.
40	** Vampires. Reasonable stats everywhere, can fly around you, upgrades can prevent you from retaliating, and resurrect based on dealt damage if they're fighting living creatures. If it weren't for the fact that half the Necropolis' army is garbage in any game, they'd be much worse to stop.
41	* DesignatedHero: The Tower faction as a whole from ''III'' is good-aligned, despite their alliances with Castle and Rampart being lorewise strictly professional, the town in question acting as repressive antagonists for Tarnum's and Yog's [[OriginsEpisode origin stories]], and practicing slavery.
42	* EnsembleDarkhorse: From the otherwise unremarkable Heroes IV expansions, Spazz Maticus, a young king on a mad quest to rule the world, gained somewhat of a cult following, thanks to his memetic faces in the official art, even spawning a small subset of "Spazz-posting" memes as a result
43	* EsotericHappyEnding: The ending of ''Tribes of the East'' is pretty much this for ''V'' as a whole. Sure, Biara is dead or is going to [[FateWorseThanDeath punished by Kha-Beleth for her failure]] and demons as a whole are purged from Ashan while [[EverybodyLaughsEnding everybody laughs at the prospect of Freyda and Duncan's upcoming wedding and family life]]. However, as Arantir and Zehir noticed, the [[TheAntiChrist Demon Messiah]] aka Sareth is born from Queen Isabel's rape as foretold. Not to mention, pretty much all of Ashan except for Irollan and Heresh is in ruins from the demons' rampage and schemes. Finally, if Sareth [[MultipleEndings chooses the wrong side]] in ''Dark Messiah'', all of the heroes efforts will be a collective ShaggyDogStory.
44	* EvenBetterSequel: ''Heroes II'' and ''III'' are often regarded as the pinnacle of the series, and for good reasons. ''II'' is an ExpansionPack to ''I'' that expands on the scope of the gameplay and defined many of the features later games would implement such as more involved heroes. ''III'' improves on ''II'' in the best way possible, implementing tons more content and some new features like hero specialties and a dramatically expanded magic system. It's telling that ''III'' is still frequently displayed as being among the most top-selling games on the Website/GOGDotCom storefront even to this day.
45	* FanNickname:
46	** "Ubival" (Ubisoft and Nival, the publisher and developer of ''V'', respectively).
47	*** Funnily enough, "Ubival" is the male third person singular past tense form of "kill", [[{{LaymansTerms}} i.e. "he was killing"]], in Russian. Seeing as Nival is a Russian developer and the entire HOMM series is quite popular in Russia, it might not be a coincidence. There are numerous players, both Russian-speaking and not, who dislike the changes in ''V'' (either the gameplay or the art style or the completely different universe).
48	** And now "Ubihole" from, you guessed it, Ubisoft and Black Hole.
49	* FanonDiscontinuity: Many fans don't want anything to do with the entries that came after ''Heroes III''. However, in light of the ''even more'' poorly received ''VI'' and ''VII'', ''IV'' and ''V'' were VindicatedByHistory. However, it's noted that ''V'' is often paired with mods to make gameplay less frustrating and the AI less dumb.
50	-->'''WebVideo/SsethTzeentach:''' ''Heroes V'' is a fantastic addition to the series, and probably the last good game it will ever have. Since I'm fully convinced that ''Heroes VI'' and ''VII'' don't actually exist. I'm just having a bad dream. One that I can't seem to wake up from. (Timestamp [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukr5SPMlzOY&t=14m58s here]].)
51	* SugarWiki/FunnyMoments:
52	** Sir Christian's campaign in ''Armageddon's Blade''. The tale of a "fragrance alchemist" (perfume salesman) with some military training trying to get home after being shipwrecked on an island chain populated entirely by nutcases. A rare case of a NintendoHard SugarWiki/{{Funny Moment\|s}}.
53	** If you visit the tavern often enough in the third game, the tavern keeper will get annoyed and tell you that he's out of rumors, something he says is your fault.
54	* GameBreaker: [[GameBreaker/HeroesOfMightAndMagic Here.]]
55	* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff:
56	** ''III'' is one of the most popular games in Russia and Eastern Europe. In particular, a group of Russian modders created ''VideoGame/HornOfTheAbyss'', including the [[WoodenShipsAndIronMen pirate-inspired]] Cove faction. There have also been a number of ''Heroes of Might & Magic'' concerts in Poland, home of the Heroes Orchestra, celebrating [[AwesomeMusic/MightAndMagic the game's Awesome Music]]. Interestingly enough, the fifth game of the series (which is spiritual successor to Heroes III) is created by Russian gaming company Nival Interactive.
57	** ''V'' seems to have a cult following in China, with a separate MMORPG based on it released, including a Chinese-esque faction.
58	* GeniusBonus: The Academy and the Necropolis in ''VI'' have ArabianNightsDays and Babylonian themes respectively, two settings that share the roughly same geographical location, only a millenia apart, which is ironic since the Necropolis is an offshoot from the Academy. Stronghold changing their motif from BornInTheSaddle to {{Mayincatec}} after fleeing from Wizards to the islands could also be a nod to Mongols and Aztecs being genetically close.
59	* GoddamnedBats:
60	** Sprites in the first and second games. They're a FragileSpeedster unit without very good offense, even for a first tier unit, but they can fly across the battlefield and it's impossible to retaliate against them. If you face enemy Sprites, expect them to go straight for your ranged units, especially since their turn will likely come up first.
61	** Ghosts in ''V'' are incredibly annoying. They're not that tough, but they have a 50% chance of avoiding any non-magical damage[[note]]Fist of Wrath is also capable of missing them since it deals physical damage[[/note]]. A pretty big issue early on, when your heroes probably don't have any potent attack spells. They were particularly annoying in early versions of the game when the 50% chance could trigger multiple times in succession. Thankfully, they were patched so they can only dodge twice in a row.
62	** Minotaurs in ''IV'' have a similar ability to the above, with a 40% chance to block any physical attack with no trigger limitations whatsoever. This makes fighting them (and hearing the "CLANG" sound of the ability triggering) often very frustrating even with a much stronger force, and especially if neutral stacks of them get paired with Medusas that can in the meantime wipe out your high level troops from afar with their instant kill petrification.
63	** Imps and familiars are pretty crappy as far as tier 1 creatures go, and are officially considered the weakest unit in the game[[note]]The game gives you a creature for your score; the higher the score, the better the creature. The lowest score, "Just Play A Map", has an imp, meaning that you're guaranteed a spot on the high score list the first time you complete a scenario or campaign[[/note]], but become fairly annoying as large stacks of imps can smash through your mana on their first turn.
64	** Most factions have some sort of GoddamnedBats too, if not as bad as the ghost. For instance, pixies and cerberi, which move fast, act often and strike multiple targets that can't strike back. Or the assassin, which can decimate any valuable stack with their invisibility and poison. Magic users dread the magnetic golem, which is not only immune to pretty much anything, but they even heal from damage spells and protect allies from area spells. Their annoyance factor declines in larger battles but they are dreaded as neutral monsters you want to deal with without taking too many losses.
65	** Neutral Shooter stacks in early game, especially those guarding resources, are horribly annoying to deal with. Unlike melee units, shooters will typically get at least one shot off, which usually will kill a handful of your units since you gotta slog it across the field. It doesn't help that most early game units are slow and melee, meaning not only will you get shot at, but chances are you will get shot ''twice'' as you slowly make your way across no-man's land.
66	* GoodBadBugs:
67	** The Sacrifice spell in ''III'' is reasonably rare and does not look too hot on paper (kill your own unit to heal damage to another). Fine. However, there is a bug that means that you can kill ''any'' unit to heal your own, including enemy units.
68	** Another one in ''III'' was that a hero with the Tactics skill (that lets you arrange your units before battle) and a stack of cyclopes could get a free shot at an enemy town's towers or walls in the Tactics phase.
69	* GrowingTheBeard:
70	** ''II'' is generally considered to be a vast improvement over the first game, and codified many of the gameplay elements of the series, such as hero skills, mana-based spellcasting, and creature upgrades. It also added storytelling to the campaign and moved away from the artstyle of ''Might & Magic'' and gained its own identity. ''III'' furthered polished the gameplay elements to create what many fans consider to be the apex of the series.
71	** While ''V'' and its first expansion suffered from lackluster storytelling, ''Tribes of the East'' featured better writing, a new level of strategy thanks to alternate upgrades, another new town, and several other tweaks to the gameplay. It also didn't hurt that ''Tribes of the East'' was a stand-alone product.
72	* HighTierScrappy: The Conflux faction is banned from most official tournaments of ''III'' (which spawned jokes about players pretending it doesn't even exist), due to being [[GameBreaker ridiculously unbalanced]] in both the early-game (powerful heroes two good early shooters, and a flier which prevents retaliation) and the late-game (access to all spell schools and ridiculous creature growth). More details on the [[GameBreaker/HeroesOfMightAndMagic Game Breaker page]].
73	* JerkassWoobie: Irina from VI can be harsh and abrasive, but it's hard not to sympathize with her considering the Emperor basically sold her to an abusive husband in a half-assed effort to keep peace in the realm, and her father ultimately allowed it to happen. Whether her heart of gold shines through or gets snuffed out is up to the player.
74	* LowTierLetdown:
75	** The Walking Dead in ''III''. Slow, weak, and hardly used, it was more effective to turn them into skeletons instead.
76	** Peasants in its expansion ''Armageddon's Blade''. They have ''1'' in every stat except speed, which is ''3'', which ties with the Walking Dead above. The game manual outright calls them useless and mentions they're only good for being turned into skeletons. Even their IdleAnimation has them facepalming.
77	** The Peasants in the first and second games aren't any better, since they're similarly weak and can't be turned into skeletons. Most Knight players will leave them out of their army once they gain access to Paladins.
78	* MemeticMutation: Astrologers proclaim week of the ''X''. ''X'' population doubles! [[labelnote:Explanation]]An exploitable random event popup from ''III'', where the creature bonus is replaced with trending topics.[[/labelnote]]
79	* {{Misblamed}}: There has been quite a substantial portion of players who consider ''IV'' the reason why [=3DO=] and New World Computing went bankrupt. In actuality, it is due to rampant game piracy that crippled sales combined with many other factors, with ''Heroes IV'' '''not''' being one of them. More details from a former employee [[http://heroescommunity.com/viewthread.php3?TID=11058&PID=1100272#focus here]].
80	* MorePopularSpinoff: A significant proportion of the gigantic ''Heroes'' fanbase never played [[VideoGame/MightAndMagic the original RPG series]]. This factor led to the scuttling of the ScienceFantasy Forge faction in ''Armageddon's Blade'', as ''Heroes'' had been almost strictly fantasy prior to then and the sci-fi elements of ''Might and Magic'' were seen as foreign to the franchise.
81	* SugarWiki/MostWonderfulSound: ''III'' has so many of them. It's not an exaggeration to say half of the sound effects are absolutely wonderful..
82	** [[https://youtu.be/PTMWEL3cFKg?t=255 The heroic jingle of visiting mercenary camps, arenas and Marletto towers]].
83	** [[https://youtu.be/PTMWEL3cFKg?t=359 The wonderous jingle of digging up the grail is glorious even by Heroes III standards]].
84	** [[https://downloads.khinsider.com/game-soundtracks/album/heroes-of-might-magic-3/45%20-%20defended%20our%20castle.mp3 Successfully defending a castle]]. Since the enemy probably won't attack you unless they're confident they can win (or desperate to take a town), this will generally be a welcome sound after a hard-fought victory.
85	** [[https://youtu.be/PTMWEL3cFKg?t=182 Morale]] and [[https://youtu.be/PTMWEL3cFKg?t=179 Luck]] bonuses in battle.
86	** [[https://youtu.be/PTMWEL3cFKg?t=310 The "VRRRRRR" sound effect of resurrecting troops]].
87	** [[https://youtu.be/PTMWEL3cFKg?t=73 Constructing a new building]].
88	** [[https://youtu.be/PTMWEL3cFKg?t=83 Finding a treasure chest]].
89	** [[https://youtu.be/PTMWEL3cFKg?t=162 Entering places like Stones of Learning or witch huts]].
90	* NarmCharm: The first installment had some pretty silly looking creatures, but some of the sound effects, such as the druids and turret sounding like [[Franchise/StarWars TIE Fighters]], and the peasants' monotone "Ah!" when they get hit just take the cake.
91	* NightmareFuel:
92	** In the first three games, if you lost a map, you'd be treated to a scene of your own execution, either by the guillotine (''I'' and ''III'') or the sight of your abandoned skeleton in a cage that was hanging off a tree (''II''), complete with music to [[ItsAWonderfulFailure further emphasize your failure]].
93	** Also in the same tune is Heroes II's battle defeat scene. I shows the defeated Hero walking away from the battlefield in a rather gloomy tune. II shows the Hero running from the scene like a coward ''while vultures immediately pick on the flesh of his freshly-killed army.'' The music doesn't help either. The one from ''III'' is similar to the one in ''I'', but a lone soldier runs towards the hero with a flaming arrow in his back then promptly falls dead.
94	** Several map objects in Heroes 3, such as the [[https://youtu.be/PTMWEL3cFKg?t=184 Warrior's Tomb]], many [[https://youtu.be/PTMWEL3cFKg?t=312 creature banks]], and the [[https://youtu.be/PTMWEL3cFKg?t=123 Dragon Utopia]], give off [[ScareChord Scare Chords]] which can be quite startling to an inexperienced player with their volume turned up. The [[https://youtu.be/PTMWEL3cFKg?t=464 wailing]] of a Subterranean Gate is also unsettling.
95	** The Danse-Macabre-like Heroes 3 Necropolis theme, which is why [[CreepyAwesome many fans like it so much]].
96	* ObviousBeta: Seems to plague the series from ''IV'' onwards, requiring lots of patches to get the gameplay right. More than two months after ''VII'''s release, major bugs were still around.
97	* ObviousJudas: Lord Haart being a traitor responsible for poisoning King Gryphonheart in ''III'' is a lot less surprising if you check his biography and see that he was rumored to have ties with a necromantic cult.
98	* SacredCow: ''Heroes III'' has gained this legacy in many places throughout the world, especially in Eastern European countries where the game was exceptionally popular. Its lasting impact basically sustained the ''Heroes'' series for four more games ''by itself'', and it's widely looked at as both an incredible strategy game and an exceptionally fun game in its own right. Thus, looking down on it for any reason isn't taken lightly.
99	* ScrappyMechanic:
100	** A series-wide example. If you are aiming to obtain or improve a hero skill upon levelling up, you have to pray to the RandomNumberGod that it will show up instead of giving you skills that you don't want which will mess up your build. For example, ''III'' only offers two options, one of which is usually a pre-obtained skill. ''IV'' is like ''III'' but it has three options instead. ''V'' dials back to two options for main skills and abilities each, which is dangerous for those aiming for the Ultimate skills. Outside of SaveScumming (a luxury that cannot exist in multiplayer), you usually can't change the skills offered upon levelling up. There is a reason for the existence of Memory Mentors in ''V''.
101	** Certain tiles have scripted events that will force the hero that steps onto the tile into an unavoidable battle. There's no way of knowing when you'll be ambushed, so you can be in for a nasty surprise. For example, on Griffin Cliffs, you might try to attack the lightly defended cities to the north, only to face an encounter that you can't win.
102	** When you start a scenario in the first game, your faction and (in some scenarios) your starting point are randomly chosen for you. This can be frustrating for those with strong preferences when it comes to their starting heroes.
103	** A few campaigns in ''III'''s Restoration of Erathia campaign revolves around obtaining an artifact and bringing it to a subsequent mission. This would initiate a chain of deals in each of those missions until you got to the final one, where the final artifact you receive will determine one of the possible bonuses you get (usually a very powerful artifact, troops, or something like a full map reveal). The idea was that the in-between missions of these campaigns could be done in any order, and so the bonuses encouraged replayability. Unfortunately, the chain of deals wasn't communicated well in-game, and thus it left a lot of players scouring the map looking for an artifact to turn in to the trader when the idea was you were suppose to do the other mission first. On top of this, when the game was ported into the Complete edition, it resulted in some of the traders asking for ''the wrong artifact'', breaking the chain of deals and making it impossible to get the bonus unless you do the missions in a specific order.
104	* SequelDifficultySpike: The second game, in comparison to the first. While the first game had Claw, a fairly easy level for new players, there are no obvious missions for beginners in the second game. The campaign also starts off more difficult and stays that way, culminating in [[ThatOneLevel Roland's final mission]].
105	* SequelDisplacement:
106	** While the RPG ''[[VideoGame/MightAndMagic Might & Magic]]'' games weren't exactly ''un''popular, the ''Heroes'' spinoff series became much more widely known and helped define the turn-based strategy fantasy game genre. It's telling that the ''Heroes'' games were rebooted in the new Ashan continuity well before the parent series received the same treatment.
107	** Within the ''Heroes'' series itself, ''II'' and ''III'' definitely eclipsed the first game in popularity due to technical and aesthetic advancements. For many players, one or the other was their introduction to the series, and they're re-visited more often.
108	* {{Squick}}: Thralsai, leader of the dark elf Soul Scar clan in ''Hammers of Fate'' has a line that wouldn't sound strange coming from one of the [[TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} Dark Eldar]]:
109	--> ''I feel the urge to celebrate. Fetch me a slave, a fresh one. And towels for the blood.''
110	* StrangledByTheRedString: Raelag and Isabel in ''Hammers of Fate''. Especially egregious considering that [[spoiler: Raelag murdered Isabel's husband Nicolai in the main game]]. The awkwardness of this pairing probably contributed to Raelag being [[PutOnABus written out of the story]] in ''Tribes of the East''.
111	* ThatOneBoss: Orlando, the Demon Lord you fight at the end of the Necromancer campaign in ''Tribes of the East''. Due to a ridiculous combination of skills and the Lion artifact set, he has Luck and Morale parameters at +9, meaning that every unit will either crit or get an extra turn 90% of the time. Even with the ultimate Necromancer skill and the various artifacts you have by now, you can at most reduce this to +3 or +4. On top of that, he has a stupidly powerful ballista that does about 500 damage per shot, shoots 4 times a turn and can crit. Luckily, you have a massive number of towns to draw forces from, but Orlando also gains troops with time.
112	* ThatOneLevel:
113	** "Castle Alamar" in the first game, the penultimate mission for non-Warlock players. There's a giant maze in the middle of the map, and while the game hints that the Gargoyles will show you the way, you'll have to kill a lot of them in order to make your way to the enemy city. Castle Alamar is extremely well-defended, and is probably more of a challenge than the actual final mission.
114	** The final mission in Roland's Campaign in ''II'' is an absolute MONSTER. First off, normally, campaign missions will give you a choice of one of three bonuses to assist you in the scenario. Just to show how you are getting NO help in this scenario, the choice between three bonuses is actually a choice between getting one of three artifacts that will ''hinder'' your army instead. Next, the developers put an enemy hero right next to one of your starting castles, but just out of sight. If this is your first time playing this mission, it WILL catch you offguard and essentially force your first of many restarts. But the most difficult part by far is the magnitude of the armies you will face in this mission. Your opponents have no less than '''TWELVE''' towns, (technically thirteen, but one of them simply exists to amass troops for the epic final battle, which compared to the rest of the mission is a cakewalk.) backed up by more than enough resources to fund every single one of them. By comparison, you have 3 towns. Yeah...[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iln_6I2PGzU A playthrough on Youtube]] took roughly EIGHT HOURS to beat this mission. And that's a single attempt. Account for failed attempts and we're easily talking FIFTY HOURS of gameplay on This. Single. Mission. And as if that isn't enough, the fact that [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard The AI is a HUGE cheating bastard in this game]] means that you can't just abuse the AI. You'll have to fight tooth and nail for every single castle on the map, and sometimes even that won't be enough. It is impossible to describe the pain, time and amount of attempts it will take to finally put this monster of a mission down. The only redeeming factor is that this IS the final mission, so an epic battle is what you would expect. And boy, does it deliver.
115	** "Steadwick's Fall" in ''III'', which, as the last mission of the ''first'' Evil campaign, is a severe DifficultySpike. The goal is to conquer Erathia's capital of Steadwick within 3 months. The catch? It's guarded by General Kendal, a very powerful Campaign-exclusive hero[[note]]Thanks to two very powerful artifacts, his Attack and Defense is at a whooping ''19-20''. Even your most powerful hero with all the best artifacts you can get on the map can only have his best stat reach ''15'' or so.[[/note]], who also has an incredibly large army[[note]]Thankfully, he has no angels.[[/note]]. Not helped by the fact that the city's barricaded by heavy garrisons and extra cities surrounding the entire map. On your end, you can only carry over ''one'' set of heroes from the two previous scenarios while at the same time having no campaign bonuses. Not surprisingly, many players choose to beat this scenario by luring General Kendal with a decoy hero out of the city that is just far enough to prevent him from coming back in the same turn while a second hero takes the unguarded city.
116	** "Tunnels and Troglodytes" in ''III'', the last mission of the second Good campaign. It's a large map, making it difficult to control territory. You start with a Castle, a Rampart and a Tower, making it difficult to field a large army of a single type. The enemy, however, has five Dungeon towns, and there are creature dwellings all over the map, making it easy for them to outproduce you if you're not careful.
117	** "The Pirate's Daughter" in ''IV'' seems to have been designed to punish people who got complacent with the relatively low difficulty of the previous campaigns. This first scenario is EarlyGameHell defined, you start with a small army of weak units, far away from any town, while your two opponents start with two each, and will aggressively pump out units from day 1. It takes days of sailing to reach the nearest neutral town, and it begins poorly developed and is in area that lacks in resources. Just stopping to build it up is not an option, or else the Green player to your immediate east will bowl over you with their superior resources and numbers, but executing an attack is no picnic either, due to their decently levelled heroes and strong starting position. And before you think about just using your heroes to overpower it, they have an AbsurdlyLowLevelCap of just 12, and are both thieves, who take multiple levels to get direct combat skills and have them on lower priority compared to their scouting skills, which are useless in direct combat. If you can survive the early part of the game and knock out Green, things ease up a lot, but getting to that point requires precise execution.
118	** The Lord of Heresh mission in ''V'' can be pretty damn absurd in terms of difficulty. Sure, you get two cities and you only enemy has just one... but in order to even get to him you need to acquire a specific artifact, which requires winning two battles against a large number of high-tier units. Due to how the scenario is designed, you get at most two months to build up your forces, while Haven troops keep leaving you, your mines get randomly captured and two enemy armies invade your territory. Before the time is up - and assuming neither of your heroes got killed yet, which is an automatic failure - you have to confront your opponent right in his city, where he has a huge army and maxed-out fortifications at his disposal. But there is one more thing which can make this scenario downright impossible - the hero defending the city is Godric, who was one of your main heroes in two earlier missions. If you developed him well, then you might suffer a case of HoistByHisOwnPetard, where you are defeated as a result of your own abilities.
119	** The Faerie Dragon scenario from the campaign "Dragon Slayer" in ''Armageddon's Blade''. While it is not hard, it is incredibly long as it requires your hero to trudge through multiple rough terrain (and often backtrack) completing random objectives to unlock the next area. Your hero will also hit the level cap in this scenario long before you get close to finishing, meaning that the latter battles are more or less just a waste of time as you gain nothing from them while potentially losing troops and have to backtrack, which is even worse if you chose this as the second mission, as the next one has the same level cap rendering all those battles a pointless slog as well. Finally, much of the enemies in this mission, due to the time limit, are trick bosses that require specific usage of spells or creature abilities to overcome, the most infamous of which is a stack of Nagas numbering ''3500'' (nagas seldom reach 100 in normal gameplay).
120	** The ''Heroes Chronicles'' campaigns feature a number of these, especially on high difficulties where the small maps tend to make the starting resource disparity particularly punishing. A good example is "A Distant Cry", the starting mission of "The World Tree" campaign, which requires defeating three Necropolis players on a Small map, each of whom has a two-way teleporter leading to your area. The level cap is a very low 8, resources are scarce due to the map taking place entirely in narrow underground tunnels, and any attempt to launch an assault on one of the three enemy towns inevitably leads to one or both of the other two gunning for your own capital as soon as your main army is away. The only good news is that the necromancers are also hostile to each other... unless it leads to one conquering another and ending up with even more troops to throw at you.
121	* TheyChangedItNowItSucks:
122	** The UpdatedRerelease of ''III'' by Dotemu is generally disliked by fans for not including the two expansions. That means an entire town, several creatures and heroes, and multiple campaigns are missing, as well as the fan-favorite random map generator from ''Armageddon's Blade''.
123	** Part of the reason the fourth game wasn't so well received was because it completely retooled everything in the series. Combat, unit production, and hero development were all changed. Oh, and it blew up the previous games' setting. The fifth game saw a return to the third's style of gameplay -- and was promptly criticized for removing the few changes that ''were'' well received in the fourth, such as caravans (these returned in the expansions).
124	** The [[AIIsACrapshoot AI was absolutely atrocious]]. Often it would not have even fully explored its home area by the endgame, and you would often find the mass graves of dead heroes who kept futilely attacking the same powerful neutral stack. The worst? There is chance that you will find the hero you need to kill already dead. This is reason why people at Gamefaqs add ''instant win'' cheats in the walkthrough -- you might need it.
125	*** Speaking of the AI, check [[http://www.celestialheavens.com/viewpage.php?id=453 here]] if you want a laugh.
126	*** Some of the criticism of the sixth game is in this vein (for instance, criticizing the reduction of the number of resources).
127	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: While ''IV'' receives a lot of praise for having surprisingly well-developed lore, the origin of the Chaos faction could have been significantly expanded upon. As the fourth game's counterpart of Nighon, it acquires a lot of troops from the faction's previous incarnations, however, its storyline focuses more on pirate queen Tawni Balfour's naval conquest rather than the incorporation of the former Nighon armies into her ranks. With every single other campaign from the core game explaining the troops available to each faction in believeable ways, sometimes focusing an entire mission on obtaining a certain creature type, it stings quite a bit that [[DemotedToExtra orcs and minotaurs are barely mentioned, medusae are only a part of a plot-irrelevant sidequest, black dragons aren't present lorewise, and the newcomers like hydras, efreeti, and nightmares aren't even mentioned]].
128	* ToughActToFollow: Every game post ''III'' has to deal with being a successor to it, and that is a massive pair of shoes to fill. Not only is ''III'' one of the most popular and beloved strategy games of all time, but it has a massive and still active playerbase that loves it to pieces. Thus, each game post ''III'' is looked upon with scrutiny for different reasons. ''IV'' changed too much, ''V'' changed too little (and what it did change is often considered poorly planned, such as the lack of caravans from ''IV''), ''VI'' is a glorified reskin of ''V'' and has some of the worst DRM in any game ''ever'', and reactions to ''VII'' range from "poorly written, buggy, but fun" to "unplayable nightmare". Most diehard fans stick with ''II'' and ''III''.
129	* ViewerGenderConfusion:
130	** Kyrre, one of the Ranger heroes from ''III'' is female. Which is completely non-indicative outside of using "her" in the lore blurb. To make things more confusing, there is also Kyrre the ''male'' Ranger from ''IV''.
131	** The Rakshasa Ranis in ''V'' are muscular and have quite masculine faces. The only indication of their gender is the green sashes they wear over their pectorals.
132	* VindicatedByHistory: In light of the ''even more'' poorly received ''VI'' and ''VII'', ''IV'' and ''V'' were re-evaluated as much better than upon their releases. In the case of ''IV'', it also helps that a lot of its TroubledProduction became widely known.

Context YMMV / HeroesOfMightAndMagic