Heroes of Might and Magic

While I do agree that in some campaigns (like Chaos or Might) first mission felt way harder than further ones I won't say you were steamrolling after leveling up a hero. After all, there were caps for each mission and the enemies still got harder (may depend on the difficulty level, though).

I was talking more about things like some mutually exclusive units being way better than alternative or some skills being very niche (like bonuses from Nobility skill line being way less useful most of the time than, say, Tactics) while the other ones being outright broken (like Necromancy giving you up to 4 vamps after large battle or leveled up thief hero just stealing things and getting free XP).

Edited by Nachtwandler on Feb 19th 2023 at 4:10:01 AM

Playing through the third mission of Adrienne's campaign. It's the only one where you actually face Necropolis Towns in addition to their heroes.

It really makes you realize what a mismatch Fortress is against Necropolis. Fortress is pretty underpowered in general, but usually the special abilities make up for it.

Except most of the units' special abilities — in particular the Mighty Gorgons' Death Stare — don't work on Undead units.

Yeah, Fortress is unfortunately among the weaker towns. I still like the town for its aesthetics and the monsters they have. HOMM 3 was my first experience with Gnolls, as well as the freakier monsters like Basilisks and Gorgons. That's why I have a soft spot for Fortress, even though it can be a pain to play.

And that campaign is done. Hated it.

These AB campaigns are not as fun as I remembered. Maybe Dragon Slayer will be better.

So far Dragon Slayer's pretty fun. Dracon's ability to upgrade mages into Enchanters comes in very handy, especially when the Enchanters cast Mass Haste or Slow.

The first map however is a pretty challenging one. Probably the hardest first mission of any campaign so far. You've got a two month time limit to beat the Crystal Dragons, the map isn't a small one, there are a bunch of branching paths making it easy to waste time, you're limited to level 8, and you cannot increase your starting army. You can't even upgrade them until the very end of the level. And you want to minimize your losses as much as possible because this army carries over to the second mission.

And that's because whichever second mission you pick (this is a branching mission though you have to do both eventually) pits you against a whole map full of Rust or Faerie Dragons. At level 8 you won't stand much of a chance against them without a good sized standing army at the start.

I went with the Rust Dragons as my second mission. That meant flagging every mine, all of which were guided by Rust Dragons. There was also a Purple Stronghold army I had to take out. This mission also has a time limit, but six months is more than enough time to beat Purple, level up Dracon to the max of level 24, get all the available stat boosts on the map for him, and flag all the mines.

Next will be the Faerie Dragons.

Edit:

One annoying thing is that the Tower army doesn't have units fast enough to out-speed any of the special neutral dragons. That means the dragons always get the first strike.

Edited by M84 on Feb 20th 2023 at 11:38:53 PM

And that's Dragon Slayer done.

While it may seem daunting to tackle the powerful neutral dragons at first, the fact that Dracon has magic while the neutrals don't (you only face an army in one of the missions) makes it much more manageable. Spamming magic like Berserk makes them all a pushover.

...So of course the last mission of the campaign has a map with no means to restore your magic points instantly. No Mage Guilds. No wells. Nothing.

Yeah, if you didn't pick Intelligence and make an effort to pump up your Knowledge, you're screwed.

But whatever. It's done. Overall, the campaign was pretty fun. Next up, the Festival of Life. In which I help a psychopath take over a kingdom which eventually leads to him destroying the entire world.

I played a lot of II and III, and I got a little into IV and played maybe half the campaign of V. What I saw of IV made it look like it could have more tactical depth, but it was difficult and unappealing to a beginner, while the other games excel in being easy to learn, hard to master.

V felt lacking compared to the earlier ones, fewer factions and units, the 3D was confusing as was said earlier, and making cutscenes with fighting animations was pure narm. But it did one thing right that I quite liked: the setting felt like a world and not a list of RPG monsters bunched into armies. See many factions in II and III grouped together creatures in a way that made some thematic sense, but with no explanation as to how why they would be in the same settlement. Like I know what unicorns, centaurs and pegasus have in common, but is it something that would bring them together? Who is handling the wild animals that the Fortress fields? It is obvious that the Dungeons and Strongholds denizens aren't living peacefully together, but who rules over them to keep them in line? Only the Castle, Necropolis and maybe Conflux made sense. (The fact that the towns had such non-indicative names was symptomatic of their lack of grounding.) Adding to this, each faction's heroes were largely interchangeable except for the Necropolis.

V addressed these concerns. Each town had a clear main inhabitant and the others were allies, explained in a short panel. (Inferno was an exception, but their point in the story was being out-of-place invaders summoned in from elsewhere.) They also tried giving the heroes more racial identity. For that alone the game has my regards.

I haven't played any of the later games (I was quite surprised to learn we are up to VII). Do they keep the intuitive gameplay with tactical depth aspect that made the early ones so successful?

I played VI. While I did kind of enjoy it, it made me realize that this franchise was circling the drain. I did not play VII.

It's kind of fitting since those are the two factions explicitly led by Might Makes Right assholes — namely the Overlords and the Barbarians. The nation of Krewlod following this kind of mindset ends up being deconstructed — Kilgor's an awful ruler and he leads his people into a war that gets them and the rest of Enroth destroyed.

Edited by M84 on Feb 27th 2023 at 10:57:51 PM

I've played through all of III, IV an V, and when I tried VI and VII they just did not catch me at all. Plot of VI felt like nothing was happening, just Big, Screwed-Up Family contrived to all split into different nations and fighting each other. I had a brief flash of interest in the "oh hell yeah Sandro is back!" campaign but then he also done basically nothing except some internal squabbles and manipulating one person into becoming his super loyal follower.

Edited by Adannor on Feb 27th 2023 at 10:46:39 PM

They actually do not fight each other. Everyone around them tries to force them into it, but the family bonds ultimately prove to be too strong.

Still, it is true that if you actually want to find out more about the ongoing conflict between the Celestials and the Faceless, you gotta play the Might and Magic games that were developed around the same time.

Edited by M84 on Feb 28th 2023 at 3:55:16 AM

Horn of the Abyss 1.7 is here, and with it - Factory, a brand new town! That comes with a new campaign, a campaign editor, a host of balance changes and bugfixes, airships and a lot more!

Wasn't Factory actually planned for official game but was canned because of fan backslash and replaced with Conflux? Because people complained about "sci-fi stuff in our fantasy game" (missing the fact that Might and Magic universe is technically sci-fi). Though, this iteration looks more steampunk.

Edited by Nachtwandler on Jan 1st 2024 at 7:00:02 AM

That's actually Forge. From what I understand, Factory is an attempt to make things more magitechy, (See their two different Tier 7 units) and I'm not actually sure how canon they are. (Cove has some basis in the world, at least)

Another complaint about Forge was that five of its units would just be reskins of existing units (i.e. Jetpack Ogres and Cyborg Nagas); then again, Conflux did the same thing by repackaging the Elementals...

Taking preexisting elementals just loops back to having basis in the world. They were around and now they're around in this place too. X but Cybered feels more derivative, especially as that wasn't much of a theme prior.

Yeah, especially since the Heroes series of games had never explored the sci fi elements of the Might and Magic verse. All of that is contained in the dungeon crawler Might and Magic games.

The only tie-ins to the whole Ancient vs. Kreegan conflict are the Kreegans themselves in Heroes III and IV and the "Angels" who are actually the Ancients' advanced hunter killer androids created to fight the Kreegans.

Edited by M84 on Jan 1st 2024 at 10:36:00 PM

Unrelatedly, I've completed all the standard scenarios of the first game. Could do the non-Castle campaigns, but...

I don't feel like it. I'm moving on to the second game. XD

By second game do you mean Heroes of Might and Magic II?

Yes.

In that case, keep in mind that the power gap between factions is a significant one. Knights are ridiculously underpowered, especially compared to the Warlock faction.

Oh, and if you are lucky enough to get Genies in your army somehow, remember that even a stack of 1 Genie has a chance of halving any enemy stack it attacks.

A quick presentation of the Factory and its units. I thought it would be a choice for tier 7 but no, you apparently can build both (...if you have the resources).

It's quite interesting. I don't know how the synergies will work, but I know at least that to the surprise of absolutely nobody having ranged units for tier 1 is kinda busted (and they seem to scale decently well with their defense shredding ability).

It looks like it's going to be much more mechanically unusual than the Cove.

Yeh, I'm aware. Genies were in the first game, and the manual for game 2 outright states that Castle units are on average weaker, they're just pretty cheap and have fast movement.

It really is. Didn't get to play them much, and I'm a Sunday player at best, but:

• Halflings are... Tier 1 Shooters, with the olden neutral Halfling unit as a base.
• Mechanics/Engineers are going to require care of placement because of their breath attack. Most likely you'll want them hanging out near Automatons and Juggernauts, since they can repair them.
• Armadillos are... painfully generic in a sea of more interesting fellows. They get a growth-boosting building, but otherwise they're just a vaguely defensive statblock.
  • They start rolling when Hastened which is cute.
• Automatons are bizarre; a fast walker that can explode on death (you have to trigger that ability first) - but the upgrade gets a "no retaliation" ability, which would discourage suicide use. They also have a fixed damage value, like Angels/Archangels or Rust Dragons (or Peasants, lol).
• Sandworms/Olrokh-Olkhoi effectively teleport (unless them tunneling has a difference in some niche, like interacting with moats or landmines), and I haven't had the opportunity to use their devouring ability yet.
  • Also, if you fight with them on sea, where they can't tunnel, they slither around instead. Neat little detail.
• Gunslingers/Bounty Hunters have 45 HP, which makes all of their other stats irrelevant; you'll have them dropping like flies the moment someone catches their attention.
• Coatls can turn invincible for a turn, but their stats are underwhelming; they don't have much else going for them. Also, it appears their sounds are currently bugged.
• I haven't a chance to try Dreadnaughts/Juggernauts yet, but the unupgraded version appears sturdier and stronger than Crimson Coatls already. They're also Mechanical, which means they can get a repair from Engineers.

The army overall feels squishier than Cove's, and Cove was already fairly offensively oriented, too.

TBH, I've always thought a Forge / Factory kind of Town was unnecessary. Especially since the Wizard / Academy / Order faction was already heading that way. In IV (the last game before 3DO folded), the Order had as one of their Tier 4 ultimate troop options a dragon-shaped Humongous Mecha piloted by a dwarf. Even before that, they were already blending magic with technology, with several of their units (Gargoyles, Golems, Titans) being animated statues.

The Ubisoft games would continue this trend, with the Tier 1 academy unit in V being Gremlins with special abilities that either support mechanical units or sabotage enemy mechanical units and use rifles for ranged attacks.

Edited by M84 on Jan 3rd 2024 at 5:28:45 PM

I dunno, the flavor is different enough here. Tower is obviously about magic, and imbuing that magic in stone, while Factory is science-oriented and playing with metal.

I do think that the town suffers from some creatures not having abilities that fit them. The worms corpse-eating, for example, would be much better suited to a slow unit like a Hydra that might have to spend turns being unable to attack due to being too far away - not a teleporting, rather fast attacker that ignores obstacles. The Spiders look designed more to be the worst overworld encounter ever than anything, and actually, definitely losing creatures is not exactly what a H3 general hopes to do in the long run.

It looks like, just with the Cove, the devs were extremely careful not to add an obviously broken faction (like Conflux or the Fortress in V), and went a bit too far the other way. Although it does look better than Cove to me.

Though as I mentioned, the Wizards were heading in the direction of metal and machinery both in the original 3DO games and in the Ubisoft games. If 3DO hadn't folded, we might have seen more of a transition from magic to magitek, like IV's Order Faction's Dragon Golems. The Dragon Golem was in fact based on a unit from the scrapped Forge Town.

But is it as bad as III's Inferno? Because that would be quite a feat.

Edited by M84 on Jan 3rd 2024 at 6:13:05 PM