Homm4 - the Good, the Bad, the Ugly

[aaglo]

This is propably a relatively stupid question in propably the wrong thread: Is HOMM[anynumber] a good game? Which of the [anynumbers] is the best for a newbie ? I've never played them...

[Grumbold]

I personally found HOMM II and its expansion a good game. The graphics are tolerable and the plotlines pretty good. You should be able to get both in a combination budget title or eBay.

HOMM III is very similar but I thought that the greater number of specials on the map actually worked against the AI, which consequently proved easier to beat. In other respects its just bigger. More monsters, more spells, more options.

Choosing either Homm II or III should give you a cheap introduction into the series. If you don't like one, you won't like any of them. If you enjoy II or III then you will also like IV and can decide whether paying full price for another improved version is worth it.

[aaglo]

Well, I like Master of Magic and Warlords II... are they any similar to HOMM?

[Rex Little]

Aaglo, if you liked MOM and Warlords II you should also like any HOMM version. All of these rank among my all-time favorites. I still play MOM and HOMM3 often, and would play Warlords II if I still had it.

[SnowFire]

If you liked Masters of Magic, you might also want to pick up Age of Wonders, which is basically a combination of MOM and Heroes II. You can get it pretty cheap right now.

Both Heroes II & III are truly great games. I recommend trying Heroes II first, it's a bit harder to find so you might want to look now. It's also an, I don't know, "purer" great game than Heroes II- Heroes III added on some stuff that I really liked, but there's also a few quirks I dislike, something which I can't say about Heroes II, which with the expansion may be as close to perfect a game has ever come. Then again, now that Heroes IV has been released, maybe they'll be tempted to do another massive rerelease.

There are also free demos floating around. I don't know if they ever released a demo for Heroes III, but I know there's a demo of Heroes II around, if you can find it. The same with Age of Wonders, and AOW2 for that matter (what I'm playing right now, along with Shadow Hearts).

[Grumbold]

What is Shadow Hearts?

[SnowFire]

A Playstation 2 RPG that is... er... unique. It takes place in 1914 in a sort of alternate-Earth where magic & stuff exists. Yuri is a half Russian, half Japanese guy with a voice in his head that tells him to protect this random girl, Alice Elliot, the daughter of a priest who was murdered and has "strange powers" involving exorism and healing. Yuri can also mix with various monster spirits to get more powerful in battle, at the cost of Sanity Points (yet another odd thing in the game). Anyway, it seems everybody wants to capture Alice for her odd abilities, be it random mages or a certain English gentleman by the name of Roger Bacon- a guy in a top hat with amazing regenerative & magical abilities, and the apperant main villian of the game. The game starts on the Trans-Siberian railroad in Russia and you visit China, England, Czechslovokia (well, modern day- suppose it was part of Austria at the time), and other fun places in the course of the game.

If you haven't guessed, this game is pretty weird, but it's good.

[Triped]

homm4 has grown on me ever since I started playing it...I still keep III around, though, since the gameplay and strategies are different enough that they don't feel like they're in the same series.

So far, one of my favorite changes are the damage system and the monsters. Having 4th level creatures cost more, but effective combat does a lot for the fun factor. Selling your soul to get one black dragon, and then watching him decimate an entire army by himself is priceless.

[Standup]

yeah its growing on me as well. Having almost uninstalled it i'm glad i carried on. The gfx are still a bit garish and it feels like a lot of the numbers have been hidden away. Maybe by hiding the numbers it makes it more accesible to a wider audience?
The combat seems much more tactical. It felt that in HOMM3 the biggest stack won and tactics were of little effect when you had 50 odd black dragons. In IV i find my self replaying battles from where i'm hopelessly out numbered but trying new tactics with my heroes and a new approach can see me winning. That's something that rarely happened in Heroes 3 unless the battles were even. I do find though that i abandon the creatures quite quickly as heroes get more powerful and the extra management of building every day gets tiring.

[Asher]

My take on HOMM4 in a nutshell:
Far and above better than HOMM2 and 3. Different game, all are good, but I got really bored of the old style of play. If I want that style of play, I'll play HOMM2 and 3.

I don't miss the lack of multiplayer because you could not pay me to play TBS multiplayer games. I cannot fathom how anyone can like doing that.

Anyway, carry on.

[SnowFire]

Standup: Yeah, but how long does it take to build up to a stack of 50 black dragons? If you can do so, then either something is seriously wrong with the map, you're almost at the end of the map and have won long ago anyway, or else this is a massive map where your opponent has 50 comparable units too.

Trust me, there was plenty of tactics in Heroes II & III, just not much randomness, which myself I'm glad for- I can plan a lot better tactics when I know if they'll work or not. I will grant that once you've mastered them, there's not as much to learn, but it takes some effort to learn all the quirks.

Asher: You do multiplayer TBS when you're in college and have a roommate and can do it hotseat. You can also play yourself that way too... hehe.

[Asher]

Okay, so it's got hotseat MP anyway.
I don't have a roommate so it's pointless for me.

[Triped]

Haha, I played my first game of hotseat homm4 last night.

5 minute turns while we tag-teamed in Jedi Outcast...no peeking occured.

I don't remember the map, but it was a small two player one...we saw enough of each other to keep things interesting...

In the end, his barbarian horde got overwhelmed by my Summon Mantis spell. Thunderbirds are definitely way cooler than they were in III, though, and definitely do a number on one's army.

[moomin]

I've come to the point where I rather think that all HoMM4 critters are a bootstrapping device for growing decent heroes. Once you have a decent hack-and-slash and two good supporting spellcasters, I very much enjoy giving my castles away to the inept AI and play without any resources and castles whatsoever. Works great on maps where killing a specific hero or some other special victory condition is in place instead of the old boring conquer all scenarios.

But the strategic AI is so bad there isn't much of a game anyway, unfortunately. We shall see how the promised patch addresses it. If the AI is made to do anything but hang around in its castle waiting for you to kill it, HoMM4 will be a´much better game than its already great predecessors.

[chronocrator]

It seems like HoMM4 has just become less ugly and better - a patch is out! The hexes on the battlemap are now shown, just like in part 3!

Too bad I still have not got the game