
It's fine, that it doesn't hold up anymore after 25 years. Heroes 1 has the excuse of being the oldest, the pioneer. Beyond the numerous bugs and balance issues, the terrible AI, the lackluster attempt to recreate the Heroes 5 skill wheel and the abysmal visual presentation for a game released in late 2015 (including reusing art assets from 4-year old Heroes 6), we have mechanics guffaws with the weird magic system and the silly flanking mechanic, which causes battles to devolve into ring around rosies competitions.īeyond the story, there is no reason to ever play Heroes 7 instead 5 and what makes 7 the worst is simply the fact, that it is the newest game of the series. They tried to recreate Heroes 5, but failed miserably. There is no reason to play Heroes 1 instead of Heroes 2 except for the campaign storyline. Better graphics, better music, more creatures, more factions, better mechanics. Heroes 2 is everything Heroes 1 is, but better. Heroes 6 has enough uniqueness to be somewhat worth a play (naga faction), but overall there are much better games. Very disappointing are the very bland artifacts in general beyond the heirloom ones. The blood & tear system is a nice idea, but not implemented too well, same with the legacy features like the heriloom artifacts. Hero levelling is compeletely deterministic. Less resources, cities auto convert to your faction, so you can't mix anymore.

Heroes 6 feels like a dumbed down version of Heroes 5. I love the gathering storm expansion, where you start with five campaigns building up interesting heroes, who then all fight together in the last campaign, where you play with a troop of 5 high lvl heroes, who can wreck whole armies by themselves. The heroes in combat lends itself to some different campaign styles. The music is extreemly good, almost as good as Heroes 2. The hero development is exceptional, it's not quite as complex as the heroes 5 wheel, but the advanced classes and the many skills are great. But it does have a lot of good points as well. Only 4 tiers of creatures and having to decide sucks (cyclops or ogre mage, what a decision). Heroes in combat is a love/hate thing, especially early on, when they are very weak and very late, when armies are massive. Does it have problems? Sure, the artstyle sucks, it's the worst looking HoMM game, especially in terms of creature design and animations. This is the reason, why I like to play it, even over objectively better games. Different than all the other games, but close enough to still be recognizable as a HoMM title. Heroes 4 often gets a lot of hate and I know several, who consider it the worst game of the series. And there is also nostalgia here, as it was my first Heroes game. The campaign especially stands out to me, the succession war is still the HoMM campaign I remember the best. But Heroes 2 has its own charm, the art style is very unique and charming. Less factions, less creatures, less spells, worse balance. In many ways, Heroes 2 is simply a worse Heroes 3. The campaigns are very good, espeically as your hero has an extremely powerful special ability, which makes it a joy to play.
#Heroes of might and magic v cinimatic problems series
Overall, it's my 2nd favorite game of the series due to the hero system and the overall very good execution of the Heroes formula with their own ideas added to it. Presentation wise, it hasn't aged that well and looks worse than Heroes 3 nowadays.

It has a better hero system than Heroes 3 and the battles play out differently due to the new initiative system as well as the change to square battle maps. Heroes 5 comes in 2nd in amount of content. Overall, it deserves its spot as the best HoMM game ever made. The modding scene is quite big and you can get some nice new experiences with HotA or WoG. Only a couple of secondary skills are quite useless. Most content (factions, creatures, spells, heroes), for the most part fine mechanics. Nice graphics, which hold up to this day.
