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Highly Anticipated, Highly dissapointing

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 16 / 17
Date: July 12, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I was a big fan of Heroes 2 & 3, and have played through both games, many multiplayer games (hotseat and lan), and thought they were both great games. Heroes 4 is quite different. First of all, with all the bugs in the game (3D0 was quick to release some patches), the games almost looked like it was in Beta when they shipped it out. Months later, multiplayer STILL isn't supported. The game feels extremely rushed, and some incredibly simple bugs (like being able to hit through castle walls) are still there. I'm a programmer myself and releasing a game in a state like this...... makes a person wonder. If you read about what kind of changes are being made each update, the game should've started at 0.5 than 1.0.

As for the gameplay, having heroes is interesting, but at the same time, if your hero dies, there goes your mission. On the same note, if your heroes get very powerful, you don't even need armies. Get yourself a two level 25+ barbarians and a couple potions of immortality and you have one of the tougher armies in the game. Why? Because unlike creatures, heroes don't lose units in battles (there's only one of them) and are basically the same strength throughout. And I abhor the new castle defenses. Being standing on top of these "posts" get a 4x multiplier for attack and defense. If you place 3 ranged units on those things, it'll take an army almost 3x as strong to break in.

So if you're a big HMM fan, my advice would be to WAIT. Wait till at least patch 1.4 comes out (which was supposed to happen in June). I think by then, it should be playable and more balanced.

Oh yes, and the only cinema i've encountered was the intro. Maybe they'll add those one too..

Not nearly as good as HOMM 3

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 17 / 20
Date: September 09, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I am a huge HOMM fan, from version 2 and 3, and I must say that I'm very disappointed in the version 4 release. My biggest gripe is the combat screen. Gone are the strategies of well designed 2D combat map. It seems that they were too busy trying to update the graphics that they forgot how original and creative the old 2D battle map of HOMM 3 was. I use to love trying to protect my shooters by surrounding them with stronger units. Or trying to surround stronger enemy units so that they can only retaliate once per round, but you get in 3 or 4 different units to strike them down. All that seems to have gone away as enemy units can now simply fly over your protection, and half the time you can't figure out exactly what single pixel your cursor has to be over in order for you to strike the right enemy unit without wasting valuable movement walking around in circles to get at the enemy unit. It's a joke, this is a terrible game. And to release a game with no multiplayer capability in this age of the Internet. Give me a break. 3DO should be ashamed...and they have lost a die hard customer this time.

Don't buy it!

-Ryan

Beware the brain-dead AI...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 14 / 15
Date: April 13, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Since none of the other reviews mentioned the AI, I'll limit myself to discussing that. Other people have talked about the gameplay changes (mostly good, some bad, others will work well IF they can patch the game), so you can read those reviews if you want that kind of info. The AI in H4 is...hopeless. It will send weak heroes with weak armies straight into the teeth of tough wandering stacks (or within ambush distance) over and over again (you will often see mass graves of AI heroes within the ambush radius of one such stack-I once saw SEVEN). Heroes are not optimized for level advancement; while you are carefully honing your guys into Grandmasters in one discipline, the heroes of the AI will be stuck in Basic and Advanced in a mishmash of several different unrelated skills (so that they can't cast high level spells, for example, or get a GM level StealthyScout who can harass you indefinitely). The main armies of the AI are curiously timid: they will chicken out of attacking your armies even if your forces are greatly outclassed, and rarely will send its main force out into your territory on a relentless campaign of conquest. The AI doesn't put a priority on defeating wandering stacks and getting the mines and treasure they are often guarding. This means that the AIs are doubly-weakened: fewer wandering stacks killed means less experience for heroes as well as less gold and resources for buying creatures and fewer magic items. Eventually the AI just 'gives up' and sits in its home castle waiting for you to come along and kill it. This makes the game an incredibly boring non-challenge. A potential prince of a game, Heroes of Might and Magic IV currently resembles a rather warty toad, and, given the recent layoffs and resignations at NWC, the AI is highly unlikely to get these problems addressed in a patch. Caveat Emptor.

Awful...as much as I hate to say it....

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 18 / 23
Date: March 30, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I have been a die-hard Heroes fan since it's inception...and needless to say Heroes 3 and Armageddon's blade ROCKED! I've been eagerly waiting for Heroes 4 for 5 years now...got it the minute it came out...and man, what a disaster. This game bears no resemblance to it's predecessors, and they have broken away from what made the game so unique. This game is basically a step up from Age of Wonders...as much as I hate to say it. The fact that any piece can wander independently of heroes is an interesting twist but it takes away from strategic planning, in heroes 4 you had to make the choice, do I free up resources, explore, or expand...now a peasant can do a heroes job grabbing up goodies, recruiting, and exploring. You also never get to grow attached to your heroes or your pieces because they CONSTANTLY die...and die and die...you simply replace with the seeming endless supply from your towns (towns constantly produce day to day unlike week to week in previous heroes games) Oh and did I mention the HORRIBLE music score???? It's OPERA!OPERA!!! The gameplay itself is also painfully slow...it takes forever to resolve the simplest battles. The graphics are also hideous...the pieces are animated well but they are about the size of your thumbnail on a 16" monitor. And heroes no longer bestow bonuses upon their troops...outside of the moral, luck, speed, offense, defense secondary skills. Now I would be remiss in mentioning some of the positives. The new hero skills are cool, way cool...very unique. And they introduce the ability to distribute artifacts among your troops and intro the use of potions...kinda cool. But the whole charm of previous heroes has been totally lost. Hey maybe that's what heroes fans have been looking for but not me. Now normally complicated is good. But in this case, it's bad, very bad. They managed to bog down the gameplay to the point where it's actually boring (how is that possible you ask...buy and find out), and I personally feel that there is actually less strategy involved relative to heroes3. If your looking for a change or loved age of wonders, this is your ticket..but this is not a worthy sequel to heroes3...they tried to jazz it up too much...sounds stupid I know, but you'll see.

Very pretty, but...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 11 / 11
Date: April 01, 2002
Author: Amazon User

The new look of Heroes 4 is very impressive. The graphics are sharp and the spell effects are terrific. However, Heroes has strayed from the essence of what set it apart from the rest.

"Improvements" that are just the opposite:

1. You now have to choose which creature generators you are going to build in your castle. You cannot have all of what is available for the particular castle.

2. Creature generators are one-level only. No upgraded creatures.

3. All of the heroes of a particular type are all the same. (ie: all the druid heroes are exactly alike except for their portrait) There are no unique hero abilities.

4. The hero actually now is much less a factor than in previous games. In HOMM 3, a powerful hero could make an army of mediocre creatures very effective. Now, the hero's scores have NO effect on the creatures in the army. Each creature goes on it's own scores only, no modifiers. Granted, there are some items that have an effect on all creatures, but improving the hero generally only affects the attacks the HERO makes, not the attacks of the creatures in the army.

5. Schizophrenia. HOMM 4 can's seem to decide what it is. It has many of the strategic elements from the older versions, yet the addition of the attacking hero and the feature of buying armor, weapons, and potions for the hero make it more like a D&D role playing game. For example, look at the combat screen. It's Baldurs Gate! (only not as well done) Put your ranged-attack creatures in the back, melee fighters in the front, turn-based combat, use a potion...

6. Minor quibbles:
"What just happened?" In HOMM3, the status messages at the bottom of the combat screen could be scrolled back if you missed something. In 4, the messages are off in the bottom-right corner, and cannot be reviewed.

"One hero per week" You cannot recruit more than one hero per week from any given tavern. I captured a castle, but because the enemy had just recruited a hero, I couldn't recruit one for a week.

"Interface Bloating" The interface takes up too much room on the screen. Just for laughs, knock the resolution back to 800x600. The interface takes up half the screen! Even at 1024x768, the adventure window seems small.

"Label Overkill" Floating the mouse pointer in any spot for more than a second or two will reward with a popup label that says something useful like "dirt" or "water, shallow" or "road, stone". Thats dumb! Put it on the right mouse button so if I want to know what it is, I can click to find out. I don't constantly need reminding that I am standing on "grass".

A few pluses: The caravan option is nice, having the windmills automatically cough up tribute is convenient, but on the whole, the "more" in HOMM4 adds up to "less".

What can be said that has not already?

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 11 / 11
Date: April 24, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I respect the design team of HOMM4 for what they tried to give us. We the gamer have asked them to give us heroes that actually partake in combat, new and interesting spells, and a new take on game play. And they gave this to us.

But where the team failed was in the true charm of HOMM4. All of us who have played the past games know the pure joy of having a massive stack of fully upgraded Black Dragons cook a entire wild army with glee. And many of us can fondly remember that late game moment when those Grand Elves joined our army, giving us 450 very useful warriors. These feature are lacking completly or are pared down in this game.

Other aspect have also seen a..."change." The graphics of HOMM4 are much more pastel and garish than even HOMM2. They also lack the sharp lines and contrast of HOMM3. Worse, creatures no longer have an immpressive apperance. Behemouths(one of my favorites from 3) look like oversized moles. Thunderbirds look like pastries. As an added slap to our collective faces, there are now only 4 levels of creatures, meaning that while the 4th level is indeed powerful, it doesn't carry the same weight of the top level creatures of 2 and 3. I understand that the makers are trying to really differentiate the creature types but even though a HOMM3 Minatuar was basically the same as a Orge Mage, they were different enough that having one or the other mattered. I liked more creatures!

Yes, the new heroes are truly immpressive. Yes they add a new level of play. But they are not the world shattering move to a new era that I personally hoped for. While playing campaign heroes are really a liability. I would skirt around even the small stacks of Medusa's and such because 1 shot may kill the hero in my army, thereby ending the scenerio. And fopr all their power, they took up an important opening in my army, one I would have liked to fill with a stack but couldn't because I needed to level up my hero.

At first, the ability to send out armies of only creatures(no heroes in it) seemed very important. But once I found that they could flag nothing and were easily ambushed, I would have a hero in every army. It seemes logical that a miller would be just as willing to give his gold to a army of beholders as some hero. In the end, I usually used "charmed" or "Diplomized" soldiers as fodder to find out just how strong an army really was.

I could go on and on about problems. But I don't need to because my fellow reviewers will. Read their's too and note those written about system problems and lack of features. But in the end, if you really want to be told whether to buy this game or not...Save the money for a game that you know is good, and not one that may be.

Awful. Just awful.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 21 / 29
Date: September 30, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game is a slap in the face of existing Heroes fans. What were the programmers thinking? It's an absolute debacle! First of all, the combat is ridiculous. There's no hex grids, no room for tactics, and the concept of having heroes in battle, unless they are very powerful, is absurd since they are easily killed. Laying seige to a castle is a complete joke, since there's no way you can knock down walls (the only way through is the gate) and there's these ridiculous pillars behind the walls that give a huge advantage to the player who owns the castle.

What's really missing in this game is immersion, which existed in both Heroes 2 & 3 and made them such excellent games. Heroes 4 however feels empty for a number of reasons. Buildings are ridiculously expensive. There's no more 'wait until the end of the week' for new creatures - they replenish sporadically. You must CHOOSE between which armies you'd like to have populate your castle, eg, choosing Champions means you can't have Angels, and choosing Monks means you can't have Crusaders. There's no upgrades possible for units. You just get them and away you go.

The hero system is stupid and biased. When you're weak you too easy to kill, wheny you're strong you're too hard to kill. Learning skills takes forever and even at level 25 you've only learned half of what you're able to. The game looks too flashy and the layout is way too complicated. So much for simple looking graphics - it's hard to see exactly what's going on now.

Ultimately, Heroes 4 is a total disaster with so many things wrong with it there's no way a Heroes fan could possibly like it. As for people giving it 5 stars... they're probably just looking for 'helpful votes'. Listen to the rest of the people who have bagged this game and AVOID IT ENTIRELY!

Different, but that's not always bad.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: March 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Heroes of Might and Magic 3 was one of my favorite games of all time. This game is not as good but it still is far above most games.

New things-
Heroes can fight and customizing them is much more fun.
You choose between high lv units. adds lots of strategy
Map editor is huge and in depth

Old things that are gone
No upgrades
The 2dish system, now its isometric

I don't think that this game has ruined the series in the least. It could use a few more units but other then that it is nearly perfect. The campaigns are good and keep you going (one of em is really sad) and the units are more creative A+

Eats up time just like the others

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: April 11, 2002
Author: Amazon User

3DO has published yet another time machine in HOMM4 -- start playing at 9pm and the next thing you know it's 3am.

HOMM4 is a worthy additon to the Heroes series in that all the things that made the previous games so great are still there, but there are some problems that are going to have to be resolved soon by 3DO.

Combat is fun now that your heroes can take part, but where on earth is the combat grid? I can't explain how annoying it is to not know exactly where your troops will end up. Also, the attack/move interface is sketchy to say the least -- I've lost countless troops by trying to shoot the enemy but instead ending up wandering over and standing beside them.

The new graphics and sound are good, although part of me still prefers the older graphics from HOMM2 & 3 -- I loved those golden crusaders... The adventure screen interface is too small though, which results in jerky movement when exploring the map. The new sound (both music and FX) is very well done, but there is a lot of skipping and repeating. I've had to switch off the music option due to the score getting stuck like a scratched 45 and you may go crazy when the FX start to loop.

Final complaint: HOMM4 starts to slow down after a couple of hours play and I have had to reboot my computer after quitting every time -- other programs just wouldn't load or were slower than an 84 year old driving a Yugo. This happens even though my computer passes all the technical requirements for the game.

Despite all of the above, HOMM4 is addictive and a blast to play. Many of the reasons gamers loved the previous Heroes games are there and a few things (such as caravans and the MUCH improved creature generation) really add to the value of the game. The campaigns appear to be huge (still playing the first one after 20 hours) and the creature features and updated heroes skill list are fine additions. In all honesty, the sound and slowdown issues probably mean that HOMM4 deserves 3 stars, not 4, but the sheer amount of gameplay offsets some of those downsides. I recommend picking it up, but I'm hoping that a patch is on the way soon to resolve the sound issues -- if 3DO is going to spend time developing a quality score, I'd like to hear it while I'm playing. Also, can we have the crusaders from HOMM2 back, please? :-)

The next six months of my life

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 30 / 56
Date: September 15, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Aw Gawd, not again...To think how many hours I have productively wasted on this series throughout the years. It's disturbingly great. It's been far too long since I've felt the sweet purity of the klack till 5 in the morning. I am anxiously looking forward to having the life sucked from me courtesy of that oh so dear sweet tender computer screen. Carpal Tunnel, I await your mercy. I'm thinking that this investement will save me $$$ considering I anticipate that the need to go out will dwindle sharply. Who needs friends...I have computer. Yay!!!

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