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The cold, hard fact is this game sucks!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 24 / 30
Date: May 03, 2005
Author: Amazon User

First off I would like to acknowledge the fact that this review comes very late after the fact since it's been many years now and 3DO and New World Computing are now dead. The secret, mysterious reason why these two game companies are dead may remain hidden, but one could guess that the poor design of Heroes 4 and Might and Magic 9 might be the reasons. But If there are by chance any buyers out there still pondering purchase of this game I'm about to give you the complete lowdown with no candy coating. You should also know that anyone who gives this guy 5 stars is either 1, a 3DO/New World Computing employee; 2, used to own stock in 3DO/New World Computing; or 3, are family members and friends of these people. You cannot possibly give this game more than 2 stars and here are the reasons why.

*No multiplayers support- This is a joke. These days only certain games can get by without multiplayer, i.e. Final Fantasy X and even Squaresoft went and foud a way to make FF multiplayer. This is inexcusable. There isn't even hotseat support???
*The people who are saying the graphics are 3d now are lying. The graphics are still 2d they are just drawn in an isometric view. The animations are horrible. Nowhere clos to the ones in heroes 3. The colors are all dull and drab for some reason and they have stupid fighting nimations. The Sorceress does s spinning roundhouse kick?
*The hero portraits of previous characters are resued from Heroes 3, they just have minor touches on them to make them look different. Some of the portraits are the same model shot from a different angles.
*There combat maps are smaller now and condensed into a narrow alley in the isometric view which begins your hero in a confined "corner". Instead of fighting on a wide open square you now fight on a diagonal, elongated hexagon.
*Siege warfare is a joke. There are no siege weapons. Players can punch through walls. Tower do not attack anymore.
*Towns no longer look like colorful themed paintings but rather look like boxy, card board cut outs with no detail or animation. Once agian, subdued and dull colors.
*Less monsters to fight with total. Building some mosnter dwelling restricts you from buying others.
*CGI cutscenes have now been replaced with poorly painted water color paintings. You don't even get to see multiple paintings in a slide show style. Just one washy, dull painting and some stupid narraration. Sometimes they use the same painting twice or thrice.
*Magic user heroes can get toasted in battle even at intermediate levels. I still favor heroes in battle but heroes should be tougher or have added defenses.
*No random map option means you have to play the same 12 stupid scenarios over and over again. One of the best things about Heroes 3 was the random map feature.
*Fewer towns than Heroes 3. Heroes 3 with expansion gave you 9 towns with tons of monsters. This game gives you only 5 towns. The Asylum is the dumbest idea I have ever heard of for a fantasy warfare game and the units are just a mish mosh of neutral units from other games.
*There are lots of stupid things here that just don't add up for a fanstay warfare game. Druids ridding zebras? White tigers living in a cave that is white with black stripes? Water Elementals produced in a Preserve/Rampart town? Dwarves( who traditonally abore magic) serving Wizards and Mages?
*The inferno and Necropolis towns have been mixed together? How can a necromancer cast a spell that damages all except undead when he has imps and cerebri in his army that are alive with flesh?

Well I could go on forever, but I wanted to make sure anyone who was eyeing this product before they decided to test the waters knew exactly wha they'd be getting in this game. The only good thing about this game period is bringing heroes into battle. This game certainly had the potential to be awesome but lacked too much and simply ignored simple things they could have carried over from the last game. You can tell this game was made on an uneasy budget unlike Heroes 3 which seemed like the programmers could make pretty much anything they wanted. Who knows why 3DO tanked? Spyware in their products or poor game design. Either way, I'd say unless the company that buys this liscense can make some big improvements then Heroes of Might and Magic will remain dead in the 90's, just like Grunge and Alternative music.

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!

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.

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

This game freaking ...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 13 / 22
Date: November 30, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I have been a HOMM fan ever since HOMM 2, I loved HOMM 2,
and loved HOMM 3 even more. Man, HOMM 3 is such a great game.
I looked forward to this game, but no, 3DO had to change the
game completely. 3DO manages to successfully taken out
everything that was fun in the HOMM series and give us a
horibble looking and boring game.

no longer we have the beautiful graphics of HOMM 3,
no longer we have the challenge of HOMM 2
no longer we have the serious tactics of HOMM series.

good job 3DO, no wonder you are doing so bad.
get rid of the M&M series and focus on HOMM!!
but I heard they are not going to develope the HOMM
series any more. which is just stupid. how much
did you make off M&M? how much did you make off HOMM?
can you guys do math?

Very disappointing

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 24
Date: June 03, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I was/am a huge fan of the Heroes series. Was actively involved in the forums and the fan base. Even have a Hero in this game named after my on-line persona.

Couldn't like this game, moved so slow and lost the charm of the previous versions.

It's a shame, hopefully Ubisoft can revive the magic in Heroes 5.......

This used to such a good game............

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 14
Date: June 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

If you are a fan of HOMM III and prior, DO NOT BUY THIS GAME. You will hate it more than you have hated anything else in your life. The game has lost all of the charm and structure that existed in HOMM III, and was replaced with a visually chaotic, tedious and overly complex game. Do yourself a favor and avoid this game at all costs.

HOMM IV falls way short

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 16
Date: October 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

First of this is not the US game. THey are selling a knock off UK version. Secondly it does not have Multi Player support, not even hot seat, even though it says it does. You can upgrade it py patching all the way to v3.0 and get multi but most places with the patch are pay sites since 3DO is no longer in business.

What a Joke

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: April 22, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I've been a DIE HARD HoMM fan since day one. I have them all. I even bought Complete, when I already had Blade AND Shadow! This is how much money I've invested into this series. Needless to say, 4 was THE BIGGEST LET DOWN SINCE FINDING OUT SANTA WAS FAKE! Where's my random map generator!?! Where's my tile grid for combat!?! Where's my specialties on my Heroes!?! THAT is what you call a Campaign Editor!?! Where's this so called IMPROVED AI!?! 3do you have struck out in every way. The graphics aren't even that damn great! WASTE OF MONEY! WASTE OF TIME! Do yourself a favor, and save that {$$$]. This game isn't worth the shrinkwrap it came in.

This game is ruined what previous versions achieved

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 9
Date: April 24, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game is a joke. I was a big fun of HMM series since I've seen HMM-1. But this game had ruined everything. First of all it has memory leak and all I could get from tech support was "we know it". So much advertised new spells won't give you much. Your hero is locked to ONE magic school (because of the skill system). Well, I'm done with hmm-4 it is already on the shelf and even memory leak patch will not change anything. Even my wife (she's even bigger fun of HMM) had admitted that this game is BORING ! That's worst definition for game. So if you want to play HMM stick with HMM-2 or HMM-3 with additions.
This product (I can't name it game) is not worth your money !

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