Mine and many other people's Beef with the game mainly was because of the fact that the characters were terrible and the artstyle was abysmal

The game looks absolutely nothing like a Might and Magic game, if anything - it looks more like final fantasy or something. I understand that they were trying to capture a new audience but that is no excuse. God I was so angry when I saw the first screenshots

I felt the same way then like I feel about the DmC "Reboot" right now

Okay, but that's purely a matter of taste. You may like it, you may not, but graphics alone don't make it a good or a bad game. yeah, I was also surprised with the "anime" look of the characters, but after all, it's on Nintendo DS. I would have been disappointed if a PC HoMM game was looking like that, frankly speaking, but this design fits perfectly the NDS "atmosphere", I feel.

You say that "this is no excuse", but as far as I'm concerned, game designers are totally free to design their game the way they want. It works or not with the audience, but still, they are perfectly free to do what they want.

I'm also a bit afraid of it, and not only because of the simplification of the resource system (in fact, there will be also Crystal along with the ones you mentioned).
From a preview I read, I have a *strong* feeling the devs are trying to create a game that's more RPG than TBS on the strategic map and only a TBS while in battle. Here just a few clues which lead me to this conclusion.
-There will be a "morality" element in the game. Based on your actions (how violent/pacific they are) you get either dragon blood or dragon tears. As you accumulate these, you unlock new, ever more powerful skills.
-There will be a myriad of mini side-quests on the game maps which you can solve in a number of ways and get rewarded for it. A given example was that you encounter a merchant who's just been robbed by bandits. You can either go after the bandits and kill them to get back the loot or pay the expenses yourself. In the first case, you'll get dragon blood, while in the second dragon tear drops, along with your reward for the quest.
-There will be classic boss battles, pitching your army against a huge enemy with ridiculous stats.

I sure hope they will retain the original style of the series nonetheless and not make a King's Bounty clone of HoMM6. The previewer seemed to be absolutely swept away by it, but I have a slight feeling it was also due to the fact the devs are Hungarian as well.

We shall see...

hi, i was a long time heroes3 player. I had heroes4 many years ago but the cd is unreadable and only once i got really hooked to play heroes4.
Guys, remind me what can involve me into homm4 from homm3. ( im also not a fan of fog of war so..) I just dont want to buy homm4 and get dissapointed at once.
p.s. tried homm2 few weeks ago but i didnt got interested in it... it felt unpolished gameplay :(

Community made maps, better magic system, much better campaigns. Also music is still great.

The problem is, H4 introduced *many* changes and many people are divided on whether these changes are good or bad (I mean, person A would tell you, "It's awesome to have heroes on the battlefield" while person B will say, "They ruined the game by putting heroes on the battlefield"). I will try to point out things which I believe to be objective high points, but there may still be controversy over them:

* Larger battlefields allow strategies impossible or impractical in older games (it is often possible to out-maneuver a stronger, but less mobile, enemy in H4).

* Excellent storylines in vanilla campaigns. (On the other hand, virtually no storylines in expansions.)

* Excellent map-making possibilities. Sadly, you *must* resort to fan-made maps, because the provided maps are mediocre at best (and often very poor). But you can find a whole lot of real gems, often rivaling the best of other Heroes.

* The complex scoring system allows a very competitive gameplay style focused on careful optimalization.

On the other hand, keep in mind that many of the design choices or implementations were (and still are) dubious, if not outright bad. For example, the standard AI is very poor (well, in fact it is much the same as in H3, but since H4 is a radically different game, what worked for H3 doesn't really work for H4; fortunately, this can be alleviated through careful scripting). The "heroes on battlefield" usually means that you don't really need any creatures, except early in the game, and as scouts or item-carriers. The game is VERY unballanced in many aspects (e.g. barbarians and necromancers tend to be far more powerful than other heroes classes, and having the Combat skill is pretty much mandatory for any active hero; low-level artifacts are often more powerful than high-level ones, and the same is true for spells). Fortunately, we don't have to deal with the huge memory leaks which plagued the original release.

Overall, despite its faults I do think H4 is a better game than H3, but that's to a degree because I am a munchkin at heart and love exploiting the game system...

Aw you don't want to do that! Don't get me wrong, IV is superior in the options, mechanics and graphics, but II has a certain charm that IV could never touch.

Then again it's probably my nostalgic side speaking.