I have over 600 hours in HOMM6 now, Ive played them all except 4....I like them all.
Never liked HOMM 4 but it is on my list to go back and try since I own it.

In my view, I have the Heroes games ranked thusly:

1. Heroes 2 & 3 (tied) - Best music, graphics and game play
2. Heroes 5: Tribes of the East - With the fixes and alternate upgrades, plus the Orc faction it falls shy of H2 & H3.
3. Heroes 4 - Terrible AI and a new isometric battle map where your heroes can be killed (not in itself a bad thing necessarily but could have been better implemented) that add nothing good to the game.

4. Heroes 5 (the first two versions) - Getting rid of the 'Might' and 'Magic' hero classes for each faction and 3D graphics plus other buggy problems bring this one way down.

5. Heroes 1 - Was probably great for it's time (I started with H2) and has graphical charm but too limited for my tastes.
6. heroes 6 - Bugs, crapping on the 'Might' and 'magic' theme of Heroes III, nonsensical units for each faction, graphics and silly mechanics drag this one to the bottom of Heroes games (save for the King's Bounty game)

7. King's Bounty (the original precursor to the Heroes games. Not the modern game here on GOG)

My 1st computer game ever was HoMM1 played on a DX2/66 Intel CPU (1996) That's before Pentium, for those of you that even remember Pentium! I completely feel in love & played countless hours. HoMM1 isn't the "best" title, but it will always be the fondest for me. HoMM2 & 3 are instant classics! HoMM IV simply didn't get it done for me, but I played all the campaigns & a decent amount of scenarios.

I really like HoMMV myself! ToE is a really good add-on. I think HoMMVI isn't terrible, but it's just ok. I own every title & will continue to support the series. I also still own a boxed copy of "Kings Bounty" (1990) with 3.5" disks. Found it in a bargain-bin @ a company called EggHead Software (been gone for years now) This was the platform that started the HoMM series. I still play it in DOSBOX when I feel the itch. They all have their own charm one way or another.

PS: I forgot to mention a game that NWC published called "Hammer of the Gods" in many ways was very similar to the HoMM series.

I had no such bugs, and the Game seemed fine to me as far as content and theme. Not sure what bug crawled up your butt, I think the game was fine the only thing I didnt really get is the need for that online content thing.

I wouldn't say best in the series but it definitely had it's own charm and is certainly no where near as bad as people say. There were some balance issues, that's true, but I honestly believe if HOMM4 wasn't pushed out the door and stayed in development a little longer to work out the issues, it could have been a real contender for best HOMM game.

For campaigns though, HOMM2 was the best. None of the other HOMM games came close.

Ya definitely worth it. Has a new nice kick to it.

The storylines were definately crap although Gaulgoth Halfdead's campaign wasn't bad at all. It was nice for the necromancers to get away from the "we must kill everyone and raise them as undead cannon fodder" cliche. Werjack's campaign was hilarious though. All the talk about community, strength of the community, importance of the community, working together and all that............yet Werjack could solo the rest of the campaign after the first map. Yet, I can't say everyone should have just put their faith in Waerjack because Tarnum's (Waerjack's mentor and main character of the Heroes Chronicles) and his kingdom met their demise because his followers put all their faith in Tarnum and when we was defeated, his kingdom shattered with it.

The worst were the Wind's of War expansion campaigns though. Those campaigns were all "some guy with a goofy / cliched name wants this kingdom for their own.......... cos.........just cos!!" It was hard to take it seriously when the heroes have names like King Spazz (bet he was the butt of many jokes at school), Erutan Revol (Yeah, I totally didn't see you spell "Nature Lover" backwards here), Mongo the Barbarian (Yeah, nice cliched name there).

I'd actually totally forgot about the cringe worthy names. Wasn't Mongo a character from Blazing Saddles? MONGO LIKE CANDY.