Does either Heroes 2 or 3 have a co-op made that allows you to play through the campaigns with a friend?

The official campaigns are SP only. I suppose you could look around online to see if anyone has made scenario versions of each campaign map, but even then the campaign maps really aren't designed for more than one player. I doubt that any such conversion is easily found.

I think H2 ships with some allied maps as well, but I don't remember how many.

H3 complete comes with several "Allies" maps, where each side is assigned to a team, and you can use the random map generator to generate random maps that can have allied sides. You can also look online for custom scenarios that were designed with allies in mind; I expect you'd have a lot more luck with this than with finding campaign conversions.

I can't speak for any user made campaigns.

What about Heroes 4?

Hm. Mostly the same story as H2, I think. The campaigns are very explicitly single player (generally revolving around a particular hero). There might be a few ally oriented scenario maps? I don't remember. I'd check online for scenarios.

H5 is also going to be similar, though in this one the campaigns have all sorts of triggers and trying to insert an allied player will likely break the thing in half.

Do you explicitly want a coop campaign? What precisely are you looking to do or accomplish? With some details I might be better able to point you in the right direction.

Playing a campaign, due to the story and unique or novel circumstances of the campaign, not to mention the cinematics, atmosphere, and story that typically accompany it; is typically more interesting to me than simply playing a random skirmish map that allows for allied factions. I just thought it would be fun to play with a friend... that's all.

I'm not really interested in the newer games since their quality doesn't seem as good as Heroes 4, let alone the exceptionally high quality of Heroes 2 or 3.

Ah. I wanted to check whether it was more story aspects or "play with a friend" aspect that you cared about more, or if you were really looking for "lets play through a series of missions together".

Some single scenario maps do have elements of story (but not all), though generally a more involved story is achieved via a map designed for a single player experience because there are fewer variables that the map maker has to deal with, like victory conditions.

Most of the Heroes 2-4 campaigns are simply a series of scenarios that have an overarching theme. For example, the first "Good" campaign in H3 has the theme "Recover from the surprise Demon attack", where the first map is all about establishing a beach head, the second map is gathering allies, and the third map is gathering the troop production you need. The first "Neutral" campaign in H3 is about being a mercenary leader in a time of trouble; the first two maps are working for two different sides, while the third map is picking one of those sides to support in a land grab.

I haven't played all the scenarios that ship with H2-4, but H3 is probably your best bet for what you're looking for. Some of the scenarios do have more than just a single pop-up text box after you start the map, like random events you may stumble across while playing, or events based on time triggers, but you won't find cinematics in any of them. I also suggest poking around Celestial Heavens to see if you can find anything that looks appealing.

Hey,

I can confirm at least that Heroes 2 had some good allied single player maps that came with excellent stories.

In fact I remember going through one such map in the map Editor and thinking "Man, I wish I had someone to play this map with". I don't remember the name of the map (and unfortunately don't think I can check it, since I'm out of the country for a few weeks and didn't bring my CD collection with me; but I'll look later to see if I have the game installed and can run the editor without the CD and find the map).
The map started with both human players having several heroes imprisoned by a powerful enemy demon hero (whom you have no chance of defeating). Your only hope is for each to take the one hero with fast enough unit, Surrender (or retreat). Re-hire the hero in your town and start from there.

Also, Homm5 is pretty decent; in fact I like it better than 4. But 2 and 3 are indeed best.

This sounds like it could be Gates of Hell. Each of the players has a staring hero with a Statesman's Quill. The "demon" heroes are customized to have Demon in their names, to wield numerous dragons, and to have a zero patrol range so they can never attack heroes who stand even one tile back.

Yes indeed it is. Thanks.

temps, if you want a good coop map with a decent story, try Gates of Hell for Heroes 2.

Thank you! I made a note of that and I'm looking forward to playing it soon.

Once again, thank you for the map suggestion. Do you have a similar suggestion for Heroes 3?

Sorry, no. There probably are some good ones, but I never play single maps much.