rmeakins: I love HoMM 4, it's my favourite. many people hated the transition from heroes on the sidelines to heroes fighting on the battlefield, but I thought it was brilliant.

I think the easiest way to get used to it is to save quite often and play a few throwaway games to ease into it. Don't expect to be an expert instantly as it's fairly different from the other games in the series.

Heroes are the main change in this game, while the rest of the game should have a familiar feel with slightly different towns and things.

A few tips :
- Get the Combat skill for your heroes to allow them to survive a few hits from enemies
- Try to focus on one or two main skills (one magic skill and combat are pretty good choices). I would avoid nobility and scouting at first but as you get more used to the game you could pick them
- Start with one of the easier campaigns on an easy difficulty level. The Life campaign ("The True Blade") is a good one to start with.
- Practice using all the spells and figure out which ones are useful and which are not so great
- Regeneration is my favourite spell (needs Expert life magic)

Plokite_Wolf: Well, Heroes IV maybe isn't such a tragic game as people make it out to be, but it surely is one of the worse Heroes games. If it got a little more polish and some ideas got a chance to mature, it would be a more recommendable game. Do not expect it to come anywhere near its prequels in terms of quality, but you can accept it for what it is and enjoy it if you keep an open mind about certain changes. It indeed does some things right.

What you may like:
- Master and Grandmaster skill levels add to the depth of hero development
- some spell ideas were pretty good
- haven't tried out myself, but I heard the campaign storylines aren't bad
- although the idea of heroes fighting alongside their troops may have been controversial, I personally find nothing wrong with it. At first, they're weak, but afterwards, they can really be of help (particularly Magic ones)
- independent unit movement is more useful than one might expect at first (especially when reinforcing a distant hero)
- your heroes may be resurrected at your nearest town once you move his army there
- the graphics, albeit oftentimes overstuffed, are beautiful
- the soundtrack kicks ass
- windmills and water mills no longer need you to visit them every week (IIRC)

What you may find strange or even shocking when transitioning from Heroes III are these things:
- no more upgradable units
- choosing between one of two creature dwellings for levels 2 to 4 (sometimes it's an easy choice, sometimes it isn't)
- dubiously done town/creature design and combinations (Death particularly)
- heroes no longer have specialties. Between heroes of the same city and in the same Might/Magic category, there is zero difference.
- strange in-combat movement system, which no longer uses hexes, but... whatever it is that I cannot name. It sometimes tricks you into thinking you can reach a creature when you're actually just out of movement range by a pixel or two.

P.S. Here's a good source for all things Heroes. They also have some detailed information on Heroes IV: http://www.heroesofmightandmagic.com/heroes4/heroesofmightandmagic4iv.shtml

mangame5: <snip>

mangame5: I've been playing HoMM 2 and 3 since I was little and everybody told me to avoid HoMM 4. I skipped it and tried the fifth, but I wasn't too fond of it and as far as I know, the next two weren't exactly improvements... So now I'm looking back at HoMM 4, people left and right saying that it's bad for this or that, too few saying that it\s good or at least alright. Now, for some reason, I feel like joining those few, but I'm not sure on how to get into it. Any HoMM 4 fans around here that could help me?

gscotti: HoMM IV is the best of the series. It has so many wonderful improvements. The only weakness is not many 3rd party maps.

HoMM V is crap - you have situations in which you have no visibility of your environment, no matter how you rotate the view. Just awful. 3D makes everything worse.