Looking at my gaming experience from 1996 (I say ONLY about times when I had my own PC, not concerning about "game evenings and nights" at my friends' homes) I should say that HoMM series are the games that have the special place in my heart. These are the games I played far more than any other games, though I NEVER played multiplayer...

I invite all the old farts to seat by my campfire and tell a tale about Heroes of the Past.

What game in series you like most and why, what are your best memories about it? What we see now in lands of Enroth, Axeoth and Ashan? I didn't play Homm 6 and didn't ever want. Maybe you, old farts, have some opinion about it too?

Make yourself at home by my campfire! Let Old Dreams live again!

HoMM is definitely one of my favourite game series.

I think HoMM 1 was the first game I ever bought when I finally ditched my Amiga and got a PC in the summer of '96. I also regard it as the first "modern" game in my collection. I remember being especially impressed by the ambient sounds.

When HoMM 2 was relased I never looked back at HoMM 1 again. It was bigger and better in all regards, except for the monster sprites and animations (I especially liked the Genies).
I used to play against a buddy, who had perfected the art of combining a Barbarian Hero with Sorceress troops like Elves and Druids, and Mass Haste/Slow. I even had nightmares about his invincible armies.

My favourite user made map for HoMM 2 was Dead Dragons, but I never could complete it beacause it would would always crash during the computers turn some time during the game. Very annoying. :-(

For HoMM 3 my favourite user made map was Titianic Pride by Jason Russell. His two other Pride maps are also brilliant and highly recommended.

One of my most memorable moments in HoMM 3 was a huge battle when I won with all that remained of my army being one Iron Golem. I wish I could remember which map that was...

I never played HoMM 4, but HoMM 5 was a pleasant surprise. The 3D added nothing of value, but I really liked the skills system.

My most recent forays into HoMM was Heroes Chronicles. Not really recommende for experienced players, but a nice introduction to new players and enjoyable enough if you haven't played HoMM 3 for several years.

Well, it was 1996 when my father bought me my first PC. It was the trouble times here in Russia, my family had not much money but we had some stuff from my grandfather: mahogany furniture, Danish porcelain, some old coins, many of old books and such... All of this heritage allowed us to survive "reforms", although both my father and my mother had lost their jobs. Having sold something from grandpa's things we could buy food, clothes, and sometimes... a new PC.

I think we paid too much for it... :) It had no sound card and no CD-drive but it had some games pre-installed on hard disk. These were Duke Nukem 3D, Warcraft 2, Zed, Terminal Velocity and... Heroes of Might and Magic 1. HoMM became my favourite game at once. I remember the campaign, when I had to defeat the Sorceress. She lived in forest realm, and I had to fight through narrow tree corridors, sieging her castles one by one and suffering big casualties from her phoenixes. My army constantly dwindled, my own castles were far away but I fought through, and captured her main castle in dramatic battle.

But one day (it was 1997) one friend of mine showed me HoMM 2. He had a huge army of minotaurs (600-800) in that game and he swept the land with it jumping through megalith teleports... And there were these damned brothers, Zam and Zom... And they RAISE SKELETONS... My life was broken. As you remember my PC had no CD-drive, and when I calculated how many floppies I'd need to copy these wonderful 60Mb I was completely destroyed...:)

Some time after I bought a CD-drive from one of my friends, sound card from another, then there were HoMM 2, HoMM 3 and 4, and even 5, but the Homm 2 remained my favourite game in series forever... I never paid much attention to balance issues, and I really loved Warlock Town, not for Dragons but for Town Screen with this ash-black Castle and cliffs, for town music and for Hydras... And I never thought about some imbalance or such. I think I learned about it only from Internet much later... :)

Only one game in series could match with HoMM 2 in terms of emotions. It was the first of Chronicles. It seems I had no more of them besides the first one till I bought it here on GOG :). I'll never forget the desperate battles what Tarnum fought with evil Bracada Empire... Oh, how I hated these damned Mages! :) Save-load, save-load, sunset, save-load, save-load, sunrise... :)

I was introduced to the series with HoMM2 in the late 90s. One of my friends in high school had it and we would play hotseat, usually with a truce between us until the computer opponents were wiped out. Then we'd settle things with a showdown between our strongest heroes, usually with some specific rule of the battle to keep things interesting. For instance, I remember in one of the battles only level 1 units were allowed, so we both ended up hitting up all of our towns for the level 1 units that we hadn't been bothering with (I lost that one, but he only had a single halfling left after the fight, due to keeping the stack alive only with multiple Resurrect spells).

When HoMM3 came out it quickly became out of my favorite games, and remains so to this day. I didn't play HoMM4 when it came out (got it through GOG and played most of the campaigns, but it never really grabbed me), and while HoMM5 was enjoyable it just didn't really have the same magic that HoMM2 and HoMM3 did. And unfortunately they never made any other HoMM games after 5.

For maps, in HoMM2 I liked Slayer Legacy quite a bit, along with Ghost Planet. In HoMM3 there were quite a few maps I really liked, but some of the ones that most quickly come to mind are To Kill For Power and The Lord of War.

Heroes III was probably one of the first strategy games I played, period and it may be the game I've spent the most time with. I believe I saw it at a friend's house, and he actually gave me his vanilla disk after he had obtained Heroes III complete. Funnily enough, I've never gotten super far with the campaigns, though I'm currently trying to get through The Restoration of Erathia for funsies. There were a lot of hotseat games against myself because the computer beat me, and to this day I have the sinking suspicion that my strategy in these games is hampered by some of the bad habits I picked up as a kid. Also I may have the map "Emerald Isles" memorized.

I was super excited for Heroes IV when it came out, got it and still enjoyed it despite it being a significantly different game and sort of disappointing. I think I like it a lot more now than I did back in 2002, especially with the Equilibris mod installed. The AI is functionally retarded and the art direction is pretty terrible, but there are enough neat ideas that I'll defend a lot of what Heroes IV does. It also has some pretty well-written campaigns.

At some point I also got my hands on Heroes II Gold, and in some ways I think I may like it more than III. There's an earnest, somewhat cartoony charm to the entire game that really appeals to me and it has the best soundtrack in the series, bar none. I also got my hands on the first game at some point and I don't really care for it, especially since II does a lot of the same things better.

My bad computer limited my enjoyment of V since it took forever for computer turns to happen. Now, on certain days I might call it the best in the series, for as blasphemous as that sounds, with the caveat being the inclusion of expansions. Between the skill system, alternate upgrades and the inclusion of caravans, I feel like they helped Heroes V become far more of its own game and less reliant on cribbing from Heroes III. Not a fan of the Ubisoft Might and Magic world, but whatever.

Heroes VI also exists and has a lot of neat, weird ideas that I feel would work far better against human opponents than the AI, but I have yet to play a compete game against another human. It's a much different game and I'll commend the developers for doing something different. I'm in the process of playing more to give myself a more concrete opinion, but much like Heroes V I feel like it's treated a bit harshly by some other long-time fans of the series who are opposed to everything that Ubisoft has put out.

The strange thing is that I never liked HoMM 3 as it probably deserved... :) I think the main dislike is its visual style. I find that I like more "cartoony" style in TBS (as it was made in HoMM 1,2 and partially 4), although I never liked "cartoonism" in hack-and-slash (that still prevented me from buying Torchlights).
Moreover, I feel that I can't take the changes in towns and races that were made in HoMM 3. Swamp race and Conflux look heterogenous and foreign to the game, Warlock Castle metamorphosis I also always disliked. Maybe only Inferno took its appropriate place in HoMM World.

My first introduction to the world of Might & Magic was the original RPG game, which we owned for our Commodore 64. My father always preferred to buy games that had a lot of value (i.e., take a long time to beat) and that were replayable. So RPGs and Strategy games were common in our household.

When 1995 came, I had already played all five Might & Magic games and it was only natural that we would buy the new strategy game based on that universe: Heroes of Might & Magic.

I still have a special place in my heart for HoMM1. I love how the heroes and units reflect the art style in the World of Xeen RPGs (M&M 4-5). It created a unity between the RPG and Strategy games that felt very special. There's obviously almost no story to speak of in the game, and replayability-wise, there's just the one map that is different between the factions. Still, the turn-based action is very addictive.

HoMM2 was an instant buy, of course, and for a long time it was my favorite game in the series. I still think it has the best music and the best art direction. The game has a fun and compelling story, but I also enjoy how it doesn't take itself too seriously. I still smile whenever I think of the vampires making that Bela Lugosi "blewgh" sound when they attack. They did a really good job of making Roland and Archibald compelling characters. That last map in Roland's campaign against Archibald is a real doozy, and the sense of accomplishment when you finish it is quite good.

Having recently played both HoMM2 and HoMM3, I think HoMM3 has finally usurped the throne as my favorite. As much as I still love HoMM2, I like the AI in HoMM3 better. That combined with some of the other "advanced" features of the series (e.g., combination artifacts) and the expanded faction types just makes it a better game overall. If only the art was as charming and the music as gloriously epic, HoMM3 would perhaps be the exemplar of a perfect strategy game.

I'm playing Heroes Chronicles right now and I'm into the sixth one (The Fiery Moon). These games are fun, if a tad easy. I'm enjoying the story of Tarnum, although for the last couple of games the story of his personal journey seams to have taken a back seat to more generic fantasy concerns ("Oh noes! Someone's trying to conquer the world!") I'm hoping the last couple of games dive back into Tarnum personally.

HoMM4 we played a bit when it came out, but were massively disappointed. It wasn't long before HoMM4 was uninstalled and we went back to HoMM3. In all the years since, I've never given it a second chance. So I'm actually eager to do that once I finish the Chronicles games. I've committed myself to really finishing HoMM4 this time, and from what I've been reading, it sounds like the game can be enjoyed for what it is if you don't compare it to HoMM3.

HoMM5 I've played only for about an hour just to get a feel for it. I can't really comment. HoMM6 will have to wait until I can get a complete version for ~$20 or even less. I don't pay full price for games anymore. :^)