Heroes of Might and Magic® 4: Complete

Heroes of Might and Magic 4 brought a measure of innovation to the series. While HoMM 3 was 2 on steroids, 4 tried to wipe the slate clean, with a new world, a different combat system and many changes. Regrettably, the game is unfinished. By the time the last expansion rolled out, 3DO was bankrupt, and New World Computing was no more. This can really be seen in the quality and general lack of polish of some of the game's aspects. It's almost like they knew what the fate of the game would be before it was released, and said their goodbyes right in the intro. I still remember it by heart. "To all things comes an end, we are no more than characters in a story, our lives easily extinguished by an arrow or a stone. Turn the page and thousands die, and for what, for the pride of two heroes inexhaustibly drawn to each other by the power of two swords and a mutual destiny. And then the Sword of Frost and Armageddon's Blade clash. A blinding flash. Another turn of the page. The destruction brings earthquakes, floods and deaths uncounted, and acts of bravery too. Just when it seemed we are doomed, we flip the page once more, and countless fortunate refugees flee trough portals into another world. Is this the end of our tale? No, we are the pawns of fate. There are still many pages left to turn. And to all things comes a beginning" But for everything it did wrong, there was something done better than in any other game in the series. What I liked most were the campaigns, especially the Half Dead campaign. It was well written and had one of the best main characters in the entire franchise. Changing the combat system in order to allow heroes in combat really made a difference. And even though heroes lacked that unique ability that set them apart in HoMM3, the evolving class system almost compensated for that. But most of all, the thing that always brings me back, the music. That wonderful music that makes every session a journey into fantasy. Heroes of Might and Magic 4 had no flaws when it came to it's soundtrack. Sure the expansions were laughable, but the main game is sill one I cherish and play at every opportunity. I'm glad to see it here.

Heroes of Might and Magic IV is, to me, one of the most underappreciated games in the series. It suffers from its fair share of faults, but also had a great deal of innovations that make it deserving of so much praise, and regrettably, it does not. Let's go through this section by section. Gameplay: Gameplay-wise, the game changes some core features, but retains many others. Basic overworld movement, for example, remains unchanged. You have a set amount of movement points per hero per day, and once you run out, your day 'ends', after you build whatever buildings you like in your town. The resource system is similarly unchanged, but none of this needed changing. Some of the most interesting changes in the game do take place on this score, however. Heroes IV gets rid of the old creature upgrade system, opting instead for a creature CHOICE system. Each town has a total of 8 creatures divided over 4 tiers, and while you can build both tier 1 buildings, for the other three tiers you have to choose which creature you'd prefer. This is a very interesting change, but not without its problems. Due to 3DO being in financial dire straits at the time, the game was released sooner than it should be, and this shows in creature imbalance. In many cases, choosing a specific creature over the other is downright stupid, because the two are so badly balanced against eachother. (Cyclops vs. Ogre Magi in the Might town comes to mind). Other changes to gameplay do involve overworld movement. While the fundamental basics remain the same, one of the key changes takes place in how you no longer need to have a hero with an army to move it about the map. A hero is required to flag structures and capture cities or mines, but if you want a scouting force, you no longer need to recruit a hero for it. This opens up many new possibilities. Another fantastic innovation, which luckily also made its way into Heroes V's expansions is the caravan system. In heroes III the creature generator buildings outside of your town were only ever used to boost unit growth. In many cases, keeping a spare hero around to constantly gather up the creatures from these external buildings was irritating, and in some cases so time-intensive you just didn't bother. In Heroes IV this problem is solved with the caravan – A way to recruit creatures from the safety of your town and then see them transported with a set movement rate back home. You could even use it to transport armies between cities! Finally on the note of gameplay: The Battle System, because no Heroes game is complete without it. As ever, you command your armies, and in battle, you fight with the stacks of creatures you've amassed from your cities/creature generators. The most important changes lie in the fact that the game no longer uses a (relatively narrow) locked grid of squares you can move on, as with the earlier (and later) instalments, but uses a tp-down view. Creatures still work the same way, using their ranged abilities, spells, or moving in close to smack enemies across the skulls, but the most fundamental change in the battle system is also touched on in other reviews: The hero. The hero isn't a “one spell per round” statbot any more, but an active part in your army lineup. He can move in to melee, he can use ranged weapons, and he can cast his spells, in some cases with devastating efficiency. A low-level hero isn't much of a threat, but a skilled player can level a hero to annihilate anything in his path. The skill system augments this. Gone are the “basic-advanced-expert” skills, replaced by a system with base skills and three 'sub-skills', that have five levels each. Each hero can pick up five such base skills, using them to augment his spells, his army, or his physical ability. Good grief that took longer than I thought. Right then, on to: Graphics: Graphically, the game works quite well. There are some things that I find lacking, such as the town screens (If you pay attention, you'll notice that all the buildings are in the same spot, no matter which alignment you play as), but overall, the game world is rich and vibrant, full of colour, and still quite pretty to look at. Music: Personally, I feel that this game has among the finest music in the series, which is why I'm so happy the game comes with the soundtrack here on GOG. I would've paid the $9,99 just for the soundtrack alone, if I'm honest. However, music, sometimes more than anything else, is purely a matter of taste, so I won't tell you you'll love it. You'll have to experience it for yourself. Story: Story-wise, the original game just gives you six campaigns to choose from, each with an (almost) unrelated story. I believe the stories of Gauldoth Half-Dead and Emilia Arcan touch on eachother lightly, but even then, only lightly. Winds of War and The Gathering Storm added some small features to the game, but the campaigns weren't really much to write home about. Nice additions for the active player though. Final Verdict: While the game certainly suffers from its flaws, it also has MUCH to recommend it for. Personally, this is one of my favourite games in the series, if only for the things it does right. Sure, I've been annoyed playing through it more than once, but at the same time, I've also spent many hours enjoying the game thoroughly. Though I can't award it 5/5 starts, I still thoroughly recommend it. Also, if you're really stuck with the balance issues, check this forum topic started by Arianus on the forums: http://www.gog.com/en/forum/heroes_of_might_and_magic/homm_iv_equilibris_mod It concerns a fan-made mod that addresses many balance issues with the original game. That is all, and bloody hell that's a wall of text. Oh well, hope you enjoyed reading it.

I've played every HOMM and they are all fun, but IV stands out for me. The storylines may be incomplete, but they're beautifully written. The music (as has already been mentioned) is amazing. But the things that really made this game for me are the caravans and the mobile heroes. It's true that new heroes are likely to get killed quickly. But once you have a few heroes leveled up you can send two or three of them into battle with only a token number of troops and take out fair to moderate armies without breaking a sweat. My favorite is to have a knight with good archery working with a wizard (Theodorus forever!) and a few meat shield troops. There's nothing quite like watching your knight shoot down an entire stack of trogs in a single turn! :) All in all, this is the game I look back on as the crown of the 3DO/New World computing era of HOMM.

The main crime that Heroes IV committed was simply not being Heroes III. Yes, those are large shoes to fit. But this is a TBS PC game. If you want every single entry in a game to be exactly like its predecessor, you should stick to Call of Duty, Fire Emblem or some other console drivel. This is a great game by its own right, but 3DO wasn't the true villain. It was the fans. 3DO was still a good contender for the role though. Budget cuts and unrealistic scheduling did their fair share to tarnish both main Might and Magic vehicles. The good news is that the name now lies with Ubisoft, arguably the least of three evils in the gaming publishing trinity (EA and Activision would probably be much, much worse). And certainly some orders of magnitude better than 3DO. But enough with the history lesson, lets go to the game itself: The main strengths of this title are the Campaigns, easily the best in any Heroes game, and the soundtracks, that keep with the amazing job we've learned to expect from Romero and Rob King. You'll be amazed how an evil storyline can do away with the known clichés as you take the shoes of Gauldoth Half-Dead, the necromancer apprentice who blundered his lich-transformation ritual and struggles to survive in this new world. And Emilia Blackraven, the orphan with a few magic tricks up her sleeve that at first just try and gather refugees from the Cataclysm and band them together, and ends up leading a full-fledged revolution against a well-meaning tyrant. Yes, new world... cataclysm. Because Colony, the world that housed Enroth, Erathia and Jadame, is gone. Gelu, the wielder of the Armageddon Blade, finally made his sword do its namesake and destroyed the world as it clashed against the Sword of Frost. The wizards opened old portals to this new world, Axeoth, one of the many secrets left behind by the Ancients (don't know what I'm talking about? Then play the Might and Magic series as well). Gameplay wise... the short-sighted schedule and budgets show a bit. They tried to reinvent the series, and they would get away with it too, if wasn't for that meddling publisher and their little fans. Heroes are part of the combat, but they are very imbalanced as they are very fragile in the early game, very strong in the mid game and again fragile in the end game. The tier system was also quite turned around its head. Now there are only 4 tiers of creature, but 8 creatures total. You only get to keep 5 of them though, since from Tier 2 onwards you have to make a choice between two creature dwellings. You do get to keep both Tier 1 creatures, so that's nice. Kinda. Well, they could have gone on to make things differently here, especially because the tiers didn't make diminish the gap between low and high Tiers since the gap between individual tiers was increased as well in the process. One nice change is that the game pace isn't bound to the week anymore. You get creatures on a daily basis... although some creatures like the powerhouse that is the Black Dragon only spawn once a week. Still, you don't need the "Hero highway" anymore, since the creatures are more than capable of walking in the map without a babysitter, so you can buy them from the castle and send them to your hero without hustle. It was also here that they created the Caravans. So helpful. Previous Heroes game would require you to have an ungodly amount of Heroes in the map whose only purpose was to haul stuff from castle to castle to closer to your main heroes so you don't waste their precious movement points. Now this not only isn't necessary as it is inviable, since creatures have their own move points. Those games were filled with good ideas that both made the game more organic and better paced, but it was bogged down by a fanbase unwilling to experiment something new and a publisher unwilling to let the developers iron out their new ideas. Recommended, sure. Even at its its worst state, Heroes is leagues and bounds above most games. Still a great experience, added with a great story and a wonderful soundtrack, for the price GOG is charging, it is more than worth it.