Rating: 
Summary: WHY I WOULD NOT BUY THIS GAME!
Review: HOMM4, what happened? maybe they should just remove the 4 and give it a new name. If you like the gameplay and style of HOMM1-3 then dont except it from this game. Many many disappoints in this game.Pros:
*I like the new heros development, very in depth and excellent. like how you can change from a necromancer to an assassin or dark priest, etc.. love new necromancy, you can create vampires after battle instead of only skeletons.
*The 3D viewing is excellent
*sounds effects are good, vampires going back to saying "blah"
*creatures can cast more spells and summon units..can also wander around without a hero and be placed into mines to protect mines.
*heros fighting alongside your units. some might not like this, but i like this feature.
*potions and wands can be used by heros in battle. potions i find useless though.
*cursor shows how many turns it takes to reach select destination. in battle, creatures have red circle to show who's going to get hit, especially if attacking creature can hit more than 1 unit, ie. black dragons
*caravans, dont have to hassle sending units everywhere, just make a caravan and they'll go on their own.
*big plus, can turn option of wandering monsters actually wondering, if you get to close, they will come out and attack you. Cons:
*the music [stinks]! i dont want to hear kenny g's sax blasting when i'm roaming around in the desert! turned it off and left only the sound effects on.
*Um, why did they change number of different classes, lower number of units from 7 lvls to only 4? upgrading units gone, why?
*Senarios are weak and lacking. the theme of a castle is gone. why can the undead generate devils and imps? and choosing between creatures to create, bone dragons or devils, but not both. generate units not at end of week, but during the week also. say, 7imps growth/week. get 1 a day. no like.
*very slow, the computer takes more time on their turns than i do.
*important spells are gone, dimension door, home town, town portal, makes end game a pain.
*not enough L-XL senario maps, but i'm guessing an expansion.
*creatures are lacking in development, elminated too many of old ones.
*dont like the dim areas where you cant see enemies even after you explored it unless you have a mine or unit to light it. very very annoying, cant tell if you're being attacked until they're right outside your empty castle.
*new spell organization confusing, i liked the 4 elements better than, life, order, nature and [stuff].
*AI, kind of dumb
*CASTLE FIGHTING!!! it [stinks]!!! you have no tower shooters, no balistas to break walls!! if you stand on stupid pegs, you can be killed. in castle fighting doesnt help like it did in HOMM3. stupid stupid stupid! one of the worst new developments.
*no stats bar during combat!!!!!!!!! i cant read the stats!!! one of my favorite parts of battle! also, creatures dont do total damage when killing off a unit only unit's remaining HP. say an imp w/ 1hp is attacked by 40 devils, devils only do 1 damg. and then stats disappear. i want to be able to scroll up and see 5000 damg on the 1 imp w/ 1HP so i can go, WOW! STATS STATS STATS STATS STATS ARE MISSING!!! VERY LACKING!!! things just flash before you eyes and i dont know what's is being casted!!!
*CANT CHOOSE YOUR STARTING HERO AND HEROS DONT HAVE SPECIAL ABILITIES LIKE ANIMATE DEAD OR METEOR SHOWER! overall, if you like HOMM3 and wanna play that style of game, play HOMM3. HOMM4 is the result of the creators on crack. some parts are good, but not enough to balance the bad. if they took the pros above and just added it to HOMM3 w/o changing anything else, i would pay +$[money] for this game, but now i dont think it's even worth my time to play, might as well go back to HOMM3.
Rating: 
Summary: Big Surprise & Sorry
Review: Hi! Guys. Nice to see you big fan of HoMM.
I have been one of a few Korean fanatics while other our country gamers have been absorbed in Starcraft and Lineage. The only reason I haven't bought HoMM4 yet is that I wanna English CD version and I had a plan on going US this July and buying there. But today I read a bunch of review at this site. Oh. Don't ask me how I am feel now. HoMM2&3 was my only leisure in this hard times of mine. Especially, I hate a weak AI. I always set the difficulty level 'Impossible or very hard' when I play it. And also I doubt why 3DO made our heroes join the battle. God knows.
Rating:
Summary: Heroes 4 major let down
Review: I have been a huge fan of HOMM series. Heroes 4 seems rushed and thrown together. Everything I liked about the versions previous to this seems to have been neglegted. God I hope they learn that they need to keep th eessence of the game here and what isn't broke please don't fix it...this is a totally different game and it is not as entertaining as the previous versions. Please bring back HOMM 3 type game play. IMHO A much better game is Disciples 2 by Strategy First...this is what I was hoping Heroes was going to evolve into... if they had to goof with the total game design...no such luck. So disappointed, playing Disciples 2 and shelving Heroes 4!
Rating: 
Summary: Great game with a few flaws
Review: First, let me say that I've played all of the Heroes games since Heroes 1, and this game has the potential to be the best of them. The graphics and combat interface have been improved substantially from Heroes 3, and there is an increased emphasis on the role and development of your heroes. A few additions, such as caravans, help to minimize tedious micro-management. Also, the available factions are well balanced. Even though there are a few extremely powerful units (such as genies, vampires, and cyclopses), I don't feel like any of the six sides are particularly short-changed. However, there are a couple of flaws you should be aware of before you buy this game: 1) My biggest criticism is that the AI is very weak compared to the previous Heroes games. In fact, I haven't lost any of the games I've played against the computer yet. I found the campaigns to be rather linear, with the computer being given huge advantages in terms of troops to make up for the weak AI. 2) Some people have experienced technical problems, such as crashing and slowdown, with the game. Personally, I haven't had many problems in these areas, but a lot of people have so you should be aware of the potential bugs. 3) No TCP/IP multiplayer. Personally, I think they should have waited an extra month or so to release the game with multiplayer. You can still play multiplayer "hotseat" games (two or more people taking turns at the same computer) but for many people the main draw of the Heroes games is TCP/IP multiplayer. Hopefully, a lot of these issues will be resolved with future patches and/or expansion packs. Heroes 3 was certainly not perfect when it was released either, and I hope that 3DO/NWC continues to develop Heroes 4 into a worthy successor.
Rating:
Summary: HOMM 4 (not what i expected)
Review: First, i always play with my roommate over TCP/IP. Luckily i only bought one copy to check it out. It would seem that TCP/IP isnt coming out until a later date (and NO they havent released that date...could be years). I was sadly dissappointed i have been following its arrival since it was SUPPOSED to come out late sept, then nov, then dec, and finally march. I rushed out and bought this piece of junk As with others i have to agree that the graphics are far better... "EXCEPT" when you are fighting creatures and the likes...then it looks awful I HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU DONT BUY THIS IF YOU INTEND TO PLAY VIA MODEM OR INTERNET.
Rating:
Summary: Just horrible compared to HMM3
Review: I loved HMM3 and its expansion packs, as well as Chronicles games, so naturally I was looking forward to HMM4 expecting it to be a great sequel to HMM3 and a major improvement in terms of user-friendliness, (just as BG2 was a great improvement compared to BG1). I was bitterly disappointed, since the game is slow, the interface is much worse and inconvenient to use, and the whole thing looks just terrible. Complete waste of money. I hope 3DO will come to its senses when it's time to for HMM5.
Rating:
Summary: What a dissapointment
Review: The Heroes of Might and Magic series has been my favorite over the last 5 years. I've probably played HOMM2 & HOMM 3 more than all other games I've played combined. Here are the major problems. Heroes are a joke. The heroes fight in the ranks with the monsters. The problem is they are not nearly powerful enough. Those of you that have played this serious before know how powerful your armies get later in the game. Here is what happens. Enemy hero attacks. My army goes first. Enemy hero dies immediatly to my (insert monster group here). I've taken a here to lvl 32, in the later parts of the game, any one of the opposing enemy monster groups can typically kill your hero in one hit! Major problem number 2. The endgame is HORRIBLE. They removed the dimension door (allows you to quickly travel across the map) and the town recall (where at 4th lvl and above you could travel to any city you control) spells. So what happens is moving around the map is extremely slow. Which makes getting to an enemy hero a nightmare if he doesn't want to be caught. Example - Enemy has one super group. I've one super group. I head towards enemies remaining castle, which takes forever. Enemy sees me coming and moves away. I take enemies last castle. Enemy takes one of my castles. I move towards enemies last castle, enemy moves away. It is boring as hell. I've now played 3 maps worth about 30 hours of play and I've yet to actually finish a game. The third game I went extremely aggresive thinking I could beat them before you get into that boring end game. not. I'm done with this game, and upset enough that I'm done with the series. The memory leak, as has been reported in every review, is so severe 3DO could not possible have misssed it. They released an extremely buggy boring game. Done.
Rating:
Summary: Just to sum it all up...
Review: A couple of years back I stambled on HoMM2 and was instantly charmed by the idea of having RPG and chess-like strategy in one game.
After playing HoMM3 beginning to end a few times I wanted to buy the fourth part, and so I browsed the net for reviews and these are my findings:
The big gaming sites gave HoMM4 very high scores - about 9/10.
The reviews here however draw a different picture.
The things I like most on H3 were these:
- The effect the heroes had on the abilities of their armies. - The spell system with the four elements and three levels of effectivness.
- Upgrading creatures.
- The "theme" of each town and each hero.
- The spells: hometown, dimantion door and fly. None of these are in HoMM4. If by any chance someone from New World Computing is reading this:
It is "HEROES of m&m" not "heroes that occasionally join the battle of m&m".
Furthermore I read many complaints about the AI which was pretty OK in H3. Graphics and sound are subjective taste so just look at some screen shots - I like it. After careful consideration I decided not to buy the game.
NWC spoiled a wonderfull game and that's a real disappointment.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Game but...
Review: I got this game the day it came out and have been playing the different scenarios. I have been a big fan of the series since HOMM2. I happen to like this version a lot. I like the greater variety of creatures, spells, and hero classes. The only problem is that twice now I have been playing and have done everything I was supposed to do to have won a scenario and I haven't. It's quite disappointing when you are playing a game and it says defeat such and such characters to win and you do that yet you don't win (so then I eliminated all the colors and still did not get the victory screen). Of course, you can always go into the map editor feature to fix the problem.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent game - better and worse than HoMM 3 however..
Review: Overall, HoMM 4 is a great game! It has all of the elements that made the former releases a success (I've played them all since HoMM "1"), but a few of the changes may not be as exciting as they sounded before release. Heroes are now a major part of your armies.. this is good, and adds some new elements to the game, but on the other hand, building that killer team of creatures isn't as important anymore. Many times, I had groups of heroes stomping down the lands without opposition. Early on, it's too easy to lose a hero (and often the scenario), but later the heroes are too powerful, and there is little need to attain that angel or phoenix to top off your "killer troop". I also found much of the early campaign scenarios too easy. You meet the computer months into the scenarios, and the AI teams have barely built anything, whereas in Heroes 3, they had been hoarding armies for weeks and were very powerful. It's almost as if the game is on "pause" for the AI players while you build up. Some of the new elements are nice - quests within the scenarios, quest NPCs and extra "things to do". The land is literally saturated with things to visit and level up your heroes, it's almost TOO much. NWC streamlined some of the towns; instead of having 8 and confusing the heck out of you, there's only 6 more distinctive towns, with a specific magic type assigned to them (order, chaos, nature, etc..) The towns coincide with some of the magical paths you took in Might and Magic 8, and make more sense. There are now "technology trees" in each town, where you must choose what direction you want to build (go for angels.. or champions? - you can't do both in the same town). One thing I really like is the addition of caravans to automatically send troops from town to town without having to manually march them down the map, or hire a hero to lead them. One thing I miss, are the hexes in combat mode.. It's hard to tell where your troops are moving (unless I just overlooked something). The graphics are, of course, top notch and beautiful. The music is once again astounding, with choruses of angels and operatic chants. They make you feel like you are wandering through an elven land in The Lord of the Rings. All the M&M games have had simply some of the best music in gaming.. All in all, HoMM4 is worth the price, but I hope they address some of the simplistic AI in a patch, and maybe tone down the heroes some (they can learn WAY too many skills now, and there are now 5 levels as well, topping out at grandmaster). Good luck!
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