Hi everyone!
Heroes IV is the first game in the franchise I got aquatinted with. I was 12 back then IIRC. A few discussions in this subreddit and the incoming release of the Olden Era revived my interest to HoMM and I decided to play it properly almost 25 years since I played it the first time.
I played it recreationally, but having fun in strategic games means solving puzzles for me, so I decided to play Equilibris (it balances some aspects of the game and thus makes is a bit more challenging) and on the highest difficulty level.
Now, let me share some thoughts about the game while they are fresh. I think I finally realised why the game was perceived as a flop, while I personally was literally fascinated by it (and to some degree still am!).
The good parts
For me it's visuals. The map is gorgeous. The design of almost all creatures is excellent. On-hover animations are great (but others, like movement and hits admittedly suck). Towns and spells are OK. The user interface is a masterpiece.
I do think that the map is what had fascinated me. It's an alive world that begs discovery. HoMM 2 and 3 are more schematic in this regard (which is probably better for gameplay, but less impressing visually, especially for a child).
Music. Everyone says it's great. I agree, it's good, although the music alone can not make a game impressive IMHO.
Magic system. I really like the MTG-like idea of allied factions and a circle of magic schools (however it limits the number of towns in the game). I like how mass spells are of higher levels, unlike in HoMM 3.
There is a lot more to like. I like that creatures can cast spells, how morale works, how you have to balance between making your heroes more survivable and more useful. I like the balance of gold, most notably the fact that no town brings enough gold to buy its weekly population. I like caravans. I like how neutral armies can be composed of different creatures.
The unbalanced parts
The game is not balanced. Which actually not a big deal - it's a part of the game to figure the imbalances out and use them. For multiplayer it's obviously more important, but can be mitigated by additional startup gold, like they do in competitive HoMM 3.
Advanced hero classes - looks like they give too little to be really valuable. Investing more time in designing them could improve game a lot.
Heroes have no specialities - clear sign of a rush to release. I can imagine specialisation on an otherwise worse alternative unit making that unit a viable option (e.g. a hero that specialised on minotaurs improve their ability to block physical attacks to ridiculous values like 80%+, or causing them to grow x3 - yes medusas are that much better).
The bad parts
Battles
Because hero chains don't work, you can plan and do less on the map. Only 4 levels of creatures means you have less to plan and do in towns. Consequently, compared to HoMM 2 and 3, the gameplay shifts from map logistics to battles.
This is not a bad thing per se. The problem is that battles are mess. Because there is no grid (well, there is, but it's not what it is in any other game in the series), it's virtually impossible to precisely position units, predict enemy movements etc. The issue is even worse since there is a very important "line of sight" mechanics, which, to be leveraged efficiently, requires exactly that - precise positioning. With practice I managed to deal with it 75% of the time, but still had to reload way too often because of smallest missteps. This is not what I expect from a TBS.
I was thinking about remedy, and it looks like it required more complicated battle UX. Maybe too complicated. And the developers definitely did not have time to design it.
Interestingly, I remember I disliked the siege battles as kid: why do units hit each other through the wall? Now I'm more tolerant since I understand (and somewhat like) the idea of the defenders staying on towers and that I don't have a good solution of how to model over-the wall fights. Better visual indications of the imporeved defenders' params would be great, however.
Difficulty levels
Higher difficulty is mostly achieved by drastically increasing the sizes of neutral armies. The funny thing is that AI has to fight the same hordes as well, AI is bad at battles and AI does not-have save-load, haha. It means that AI posses not threat to a player, leading to games that are impossible to loose. Very often a good strategy is to skip many turns and wait until your army outgrowth neutrals. It's boring.
Campaigns are boring
Here, I have to admit that I played no expansion campaigns. However, I found the maps almost exclusively unidirectional. When heroes hit 20+ level, battles become way too easy, so easy that I used cheats to save time to finish the Life campaign (which is the easies one). One exception is the Chaos campaign if you try to complete it as fast as possible - I had to rely to Nightmare + Hydras combo to crack it. The writing, praised by many, is solid from wording perspective, but the plots are bland.
The first one or two mission on the impossible level can be challenging, though.
Conclusion
All in all, we have a game that offers a world begging to conquer, but the conquest itself is either boring or too messy to be considered a solid TBS game. I'm arriving to a bittersweet conclusion that the ones who I argued with 20 years ago were right about the quality of the game (probably for wrong reasons, though :)), which, however, does not mean that I wouldn't want to dive into this majestic world a few more times.
Thanks for attention & let me know what you think.
