Being a Hero’s of Might and Magic noob and quite pedantic (every hero must visit every shrine for every upgrade) the game played quite well, even after I read that you should rush the stages quickly to keep the next levels army size down (it’s refreshing to be punished for taking a stupid amount of time). The battles were fun, large affairs that took time and patience to win, but every battle felt rewarding, and there was a sense of achievement. I breezed through the first few races, then I come to the Sylvan (elf) quest line and I swear the game is broken. I swear there is no way to finish some of these missions. Units that should be able to be removed from a garrison can’t be after a certain level patch, which makes re-enforcing your home town impossible. The only way around is to have a running battle with weak sacrificial units and hope you do enough damage each turn to whittle them down before they hit your main town. Other than that 1 glaringly painful part of the game, it was quite fun to play. Each race plays differently (they are all unique), and while you could make most hero’s semi similar with loadouts, they work well enough with their faction’s units that I didn’t feel a need.

I found the plot interesting and it contained enough twists and turns early on to keep me invested until I finished it. The characters dialogue is well written, and while some of the humor falls flat I found myself chuckling enough when it was trying to be humorous.

The two expansions also play very well, although I found some of the balancing made some races/units very over powered. I thought the overall difficulty increased with the 2 expansions (especially with the tribes of the east expansion). Having the different unit upgrade paths was interesting, and brought new options to the field. Be prepared to sink a lot of time into playing it (this isn’t something you can rush through- though I’m sure someone will prove me wrong in this). If you are a fan of turn based strategy games then I would recommend this. No achievements for this game (it must be one of the few that doesn’t have them).

Being a Hero’s of Might and Magic noob and quite pedantic (every hero must visit every shrine for every upgrade) the game played quite well, even after I read that you should rush the stages quickly to keep the next levels army size down (it’s refreshing to be punished for taking a stupid amount of time). The battles were fun, large affairs that took time and patience to win, but every battle felt rewarding, and there was a sense of achievement. I breezed through the first few races, then I come to the Sylvan (elf) quest line and I swear the game is broken. I swear there is no way to finish some of these missions. Units that should be able to be removed from a garrison can’t be after a certain level patch, which makes re-enforcing your home town impossible. The only way around is to have a running battle with weak sacrificial units and hope you do enough damage each turn to whittle them down before they hit your main town. Other than that 1 glaringly painful part of the game, it was quite fun to play. Each race plays differently (they are all unique), and while you could make most hero’s semi similar with loadouts, they work well enough with their faction’s units that I didn’t feel a need. I found the plot interesting and it contained enough twists and turns early on to keep me invested until I finished it. The characters dialogue is well written, and while some of the humor falls flat I found myself chuckling enough when it was trying to be humorous. The two expansions also play very well, although I found some of the balancing made some races/units very over powered. I thought the overall difficulty increased with the 2 expansions (especially with the tribes of the east expansion). Having the different unit upgrade paths was interesting, and brought new options to the field. Be prepared to sink a lot of time into playing it (this isn’t something you can rush through- though I’m sure someone will prove me wrong in this). If you are a fan of turn based strategy games then I would recommend this. No achievements for this game (it must be one of the few that doesn’t have them).