Now, gameplay. Unlike Heroes 2, which was more of a tune-up and straight upgrade, Heroes 3 is a major overhaul that radically alters game balance, adds another two new factions, and adds a few new features for good measure.
First off, I guess as part of lip-service to the whole “might and magic” thing, every faction now has two sets of heroes, one might-oriented and one magic-oriented. I find this to be a questionable design choice – the factions themselves are still very clearly slanted one way or the other, and this is usually reflected by putting an arbitrary cap on how many levels their mage guild can reach before it hits the normal maximum. As a result, you aren’t going to be seeing a lot of use from the magic version of the barbarian hero, for instance, since they can only get up to third-level spells under normal circumstances. (Might heroes in magic towns do not suffer similar problems, for reasons I have already ranted on extensively.)

Battles have become a bit more balanced, I believe. The battlefields have become larger to accommodate bigger armies (I think), and flying troops do not have infinite movement range now! That is a relief. It seems like, in general, battles are pushed towards being longer and more involved, which on the one hand is good if you’re obsessed with having as few losses as possible, but on the other hand makes battles into even more of a slog than they used to be.

Fortunately, the game now has a magic button to solve this problem: quick combat! If you turn it on in the options menu, the game will skip over all battles and give you whatever result you would have gotten if you had just let the computer play for you. This is a godsend, but the fact that I left this on most of the time does not reflect well on the battle mechanics. If people actively try to avoid using your gameplay mechanic as much as possible, you have failed as a designer.

More creatures have also been added, both by adding a whole new “tier” of creatures, and by making upgrades universal instead of only applying to a select few creatures. It also ditches the idea of having to pick and choose your troops – armies now have 7 slots, exactly the number of creatures per faction. To accommodate this increase, the designers have added some new creatures, but mostly, they’ve actually just swapped creatures around, putting a lot of the seemingly-pointless neutral creatures in Heroes 2 to good use.

Oh, and speaking of that: the creature statistic screen is much clearer now! In Heroes 1 and 2, creature special abilities were hidden, and you had to figure them out on your own (or look them up). Here, they are clearly displayed. User-friendliness is always good.

The knight faction has become the Castle, and it has finally, finally become a serious contender to the other factions. Peasants have been removed from the lineup (*cheers*), with pikemen being demoted to tier-1s to replace them. They also get a second shooter in the form of monks, which is kind of weird but if any faction needs more magic it’s them, so okay. They also finally get fliers in the form of…griffins. Yes, griffins have been plucked from the warlock lineup and given to the Castle, for…some reason, I guess game balance. Two games later, the writers will actually come up with what I think is a cool worldbuilding tidbit to justify this, but for now they’re just kind of there. But that’s not all! Their ultimate troop is an angel, which is…well, I said the knight faction needed more supernatural stuff, so I guess I can’t complain. They are also arguably the best creature in the game, with enough speed to move anywhere on the battlefield, a damage rating that isn’t affected by random chance, and the ability to resurrect fallen troops. The Castle faction is now not only actually playable, but kind of overpowered too! Ironically, their gameplay style is a bit of a turnaround from their previous “quantity over quality” approach – they now have smaller numbers of fairly strong troops. However, I do find the choice to stick them with religious imagery (especially angels) to be rather questionable. It paints them as objectively good, while also conforming to the idea that standard religious authority is objectively good. (And as you can probably tell from the story, the Castle is the primary faction of the “good guys”.) I have to admit I preferred the more gray morality they had going on in the first game.

Also, the Castle has the distinction of being the only faction with a maximum mage guild level of 4, which I guess is supposed to mean that they’re balanced between might and magic or something? I don’t know.

This one is brand new. The Inferno is the Kreegan, or demonic, faction. (Seriously why are they aliens, they look, talk, and act exactly like mythological demons, just look at that screenshot.) It sucks. Everything is ridiculously overpriced, and over half their troops are complete garbage. Their tier-1 is imps, arguably the weakest creatures in the game, their tier-2 is their only shooter (whose upgrade has an area-of-effect attack, but which can damage your own troops so I didn’t see the point in upgrading them), their tier-4 is demons, a generic melee troop with literally no special abilities at all, their tier-5 is the same but with the fairly useless ability to “resurrect” demons from dead troops (but not enough to really make a difference), and their tier-7 is devils, which are objectively inferior to their angelic counterparts (though in fairness, they are fairly decent in comparison to other tier-7s). Their only real saving grace are their tier-3s, cerberi, which have an area-of-effect attack, are fast, and are all-around fairly strong, and their tier-6s, efreet. Efreet are actually pretty nice – they have an ability where, whenever they’re attacked, the attacker takes a portion of the damage inflicted. This is on top of their regular retaliation, which can make them quite painful to take down. They’re also really fast, and fliers, and are generally pretty strong. Still not enough to make up for all the other crappy troops. My sister thinks it’s some kind of moral guardians thing, where the designers don’t want to make the evil side too powerful. Given that necromancers (who are, as we know, even eviler than demons, because torturing people for kicks is mere run-of-the-mill villainy compared to the ultimate evil of corpse desecration, the horror!) are gamebreaking, I highly doubt that.

And believe me, they are still gamebreaking, probably because they haven’t changed much. Mummies have been dropped for wights and wraiths (so I guess they are enslaving peoples’ souls), which gives them another flier. I didn’t find them too useful, myself – they’re not as fast as I expected them to be, and they’re really fragile. They have a neat ability where they can drain a few mana points from an enemy hero… so I guess restless souls are like a magic void, even though that makes no sense? Vampires are still gamebreaking (though at least they don’t have infinite range anymore), and liches have become even more powerful because their area-of-effect attack no longer hurts undead. Bone dragons have been nerfed a bit – they’re not really on-par with other top-tier creatures anymore. To round out the 7-creature linup, we get a new (somewhat random) troop, the “black knight”. It’s basically a zombie version of the Castle’s mounted champion unit. They are really strong and really tough, with a random chance to do double damage as icing on the overpowered cake.

So yeah. Necromancers still break the game in half. They start off a bit slow, but once you get vampires you’ve already won. At least this time you get the opportunity to play as them no matter what.

This is the old sorceress/nature faction, now called the “Rampart” because they were running out of good castle names, I suppose. Their linup has had some major changes: pixies and phoenixes have been dropped, and druids have been promoted to the “magic” hero class, so they’re no longer troops. Their tier-1 is now centaurs, oddly enough, and their combat role has completely changed – they’re now melee troops instead of archers. Phoenixes have been replaced by dragons, because in case you haven’t noticed yet, the developers really like dragons. (But they’re green dragons, which is how you know they’re nature-y and good and totally different from the warlocks’ evil black dragons.)

Druids have been replaced by pegasi, which bear some similarities to pixies: fast, maneuverable, and decently powerful, but they die like flies. The lineup’s new face is the tier-5 “dendroid” (ents with the serial numbers filed off). They are slow, tough guard units, although they have a pretty interesting ability that enhances this: whenever they attack, they bind their target in place, preventing enemies from just breezing past them to kill those squishy, defenseless elves. Overall, I really like this faction – like in previous games, it’s fairly well-balanced in almost all respects, and has an interesting lineup. The prequel expansion pack made me sick of it, though, since it forces you to use it in virtually every map.

Ah yes. This is the Tower. The wizard faction in Heroes 2 felt kind of awkward – as I said in that review, the lineup was disappointingly dull, because the usual “wizard” creatures had already been given to the warlock. That has been fixed, partially by stealing one of the warlocks’ creatures. However, I also felt like the wizard faction didn’t really have a consistent theme – its town screen just showed boring cliffs and bluffs, and I wasn’t entirely sure what that was supposed to represent. Here, they have a dedicated terrain: snow. I wonder if it’s some kind of deep metaphor about cold rationality or something? Hm.

Halflings have been replaced with…gremlins, which are a bit more magical I guess? They fulfill the exact same battle role (although curiously, they only get the ability to shoot after being upgraded), right down to being made of wet tissue paper. The odd boars have been replaced with the warlocks’ gargoyles, although they didn’t seem as powerful to me as they did in the previous games – they’re a bit too fragile now, I think. Rocs, also a bit of a weird addition, have been replaced with genies (which were a neutral troop in earlier games). Their newcomer is the naga, which is a bit random, but it’s less random than boars and giant birds, so I’ll take it.

Interestingly, it seems like the faction’s playstyle hasn’t really changed much; the main differences are thematic and cosmetic. They still have a tier-1 shooter giving them an early-game advantage, a sturdy yet fast tier-2, and a strong flying unit in the middle tiers. Titans still cost a fortune, but mages have been demoted to tier 4 and are less expensive to upgrade, so the faction isn’t as top-heavy anymore. Overall, I think I approve. This really feels like what a wizard faction should be like, instead of the thematically-confused, poorly-balanced example seen in Heroes 2. I enjoyed playing as them, though sadly they’re never really given focus in the campaigns, being relegated to simply an ally of Erathia. I guess wizards are above petty power struggles (in this game at least).

The barbarian faction is now the Stronghold – and like the knight faction, it got some rebalancing, but not really as much as it needed. Cyclopses have now become shooters, taking over the troll’s old role. (Trolls will later show up as a melee unit in an expansion pack.) Ogres can now be upgraded into ogre magi, which is a bit of a strange choice, but it adds variety so okay. They’re still melee units, but they gain the ability to cast a buff spell. Wolves are now ridden by goblins instead of a unit of their own. I think this looks cooler, but it was also kind of cool to see wolves have their own autonomy. They have stolen the wizards’ roc for tier-5, giving them a much-needed flier. (As their only flier, however, it tends to get trapped and targeted an awful lot.) They have gained a brand-new creature for tier 7: the behemoth. It has pretty much the exact same problem the cyclops had in previous games: it’s slow, it walks, and it’s a melee unit. They are quite tough, and they are decently fast, but they just can’t hold a candle to most other top tiers. They do have a neat special ability where they ignore a portion of the enemy’s defense when attacking, which I guess encapsulates the “attack first” strategy of the barbarian faction. They’re okay, but, like the Rampart, the expansion pack shoves it down your throat to the point where I got sick of it.

This faction, the Fortress, is also new to Heroes 3. Like the Inferno, it kind of sucks. I think it’s supposed to be defense-oriented, but in HOMM the best defense is a good offense, so that kind of flops. They only have one (weak) shooter, and most of their troops are slow as molasses. They have various kinds of beasty swamp-type creatures – gnolls, lizardmen, basilisks, gorgons, wyverns, and uh…these weird things called “dragon flies” that look like insect/serpent hybrids but nothing like actual dragonflies. Like everyone else, they’ve pilfered from the warlock lineup: their top-tier creature is the hydra. It runs into the same problems as the behemoth: slow, walks, melee. Like in previous games, it can be awesome if you can set it up properly, but the increased battlefield size (and general influx in the number of shooter units) kind of throws a wrench into that. They’re interesting, and they have some cool abilities, but their slowness and lack of range support just makes them really hard to use. Overall, I think the developers were trying to do something here that just didn’t fit in with the rest of the game mechanics. (And they’re apparently a “might” faction, as their mage guild only goes up to level 3, so they can’t even fall back on good magic.)

So then. This is the Dungeon, Heroes 3’s version of the warlock faction. As I’ve stated already, their lineup has been gutted like a fish and distributed to most of the other factions, so it has seen the most dramatic changes. Only two of their original troops – dragons and minotaurs – have been kept. Like the wizards, they’ve also seen a thematic terrain shift – they’re now a subterranean cave faction. I suppose this allowed the developers to give them all the freaky D&D cave beasts to plug the gaps in their roster. They have troglodytes, harpies (which I don’t really associate with caves actually), beholders, and manticores. They also have medusae now (although they were a neutral creature in Heroes 2). Harpies are actually pretty cool – they have a special ability where, after attacking, they fly back to where they were originally, making them difficult to chase after. They’re very useful in the early game, where they can attack slow-moving creature mobs with impunity. They’re pretty fragile, though, so once the enemy does catch up to them, there’s not a whole lot they can do. Manticores just reek of a random creature they had to throw in to fill out the lineup – they’re pretty weak and their special just gives them a chance to paralyze enemies. Boring. They tended to die a lot for me. Beholders are shooters, as are, weirdly, medusae (who fight with bows and arrows because eye beams are good enough for beholders but not them?).

To be honest, I think the Dungeon is a little overpowered. Harpies are an incredible early-game creature, beholders and medusae will carry them through the mid-game, and in the late game they have dragons. Unlike in the first two games, I didn’t really have resource troubles with them – some buildings were expensive, but they’re expensive for everyone. To top it all off, their mage guild goes up to level 5, which I think is pushing it a bit. I guess it’s a tribute to the fact that they were ostensibly a magic faction in the first two games, but by this point it’s pretty clear that they’re much more creature-oriented. In practice, they’ve become overpowered in both might and magic. I do like them though – like the Fortress, they have an interesting lineup, and it’s interesting to see how much they’ve changed since the previous game. (The developers have also restrained themselves to only giving the dragons one upgrade instead of two this time.)

The heroes themselves have also gotten an overhaul. In addition to giving each faction two classes like I already mentioned, there is now an actual difference between heroes beyond just names and portraits. Each hero has a “specialty” that gives them a unique edge. The most common form is an augment to secondary skills, with every experience level adding a small percent bonus to X skill. Some heroes specialize in making certain creatures stronger – and, as a counterpoint, some magic heroes specialize in a certain spell. Like many things in this game, I would like this mechanic a lot more if they knew how to execute it properly. You only ever have an option of two heroes to choose from at any one time, and they may not even be your faction’s. It often just comes down to hoping for a good choice and taking what you get.

Secondary skills are still around and are still a cool mechanic, but the developers have done nothing to fix the “total crapshoot with limited slots” problem – if anything, they’ve made it worse. There are a ton of really situational skills that you’ll often see forced on your character at level up, and skills that could be really useful will probably never appear until it’s too late. Even more skills have been added, mainly revolving around magic. Magic is now classed into the four elements (somewhat arbitrarily), and there are four secondary skills that give you bonuses to each one. They are not well-balanced at all. Earth magic, for instance, is absolutely vital. Here’s just one example: there’s an earth spell that can be used on the map to instantly transport you to your nearest town. That’s of pretty limited usage – but with expert earth magic, you can use it to instantly teleport to any town you own. I have no idea how I could have possibly won some maps without it – enemies are frequently given one-way portals that direct them right to your doorstep, so unless you can instantly teleport back whenever they appear, the game becomes an endless back-and-forth of taking and retaking your own castles. But as if that’s not enough, earth magic also covers Resurrection. Normally, resurrected troops aren’t kept after combat, but with expert earth magic, they are. Given how obsessive I am about taking as few losses as possible, you can imagine how many times I used this spell. As icing on the cake, earth magic also contains the most powerful direct-damage spell in the game.

Air magic is also kind of gamebreaking. It has two major spells, Dimension Door and Fly. The latter does just what it sounds like, but normally, it takes a huge chunk out of your movement pool, making it hard to abuse. But with expert air magic, it doesn’t, so you’re free to fly over all obstacles, monsters, and sometimes even special gates specifically designed to keep you out. Dimension Door is even worse – it instantly teleports you to another section of the map, including parts you haven’t discovered yet. Normally, you can only use it once per day and it drains most of your movement, but with expert air magic you can use it as much as you want and it only drains, like, one step’s worth of movement. These two spells were subsequently erased from existence in the next game, and I can see why. (Look at a few walkthrough videos on YouTube if you don’t believe me – they pretty much all just boil down to “Use Dimension Door to hop to the other side of the map and kill your opponent on the first day.”)

The other two spells schools can’t hold a candle to that, probably because they don’t really have any good adventure map spells. Water magic can be nice because it grants mass casting effects to a lot of buff spells, but fire magic doesn’t really do a whole lot.

The game has added a rather interesting feature. To add to the whole “RPG” thing, in campaigns, you can actually carry over some things between maps. Usually it’s certain heroes, who will keep all of their levels and spells (but not anything else), though sometimes you’ll be allowed to keep a certain artifact that you can later use to get another artifact in a sort of chain-of-deals quest. I like this – it does add to a sense of growth and accomplishment, like the individual maps don’t just exist in a void. It can also help to mitigate the dull early game phase – since you start off with high-level heroes who already know powerful spells, it makes eliminating early mobs easier.

The art style has also changed, as you may have noticed. Gone is the cartoony, hand-drawn style of the previous games, to be replaced with CGI for towns and creatures and gritty realist drawings for everything else. To be honest, I have to admit I kind of like it better; a cartoonish style doesn’t really mesh well with a game about wars with enormous casualties and those evil necromancers enslaving souls.

Overall, I do think I like the gameplay changes. Like in Heroes 2, there have been a lot of common-sense refinements and some balancing acts, making the game more enjoyable. It has definitely upped the complexity level, though. Two brand-new factions, a whole new creature tier, bigger armies, bigger battlefields, more spells…it definitely has a “more is better” attitude. Sequel escalation, perhaps? I’m not sure how well the principle applies to a turn-based strategy game, where everything is already going to be incredibly complicated and a massive timesink. Maybe it’s my cautious playstyle, but I felt that maps took a really long time to complete.

Magic still isn’t fixed – it remains virtually untouched from the system in Heroes 2. Sad.