[h1] TL;DR[/h1] If you came from HOMM2 or HOMM3, this ain't it. Play this game if for some reason you already own it and you just want the novelty.
[b] Pros: [/b] Some actually good ideas (tho I don't know if these were Heroes IV-VI). I'm coming form II/III. Adventure once/day is fun. The Necro campaign had you with fire mastery w/ very weak units, but you could clear out very powerful enemies with the Fire Adventure spell. That was neat. Some units are cool: The centuar archers being able to move then attack or attack then move as two separate commands is fun. Retaliating ranged monks? Cool. Special abilities usable once per combat? Neat.
[b]Cons:[/b] You need to be online to play b/c of Ubisoft rules, which means if you DC for too long it will quit in you even in single player.
That same Necro campaign w/t he fire mastery has you vs wizards w/ magic immune gargoyles. It's just really tedious to cast shields on your dude and wack a stack of 300 gargoyles for several turns because your might is so low.
[b]Bugs[/b]Several though vary in severity but overall making it feel unpolished. For a game that requires you to be online you'd expect these to be patched out. Some of these include the game crashing on you, of if you wait with hotkey W in combat too quickly, you get a visual bug. Sometimes the mouse in combat disappears so you need to guess which angle you are attacking form. Caravans can have units you can't access (that you've paid for and waited to be delivered). AI is also extremely stupid when it comes to fire wall, making it the most powerful spell in the game until you hit max tier magic.
[b]Campaigns:[/b]
A couple neat ideas here and there, but overall mechanically boring, and I've completed all but 2 factions. I'm going to keep going Necropolis is the worst. You barely get to use the undead units because you are usually in wizard or haven territories. I enjoyed Orc campaign the most. On normal mode, I expect to be able to explore around, not have any map knowledge, but still win because I know how to play strategy games. This is not the case on certain, esp necro maps. The way certain evens trigger is based on the position of your hero, which means you can trigger certain events extremely early or late, trivializing the campaign or just making it extremely difficult. They don't tell you all of the objectives at the beginning. Instead, they can piecemeal if as you progress. If there's a time limit and you've been just enjoying exploring/♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ around, you can complete all the listed objectives within the time limit and still fail because of either a) a hidden objective e.g. killing all enemy units, or b) time needs to pass before they tell you the next objective. These are not hard maps, but needing to redo because of a bad map trigger or because you thought you had plenty of time is unfun.
[b]Balance:[/b]
This is Might OR Magic, not Might AND Magic. Magic builds makes auto-combat more risky, and therefore the more tedious route. Warcries fills the same position as Hero Attack and Spells, so I never found a convincing time to use them when just nuking an enemy felt better. Spells are weak unless you spec really hard into them. Some Heroes don't have a very good balance of skill available to you. The Skill tree/wheel is interesting, but it doesn't allow for you to customize your hero as much. Or rather, every hero has a pre-determined playstyle. But if your playstyle is incompatible, or you don't have the spells to support it or whatever, then it's just a bad hero. In HOMM3, you could have an Estates specialist be yoru strongest hero b/c any hero can learn expert [element] magic, offense, defense, sorcery, and other powerful skills. In this game, you could have a Might hero who only has warcries, leadership, and warfare. Ok great paper thin units that have repeat turns but dont' even do that much damage. Maybe I didn't spec into warcries enough, but something else always felt better.
