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Might and Magic corner  "Heroes of Might and Magic too"

User is offline   gemeaux333 

#1

Someone have experience with either one or both these series ?
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User is offline   John Brown 

#2

I grabbed all the ones on GOG (M&M 1-8, HOMM 1-5) on their latest sale, one day I'll get to them. The only M&M game I've played is Dark Messiah, does that count?
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User is offline   gemeaux333 

#3

yes, but honestly its more like a MM parody using the source engine...

I would suggest you play HOMM 6 and MMX: Legacy as they are more fitting for novices in these gameplays (and possibly Heroes Online https://clb.heroes-online.com if you like browser games)

To me HOMM 6 and expansions is the best with HOMM 3 and expansions, and HOMM 6 provide tons of improvements such as persistent progression
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User is offline   MrFlibble 

#4

I'm a fan of the first two HOMM games (art style, music, atmosphere), but haven't played either a lot.

Never tried the M&M RPGs but I love the art style of the early ones (Isles of Terra, Xeen) too. The pre-rendered stuff from later titles is kinda less appealing to me.

I played some Yendorian Tales though, which I gather is kinda sorta an M&M clone.
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User is offline   gemeaux333 

#5

HOMM 1 and 2 didn't age well sadly, MM6-7-8 are pretty good and give more freedom although the gameplay is a bit confusing to begin with, MMX is getty back to the essential of the first 5 MM games

This post has been edited by gemeaux333: 03 March 2019 - 01:44 PM

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User is offline   Zaxx 

  • Banned

#6

View Postgemeaux333, on 03 March 2019 - 01:33 PM, said:

HOMM 1 and 2 didn't age well sadly,

Try this:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/h3sw
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User is offline   gemeaux333 

#7

Graphics included (although the cartoonish style was fun for HOMM2)
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User is offline   Zaxx 

  • Banned

#8

View Postgemeaux333, on 04 March 2019 - 08:30 AM, said:

Graphics included

Frak no, HoMM 2 was the peak of the classic Might & Magic art style. That's classic PC gaming at its finest right there.
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User is offline   gemeaux333 

#9

No, it was HOMM3 the peak of the classic Might and Magic art style, HOMM 2 was just between that and the Xeen style of the previous games
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User is offline   Zaxx 

  • Banned

#10

Not really, Heroes 3 was tied to Might & Magic 6 in storyline, as well as in the art style but I get what you mean: that game looked wonderful.

Overall I have two favorites from the franchise that I feel are on an equal level in quality: Heroes 3 and Heroes 5 with the Tribes of the East expansion, those games are just perfect in every possible way.
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User is offline   John Brown 

#11

From all the reviews I watched before deciding to spend money on the games, HOMM 2's visual style looks plenty good enough for me. It and 3 both look good in their own way.

When I finish the games I'm currently playing (Crusader: No Regret, and AMC TC ep 3 whenever that releases), my plan is to start with HOMM 5, since I know it's in a separate continuity due to Ubisoft, and it'll tie into Dark Messiah which I have already played and really enjoyed. After that, I'll probably do the rest of the games in order, we'll see.
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User is offline   gemeaux333 

#12

I suggest you begin with HOMM 6, it is more appealing and easier for an novice with the HOMM gameplay to helps to learn it, and it have good scenario and mechanics as well !

This post has been edited by gemeaux333: 05 March 2019 - 10:51 PM

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User is offline   MrFlibble 

#13

Personally I love the hand-drawn graphics of HoMM and HoMM2. I know the pre-rendered sprites in the third game were cutting edge tech back when it was released, but they have this plastic look to me that fells unnatural. The panoramic town views are wonderful though, way better than in the second game.
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User is offline   gemeaux333 

#14

I prefer the hand draw of HOMM 3, the graphics of HOMM 1 and 2 are way too pixelated (screen resolutions of 320*240 and 640*480 are to blame) only the cartoonish style save them
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User is offline   MrFlibble 

#15

View Postgemeaux333, on 06 March 2019 - 08:51 AM, said:

I prefer the hand draw of HOMM 3

HoMM3 sprites are not hand-drawn, they're pre-rendered (from pretty detailed models if promo materials for Armageddon's Blade as well as for M&M7 are of any indication). Also I'm pretty certain none of the games run in 320x240 mode, it's been SVGA 640x480 straight from the first HoMM title.

BTW guys, do you know about that pre-release CES demo of the first game?
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User is offline   gemeaux333 

#16

The recent HOMM 3 HD version prove they are hand drawned, the devs who made it had to draw the sprites again (not from scratch for sure), and the screen resolution can only be either 320x240 (pretty obvious for HOMM 1) or 640x480 (pretty obvious for HOMM 2) on ms-dos natives games

When it comes to HOMM 5, to me its more like a lazy port of HOMM 3 principles in 3D and a giant waste of money in the matter (mostly pointless and ugly 3D gaphics, even according to the criteria of back then), only Tribes of the East bring new mechanics)

When it comes to HOMM 7, we can safely say we can put this whole disaster behind us

To me, only HOMM 6 is a match for HOMM 3 !
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User is offline   Zaxx 

  • Banned

#17

View Postgemeaux333, on 06 March 2019 - 10:27 AM, said:

The recent HOMM 3 HD version prove they are hand drawned

Nope, the original game actually used pre-rendered 3D models, only the remaster was made with the method you mentioned.

As for HoMM 3 HD, man, what a wasted opportunity that was! Ubisoft doesn't have th source code for Armageddon's Blade and Shadow of Death so only Restoration of Erathia was remastered... the version of the game nobody plays anymore. :)
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User is offline   John Brown 

#18

View Postgemeaux333, on 05 March 2019 - 10:51 PM, said:

I suggest you begin with HOMM 6, it is more appealing and easier for an novice with the HOMM gameplay to helps to learn it, and it have good scenario and mechanics as well !


I don't own HOMM 6, so no-go on that one. If it comes to GOG someday, then maybe. From the reviews I've read and watched, 5 looks noob friendly enough for me.
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User is offline   gemeaux333 

#19

You can only get HOMM 6 by Uplay, it is fully interfaced with Uplay so it would be a little hard to get it by GoG : https://store.ubi.co...16728b4652.html

Don't worry, it is not noob friendly, the chalenge is great enough, and the skill system and ability system are complex enough, so you would really miss something valuable

This post has been edited by gemeaux333: 07 March 2019 - 09:03 AM

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User is offline   gemeaux333 

#20

For the source code of HOMM3 AB and SoD, it have been found again 2 years ago : https://twitter.com/...801845349466113
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User is offline   MrFlibble 

#21

View Postgemeaux333, on 06 March 2019 - 10:27 AM, said:

the screen resolution can only be either 320x240 (pretty obvious for HOMM 1) or 640x480 (pretty obvious for HOMM 2) on ms-dos natives games

I played both the DOS and Windows versions of HoMM1 and both ran in 640x480 SVGA mode. The Mode X 320x240 is actually a pretty rare resolution for DOS games (regular Mode 13h 320x200 was way more common for DOS VGA games), but at any rate I don't remember if HoMM1 could be configured for a low-res mode. I think even Hammer of the Gods doesn't support resolutions below 640x400.

Here are the system requirements for the DOS version, straight from the original NWC website (Wayback Machine copy):

Quote

DOS System Requirements

  • IBM 486/33 or greater and 100% compatibles (486/66 recommended)
  • 8MB RAM
  • Double speed CD-ROM drive
  • 25 MB hard drive space
  • SVGA graphics card
  • DOS 5.0 or greater
  • Microsoft compatible mouse

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User is offline   Zaxx 

  • Banned

#22

View Postgemeaux333, on 07 March 2019 - 09:36 AM, said:

For the source code of HOMM3 AB and SoD, it have been found again 2 years ago : https://twitter.com/...801845349466113

Damn, that's great news, if HoMM had a better publisher than Ubisoft I'm sure we could hope for the whole of Heroes 3 getting a proper remaster.
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User is offline   gemeaux333 

#23

Don't worry, know that we all know it have been found back, the devs will update, I told them !
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User is offline   gemeaux333 

#24

Just as Marzin (Julien Pirou) said the last time I had contact with him : the Traditional part of MM and HOMM players is too thin to justify always growing costs (heroes, creatures, terrains,etc...) and have to renew and enlarge its audiance in order to survive, and this is why HOMM 6 have had so much new ideas !
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User is offline   Zaxx 

  • Banned

#25

View Postgemeaux333, on 03 April 2019 - 09:11 AM, said:

Just as Marzin (Julien Pirou) said the last time I had contact with him : the Traditional part of MM and HOMM players is too thin to justify always growing costs (heroes, creatures, terrains,etc...) and have to renew and enlarge its audiance in order to survive, and this is why HOMM 6 have had so much new ideas !

Well if they wanted to attract a new audience then they should have let Black Hole Entertainment to finish the game properly first! I don't hate HoMM 6, I think it had some good ideas and simplifying the resource system is something I can get fully behind... but Ubisoft fucked up that game's development big time. They contracted Black Hole, a well established Hungarian strategy game dev studio and for a while things went alright but then Ubisoft started to miss deadlines when it comes to various game design and art elements which led to Black Hole missing the tight deadlines provided by Ubisoft.

The catch? Those poor Hungarian fellows were such huge fans of HoMM and they wanted to work on a HoMM game so badly (HoMM has been really big here in Hungary for decades) that they kinda didn't read the contract thoroughy: Ubisoft can miss its deadlines without repercussions but if Black Hole does the same they don't get additional funding for development. That sucks ass because missed deadlines mean additional development time and additional development time means that more money is needed to fund that dev time. So when Black Hole missed its deadlines they had to fund the additional time from their own money knowing that they won't see shit in return = by the end of development Black Hole went bankrupt and the game got released in a fairly unfinished state with tons of bugs.

Then of course Ubisoft was like "oh shit, we're fucked, we have this buggy mess but the dev team doesn't exist anymore" so they contracted Limbic Entertainment, a German company to patch up the game and to develop DLC. What happens when another developer has to work with an engine and code made by an other team? Incompetence so instead of fixing shit Limbic kept on adding more and more bugs with their patches and getting their shit together took so long that by the time the last DLC came out most of the players just left.

Fuck Ubisoft.

This post has been edited by Zaxx: 03 April 2019 - 02:30 PM

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User is offline   gemeaux333 

#26

You are wrong, Virtuos did the expansion "Shades of Darkness", and I would say they were the only ones to have shown any professionnalism lately on the MM license, and guess what : they have even solved all the regular bugs on the game itself (vanilla + DLCs)

I was mad to Black-Hole for a long time but figured out the work they did was not so bad, the work Limbic did on MMX and especially HOMM7 was way worst !

But the fact is here : No matter how well (or not) a MM game is received , both the editor and Devs are losing money in the end !

This post has been edited by gemeaux333: 04 April 2019 - 07:58 AM

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User is offline   Zaxx 

  • Banned

#27

That Chinese studio? :lol: Yeah, they were so professional that they quickly got repaced by Limbic... then Limbic went on to create the magnum opus of unfinished software, HoMM 7. :lol:

Let's face it, thanks to Ubisoft's mismanagement, low dev budgets and developers having to work on other people's codes HoMM is a shitshow ever since Black Hole went under. The last legit good entry in the series was HoMM 5 and even that needed 2 expansions to get to that state.

Edit: Btw. the reason why Nival, the developers of HoMM 5 did not work on HoMM 6 was that they hated working with Ubisoft so they simply didn't take the contract.

This post has been edited by Zaxx: 04 April 2019 - 08:03 AM

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User is offline   gemeaux333 

#28

Nival began to work on HOMM 6, the prove : the reputation system, they managed to prevent bankrupcy after HOMM5 and Expansions, which is praiseworthy in itself !

The only reproach that could have been done to Virtuos was the first draft of Dungeon faction abilities where they lacked common sense, but I would better see Virtuos working on a true MM of HOMM game than Tencent (as they are doing now, no ambition or technical prowess in the MM games they are working on for the chinese market), Virtuos is pretty muck like the present day version of Cyberlore (those who made HOMM 2 POL) making expansions and games for those who offer money for it...
Little precision : Limbic was already working of the DLCs Pirates of the Savage Sea and Danse Macabre !
Anyone would say that Limbic was simply/actually a casting mistake !

And when it comes to HOMM 5 this is just a lazy port of HOMM 3 with 3D standards (and even adding 3D where it is useless/pointless and just as expensive with 50% of budget drowned by graphics), especially if you remove the improvements of Tribes of the East, HOMM 6 is way more praiseworthy in its complete version !

This post has been edited by gemeaux333: 05 April 2019 - 09:28 AM

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User is offline   Zaxx 

  • Banned

#29

Yuck.
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User is offline   gemeaux333 

#30

?
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