delusion of grandeur on 1/3/2011 6:53 PM · Permalink · Report

Probably I'm the one who is going to whine there, but it seems, that game developers forgot, that previous games in series(NWC MM, KB, HoMM) were with great replayability, that made HOMM games so enjoyable and also graphic(for that time that was something new and advanced) and music, but without first one, there would be nothing of these series and also King's Bounty, what could be called HOMM0. King's Bounty and also NWC is dead - this is something different, despite similar name and commercial "continuity" of story.

I was/am a fan(not ventilator) of HOMM 1-3.They had their story and the first time I saw Heroes(1), it was a fairy tale... sprites were living in Sorcerer towns and there were unicorns, elves, dwarves and druids living in common social harmony... tough - the first impression is better, than if I start game in emulator now.

First - good things: graphics 10. really great - I liked some ideas and they were new, probably these are not new in other games, but graphics is really great and colorful for 2 year old game.

And now goes my rant: Despite scenery, game was terribly repetitious - XP gain after great battles was insignificant, forcing your hero to stay in defined borders(Around lvl 30). Comparing to this - after ~500 impossible battles with battles on each step in HOMM1-3 main character level would be sky high and because of lenght of game it would be campaign. Quests also did gave a worthless addition for character levelling. Probably 50-75% of gained money was found on the ground - it was easier to pick up money on the ground, than do any quests(for money purposes). Enemy heroes(same as monsters, but with stats and spells) had non-randomized stats, like Att:20 Def:20 Int:10 - really it was hard to create randomizer, or just make random numbers in character list or whatever, where they are kept in game, because almost 90% of enemy heroes had statistic numbers, that ended with 0 or 5.

And this is why I really decided to waste my time and put it there in mobygames:

Probably there could be some things, that would go later to trivia section if someone will find out more from developers, but the game was designed by Russian company and translation to english is just terrible, because there were many literar constructions, that native english speaking people wouldn't say - I suppose, that it would be better to say, that game was designed in russian and adapted to english by russians, who know and understand english, but are not native english language speakers, just like me. Usually translation wasn't a problem for most of the big games, as they were developed in english or had at least native english speaking developers. Names were just probably made up by from somewhere, so it would sound exotic, but for people with russian knowledge this all sounded like jibberish rubbish. The first ones, that come in my mind are dwarf names: Kvorum(кворум - quorum in english) - name used in russian politics in Gorbatsov era Debat(дебаты - debate in english)... There were more similar names... that were just mixup of russian, and something, like that just is out of context for a fantasy game. It just make an impression, that people who made this game, didn't have much of imagination for these small things and it was just a grind for money. Ending was BORING - if I couldn't find truth about this world by now, why I was forced to READ about it in the end? It is like watching explanation about Matrix from Architect...

I won't play this game again, unlike original King's Bounty Genesis version, that can be played now in emulator on my smartphone.