Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Restoration of Erathia

The Good
When I first saw information about HOMAM3 I was very skeptic. I thought that the second part was so good that nothing could beat it. Now I know that I was wrong. HOMAM3 takes all bugs and mistakes from first and second part and repairs it. It also adds some more features to make gameplay even better.

This game has indeed a very nice gameplay, computer may not be the smartest but we can live with that. Increasing the number of slots for units in hero's screen was a smart move, as the number of units in all castles increased as well. And units often have many unique attributes such as charge or healing. Also spells are better here. Instead of Mass Bless or Mass Curse, the amount of units affected depends on hero's skill, not by the spell itself. Combining with a lot of new spells, we can easily say that magic got stronger here. Castles changes as well. More buildings, more units. And of course more money up to 4000 gold per day for capitol or even 9000 gold for capitol with Grail. The campaign is ok but nothing special here. However the game shows it's level in multiplayer, especially in hot seat option. Playing with your friends sitting in the same room is just great.

The Bad
Multiplayer mode is indeed good. But only in hot seat option. If you want to play with your friends online, you have to have a lot of patience. Players can set a limit of time for every turn but battles are separate things and they can last for hours. Another player of course sits and watches his map getting more and more bored. Also in single player the campaign is not a very challenging one. We rarely see objectives different from "destroy all", "move your hero somewhere" or "get xxxxx gold, monsters, resources". It's a strategy game, not an RPG but still some maps could be a lot better. There are six campaigns, but the real game starts from the one number 4. Numbers 1-3 are so easy that imho they cannot be counted as campaigns.

Computer is not very smart as well. During battles, hostile archers (300 of them) attacked a group of 500 skeletons (slow and weak units) instead of Liches, Dread Knights or Ghost Dragons which could do far more harm.

The Bottom Line
HOMAM3 is definitely worth playing. It's one of those games which will draw player's attention forever. Of course it can bore you as it has some flaws but comparing to all other parts it's surely the best one.