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Zero-Tau
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Elsewhere
Aug 2002
time: 06:23
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No problem, DarkCloud - gives the rest of us something to laugh about. 
Oh yeah, and I have both HoMM 3 and 4, so my thoughts:
The new skill system is great. 9 primary skills, of which you may choose up to 5, and for each primary skill, 3 secondary, of which you may have all 3. All skills have 5 levels, and no skills are mutually exclusive. The system works well, and avoids the HoMM3 annoyance of choosing between two crappy skills (Basic Scholar/Basic Eagle Eye, anyone?  ). The idea of basing your class on your two best primary skills is also good.
The magic system is also very nice, and works well.
Heroes on the battlefield - Oh yeah! Once you get some combat skills, you'll have a quite powerful unit, that is hard to destroy. Great fun!
Towns and creatures - Fewer towns than before, and you have to choose between some creatures. Annoying, although getting rid of the "upgrades for all creatures" idea was good.
World Map - now isometric view, and better graphics. So what? The HoMM 3 WM was just as good. *shrug*
Although they did get rid of the need to have crappy heroes running around checking the huts, since you're no longer forced to learn a skill when you enter one.
Battlefield - This is where HoMM 4 really loses out. You no longer have a grid to refer to, so you can only get a rough idea how far units can move. Worse yet, it is sometimes impossible to tell whether it's possible to move between two bushes or not. Even worse, it's very hard to predict whether a ranged unit will satisfy the line of sight criteria, which is required to shoot at a unit. In HoMM3 you could always tell exactly how far every unit could move, and whether they could hit your units. You can't here. It really ruins strategic thinking when you can't be sure of anything.
Game balance has some serious issues as well. Take the medusa for instance. Its "Stone Gaze" ability now insta-kills a few units. So far so good. But the ability works with the medusa's ranged attack. Quite powerful, but still manageable, with some good spells. The really bad thing, though, is that with a large enough stack of medusas, the ability works on your heroes. One shot, bang, you're dead. Way too powerful for such a low level unit. There's probably plenty more examples.
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24-11-2002 01:03
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