My opinion on Heroes III HD vs. Heroes III Complete + HD MOD.

[Ebithril]

14,99 On steam for Heroes III: The Restoration of Erathia... ONLY!
"No random map generator, no expansions, No New World Computing and 3DO logos!!!"
No, nothning! Just a bit better detail level, at the expense of gameplay value lsot by not including the two expansions.

GOG.com sells Heroes III: COMPELTE Edition for 8.89 Euro!! Almsot half price, with an average 2,5 times more content!
That is, all Heroes 3 games; Restoration of Erathia, Armagedons blade, and Shadow of Death!
Randomised Maps.
A greater Map pool.
Loads of more items and treasures.
Bigger campaign mode options
A somewhat bigger number of creatures, though, not by alot.
One extra playable castle.

And, to top this of... you can get the Heroes III HD mod for FREE!
https://sites.google.com/site/heroes3hd/
True... The HD mod doesn't increase the detail level of sprites or animations, but here is what it does do!

* Support newer, modern screens and resolution. Zooming you out a bit of the level to get a better overview.
* Supports modern mouses and senestivities.
* Compresses UI elements to be better fitted into the game. Ex. The amount of spells per page in the spellbook is increased.
* Several ingame tweaks and fixes, that don't colide with game balance, and improve gameplay flow. These changes include, but are not limited to the improved transfer window;
-Transfer all items-button.
-Transfer all/selected crature stacks
-Swap all items/creatures

So, if you truelly are a fan of Heroes III.
What will you get?
The flashier, slimmed down, peice-meal-sliced-up-sell you-the-rest-later game.
Or... The less expensive, complete edition with all bells and whisles included, with the ability to add a FREE MOD onto it to improve upon your experience?

As I took myself a decent deal of time to write this, you can sure as hell bet, that my money is on The Complete Edition!
And, as I said before. Heroes III HD MOD, and GOG in general, are all fuelled by gamnig passion of one of the best games to exist.
Heroes III -HD Edition, is fuelled by money-fuelled greed!

[Silver]

OH MY GOD.

WHO.

THE.

HELL.

CARES

about the expansions?

If I want to play the expansions, I will put in my old Heroes 3 complete CD disc into my PC and play those campaigns...or scenarios....never been a fan of random maps because I generally like some sort of story going on with each mission, but to each their own.

As for Restoration of Erathia, (which the Heroes 3 HD edition is all about), the RoE campaigns already offer ALMOST FIFTY HOURS OF GAMEPLAY

ROE.

CAMPAIGNS.

ALONE.

I bought the Heroes 3 HD edition during the last 75% off sale and havent regretted it once. 3.74€? Np. Finished Long Live the Queen, Spoils of War and the first bad guys' campaign and my steam shortcut already shows 20 hours total play time. Course, I dont rush through each map and instead try to explore it 100% and also take 10-20 extra turns making my heroes visit all the locations that give them +1 to their stats if those heroes are ported over to the next mission, but still.

80% of the Heroes 3 gameplay is contained within RoE. The expansions just give you 1 new town (of which about half the creatures are already featured in RoE's wilderness), a dozen or so new creatures, more powerful artifacts that can be combined and thats it.

The main value of the expansions comes from their campaigns which are about the same length as RoE. Of these, the Armageddon's Blade campaigns unfortunately do not allow you to choose your difficulty, and are super hard so you need to be a pro at this game, a king of resource management and map knowledge or you wont beat them.

But thats the thing....by the time you have started and finished playing all RoE campaigns, youre pretty tired of the game already.

So I'm pretty happy with 50 hours of HD gameplay instead of 150 hours of SD gameplay. The free HD mod you mentioned....yeah it just makes things tiny.

I guess this is a rip off for die-hard Heroes 3 fans who can easily play this game every day for months, if not years straight (yes, there is that much content in Heroes 3 complete)

...but for casuals like me who lose interest after 50 hours, I say the upgrade to pristine HD graphics is definitely worth it.

Most annoying thing about it though is that the battles take place in a window instead of full screen, so the immersion is gone.

I have included the link to a gallery on imgur where I took screenshots of me playing the game and compared it to the SD format (an option the devs have included in the game to help you switch over and see the difference).

Needless to say once you go HD, you dont go back:

http://imgur.com/a/o3hyl

It's like playing with your glasses on or taking them off :)

[FakeHollocoz]

Warning: Fanboy on fire!!!!

[Ebithril]

"

Originally posted by Silver:

OH MY GOD.

WHO.

THE.

HELL.

CARES

Well... you seem to care a lot... Ubi-fanboy! :P

[BB Shockwave]

I am sorry, I saw the HD mod, and it cannot hold a candle to this remastered version. Am I miffed and mad that Ubi basically outsourced the old game to a company for remastering, without bothering to upgrade it to Armageddon's Blade levels (adding mine guards, space-button structure-revisiting, etc)? Sure I am. But it's still awesome and fun to play the old game again on a 27'' monitor without it looking, well, rather bad at such resolution. I wish Blizzard did the same to Diablo II, for example. Ubisoft removing the 3DO/NWC logos hurts, because they made this game, not them - and it is beyond annoying that they have no plans to rework Armageddon's Blade when it would cost so much less. But if you are a Heroes 3 fan, even if like me you hate the games Ubisoft did (especially the travesty that is VII), you will buy this to remind them that yes, the only money they will see from old fans is on 3DO material. Maybe this, and the abysmal failure of Heroes VII (which is now sold for 20$ a year after release, and got discontinued right after the first expansion) will make them see they should seek out Jon Von Caneghem...

[Menshai]

Originally posted by BB Shockwave:

.... without bothering to upgrade it to Armageddon's Blade levels... and it is beyond annoying that they have no plans to rework Armageddon's Blade when it would cost so much less...

They don't have any of the source code for the expansions. So, unless they back engineered it (a heck of a lot of work), or tried to build it from scratch (a lot of work to probably not get it right) there's no way those features could have been included. Disappointing but the end of 3DO/NWC was messy so its not unsurprising that things were lost.

I was surprised at the launch price for this title, given its age. However, I don't underestimate the work that would have gone into updating the fidelity and resolution of all the maps, sprites animations etc. I personally think it looks better than the original, and certainly offers a better HD upgrade than the so called 'HD mod' (it doesn't increase the detail of any of the sprites, animations etc, it just allows you to use them at a higher resolution. Just because I can run something at 1080p resolution, doesn't make it 'HD') . So, I think whether or not its worth the price is purely subjective. As can be seen from this thread, some people think it is, some people think it isn't....

I think calling it a cash grab is a bit of a stretch. Its not like they reboxed it as was and sold it on as was (that really would be a cash grab in my opinion). Work went into developing this HD version. Again, whether you think its enough work to justify the price is subjective. Again, from experience in the industry, I don't underestimate the amount of time and work it would take to update art like that...

[Silver]

Dude...

It's like...

14 Conflux creatures, of which 4 elementals already are in HD, so 10.

Plus 13 new neutral creatures, so 23 creature animations needed.

The town is a stationary pic that can be retouched without source code, same goes for hero portraits and artifacts and the dwellings of the new neutral creatures.

Thats it. The campaign intros can be ported over without HD-ing them

[Menshai]

Originally posted by Silver:

Dude...

It's like...

14 Conflux creatures, of which 4 elementals already are in HD, so 10.

Plus 13 new neutral creatures, so 23 creature animations needed.

The town is a stationary pic that can be retouched without source code, same goes for hero portraits and artifacts and the dwellings of the new neutral creatures.

Thats it. The campaign intros can be ported over without HD-ing them

And what about all of the code to run any of those things? The creatures abilities? Any of the code to run the town? None of that exists in the standard game for Conflux. Great that you think all of the art assets can be touched up without it but without the necessary source code in place, it's literally just art. Completely non-functioning from a game perspective.

Without the source code, they can't bring in the expansion content. It's that simple.

[Pimpin Pippin]

I still can not believe those imbeciles lost the source files for one of THE most legendary games in the history of earth.

Like out of all the very old games that could use a HD there is none more deserving than HOMM 3.
And the damn ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lose the source stuff...

The whole ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ human society has lost a priceless treasure because of those dorks.

[Menshai]

Originally posted by Pimpin Pippin:

I still can not believe those imbeciles lost the source files for one of THE most legendary games in the history of earth.

Like out of all the very old games that could use a HD there is none more deserving than HOMM 3.
And the damn ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lose the source stuff...

The whole ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ human society has lost a priceless treasure because of those dorks.

It depends on who you mean by 'those imbeciles'... Ubisoft? No, unlikely they were responsible for it, the code had probably gone the way of the donkey before any assets moved to them. 3DO, maybe, if things hadn't be labelled and itemized correctly (which during a messy bankruptcy proceedings is likely) A 3rd party insolvency team brought in to divide up and sell anything that wasn't nailed to the floor? Probably them. Likely the source code was sat on hard-disks that were unwittingly wiped and sold on to liquidize assets (or possibly just ditched altogether)

Be grateful that we now live in the digital age, where code is distributed via source-control and stored in the cloud (and we also get to rage at people for things that aren't there fault...)

[FakeHollocoz]

Maybe imbecile is too kind. Let's face it, they tried to charge $20, then $15 for the HD that is incomplete. Didn't even try to release new campaigns, etc. Are we talking about Ubisoft?

Ubisoft went through development hell with 3 sequels over 15yrs. Needed AI cheats!!! Why? Lazy AI scripting. By comparison, Homm 3, with similar complexity and released 20yrs ago, didn't need to cheat constantly throughout the game to play well.


The only satisfaction from all these is seeing sales on steamspy.com:
- 3fauxHD ... 485k (pre-steam was top on charts when released, easily millions)
- 5 ... 371k (steam wasn't released then, easily a few millions)
- 6 ... 627k
- 7 ... 110k

Happy to say, sayonara!

Like Cities Skylines have shown, it takes a different dev/publisher to do justice to a great series like SimCity and Homm. Blind loyalty + defensive of Ubisoft is getting old.

[Dutchgamer1982]

retail HOMM complete.... bought like 15 years ago... price on lable 3,99
(gamers oldies re-release)

-it needed to be fysically printed.
-it needed to be put on a shelf ofa fysical store..

so why oh why are games on steam and gog WAY more expensive...

inflation? HAH.. there IS no inflation.... to speak of for all that time.. less than a percent per year.. that does not explain almost 200% price increases..

I still am of the opinion steam and such made games MORE expensive not cheaper... and they act like their sales are the big thing.. when in most cases retail games without sale are still cheaper.. let alone when you HAVE retail sales... (often they had/have buy 2 get 1 free sales)

same with other re-releases here on steam, cossacs, age of empires, civilization III, dungeon siege, knights and merchants..

all in the 3.99 gamers oldies re-reease pile back than... not released at 15 euro each...
lunacracy..

[Buddusky]

Why its noted as such in the official site of the HD mod which didn't make any sense to me;
"HoMM3 HD is not compatible with The Restoration of Erathia, Armageddon's Blade, Heroes Chronicles!"
Ever since The Restoration of Erathia is the vanilla itself already ?!

https://sites.google.com/site/heroes3hd/eng/description

Edit: Anyway this site gotto be the most recently updated HD mod site ever to be followed imo;
http://mmgames.ru/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=130&Itemid=217&lang=en

[Seba]

Originally posted by Silver:

OH MY GOD.

WHO.

THE.

HELL.

CARES

about the expansions?

If I want to play the expansions, I will put in my old Heroes 3 complete CD disc into my PC and play those campaigns...or scenarios....never been a fan of random maps because I generally like some sort of story going on with each mission, but to each their own.

As for Restoration of Erathia, (which the Heroes 3 HD edition is all about), the RoE campaigns already offer ALMOST FIFTY HOURS OF GAMEPLAY

ROE.

CAMPAIGNS.

ALONE.

I bought the Heroes 3 HD edition during the last 75% off sale and havent regretted it once. 3.74€? Np. Finished Long Live the Queen, Spoils of War and the first bad guys' campaign and my steam shortcut already shows 20 hours total play time. Course, I dont rush through each map and instead try to explore it 100% and also take 10-20 extra turns making my heroes visit all the locations that give them +1 to their stats if those heroes are ported over to the next mission, but still.

80% of the Heroes 3 gameplay is contained within RoE. The expansions just give you 1 new town (of which about half the creatures are already featured in RoE's wilderness), a dozen or so new creatures, more powerful artifacts that can be combined and thats it.

The main value of the expansions comes from their campaigns which are about the same length as RoE. Of these, the Armageddon's Blade campaigns unfortunately do not allow you to choose your difficulty, and are super hard so you need to be a pro at this game, a king of resource management and map knowledge or you wont beat them.

But thats the thing....by the time you have started and finished playing all RoE campaigns, youre pretty tired of the game already.

So I'm pretty happy with 50 hours of HD gameplay instead of 150 hours of SD gameplay. The free HD mod you mentioned....yeah it just makes things tiny.

I guess this is a rip off for die-hard Heroes 3 fans who can easily play this game every day for months, if not years straight (yes, there is that much content in Heroes 3 complete)

...but for casuals like me who lose interest after 50 hours, I say the upgrade to pristine HD graphics is definitely worth it.

Most annoying thing about it though is that the battles take place in a window instead of full screen, so the immersion is gone.

I have included the link to a gallery on imgur where I took screenshots of me playing the game and compared it to the SD format (an option the devs have included in the game to help you switch over and see the difference).

Needless to say once you go HD, you dont go back:

http://imgur.com/a/o3hyl

It's like playing with your glasses on or taking them off :)

Alert uby kis ass boy spoted.
On Topic: i get this game as a gift, but damn. i feel sory for the guy, i think il give him the money back, this version dont deserve nothing.

[Menshai]

Originally posted by RomaniaBall:

Alert uby kis ass boy spoted.
On Topic: i get this game as a gift, but damn. i feel sory for the guy, i think il give him the money back, this version dont deserve nothing.

Yes, because someone has to be a shill for Ubisoft in order to approve of Heroes III HD *facepalm*

Why do people find it so hard to understand that... everyone has different opinions... no one is 'right' in this debate...

[FakeHollocoz]

I'm beginning to suspect that some supposed fans confuse screaming-loud-valid criticisms with zombie-like loyalty.