Heroes of Might and Magic: A Strategic Quest (PC, 1995)
Graphics-6/7* Sound-7.5 Control-7.5 Challenge-6/7* Story-4
Level Design-6.5 Frustration-7 Fun-7 Originality-6.5
Overall Score-6.5
*town views and world maps/adventure maps
**Last scenario
+
Effectively mixes town building & management sim with exploration, turn based battles and RPG elements (borrows some ideas from King's Bounty and Warlords 1-2)
Good interface overall (hotkeys (cast field spell hotkey=C), kingdom overview, field movement speed options, mini-map with drag and drop viewport, tooltips, etc.)
Plenty of content (different heroes, spells, artifacts, map encounters)
Save/load anywhere outside battle (many nameable slots)+auto-save feature
Some advanced features (terrain effects on the world map - barbarian heroes ignore this so they make good scouts/resource+unguarded genie lamp grabbers in rough terrain (warlocks are better scouts elsewhere having as good movement as sorceresses and the best sight range), diplomacy, morale (creature loses or gains a turn - mix 3 factions and morale is lowered by 1/mix 4 and it's lowered by 2/don't mix them and you get +1) and luck (more/less damage) bonuses, artillery for siege battles, teleporters)
Auto battle feature (the AI isn't great though (for example it might use armageddon or anti-magic when it's not useful/attack a debuffed enemy/protect your archer unit when it's not useful/occasionally not use certain units at all), can cancel it with Esc, can't make it not use spells)
Some cool spells (summon boat (teleport friendly boat to your hero), anti-magic (can't cast spells on unit), teleport in battle, resurrect, field teleport/dimension door, town gate - teleport to nearest town)
Decent customization (spells and artifacts, mix troop types from different factions, 4 hero stats)
4 mostly diverse factions to play as with some unique strategies
Difficulty options (for the skirmish/standard game mode only; four settings: easy-expert (five in Heroes 2-3), can also set the CPU AI difficulty level for each opponent (4 levels) as well as number of opponents, The AI cheats in that it starts with more resources+nearby resources and can see further on higher difficulties+knows your creature stacks (?)+has better luck with getting neutral creatures to join its army)
No need to build a tavern to recruit heroes (Heroes 3)
Decent art direction outside of battle (nice town views and world maps/adventure maps, so-so battle animations, often goofy looking sprite animations and silly sounding sfx)
Introduced the ultimate artifact treasure hunt puzzle (randomized location and artifact - can be one of four artifacts which add +12 to one stat here, became the grail in Heroes 3)
Can disband/dismiss heroes
Music changes depending on where you are on the map (the switching isn't dynamic though) and there's good use of ambient sfx depending on where your currently selected hero is as well
Local (hot seat)+network and online (modem) multiplayer (with save feature, 4 players, teams or free for all?)
Short but decent sprite-based cutscenes (intro and ending only here)
Holes from digging stay on the world map view
Optional challenges that can give an advantage in the form of extra income or artifacts (usually dragons)
Fund transfers between players in multiplayer?
+/-
Huge time sink (especially in multiplayer; due to limited movement points and some interface+economic bottleneck issues)
The heroes play a supporting role (casting spells, buffing/debuffing, morale) and aren't manually controllable in battle
No castle gates during sieges (less of an advantage for the defender)
Only 4 factions though there are also 4 neutral creatures (knight (castle), barbarian, sorceress (rampart), warlock (similar to dungeon))
Doesn't have these spells: clone, visions (gives relative strength of an army camp and whether that camp will offer to join the hero), hypnotize, haunt (deflags a mine and sets 4x Power ghosts to guard it), earthquake, summon elemental, town portal (choose which friendly town to go to), chain lightning, disrupting ray (lower a unit's defence), Shield (protect against ranged attacks)
Can't cancel/rewind a wrong move (if you click during a luck or morale animation it still counts)
Quite micromanagement heavy (need to keep visiting map locations/encounters with your heroes for weekly bonuses and troop dwellings, also need to trade for different resources from time to time)
Only one campaign which is pretty much the same for all factions (9 scenarios however each faction only goes through 8 of them (one of scenarios 5-8 is different depending on the faction chosen since each of those are about taking out the lord of one of the others))
No mana/MP here (instead the knowledge stat directly determines the number you'll have of each spell (in Heroes 2 you got 10 MP per point in knowledge) however you also need to go back to the town with the mage guild containing a spell to recharge that spell) - seems to make some spells like dimension door and fireball OP after the early game since they don't eat into a shared MP pool when used
Luck plays a big role (what certain locations/encounters will teach, some luck/morale/movement locations, spell selection in a mage guild is semi-random (in scenario 4 I didn't get any attack spells despite various towns), which heroes come up in the tavern (only 2 per week unless you recruit and dismiss on purpose, in scenario 4 I didn't get any warlocks for at least a month), which artifacts you find, morale (=extra move for a unit which can pretty much turn the tide in a battle) and luck bonuses in battle, unbalanced terrain and resource layouts, daemon cave encounter and whirlpool teleporters, some towns can't get some spells in their guilds (you can still learn them via other towns though), can't gain control of the catapult (the artifact that makes it shoot twice helps but you might not get it))
It takes fairly long to learn how to play well
All tiers of units and spells can be built from the first scenario on in the campaign onwards (only some wandering creatures and artifacts aren't seen yet) - lessens the sense of progression
Can't cast haste on slower units outside of battle (might've been OP; slowest unit in an army decides how far the hero can move though this can be circumvented somewhat when in towns?)
Dimension door is OP (can avoid guards of resources and items here+the knowledge instead of MP thing+no wisdom stat so anyone with a spellbook can use it)
Defense doesn't help against spells
Knights are better than barbarians in battle since DEF (their main stat) is kind of OP (A stack of 20 dragons with +10 defense will beat a stack of 50 dragons with +1 defense) and their units get +1 morale; they're also better than warlocks without good offensive spells and sorceresses without paralyze) - however they start with peasants and most maps have either rough terrain or some water
No diplomacy between factions
Towns are a bit faster to build overall than in Heroes 3
No ballista or first aid tent
No mass/hit all versions of buff & debuff spells
Can't move through the small weeds (marsh) and branches (desert) in battle
No ambushes (battles where creatures surround your army)
No roads
Only one artifact that doesn't increase or decrease a stat or increase gold income (Ballista of Quickness - catapult shoots twice per turn, no other resource income increasing ones)
Heroes can use more than one of the same artifact type at once here (2+ weapons for example) - there are no specific slots on a paperdoll screen like in Heroes 3
Can't destroy towns
Indestructible catapults
Can't dispel temporarily resurrected creatures? (they also stay alive after battle) - resurrect seems to show up a bit less often than other spells
No side quests besides digging for the ultimate artifact here
-
Some interface/control issues (limited unit stack splitting (can't use the same unit type as two separate stacks in a hero's army - only split from one hero to another or into a town (this+one or more tile narrower battlefields makes archers less powerful?)), no "wait" command, no collective recruitment menu for all units (can't recruit from the overview (well) screen) and no "buy max of all units in town" button - have to click each dwelling separately, no grids during battle, no battle movement speed options, slow and somewhat choppy scrolling, can't go to individual hero or town views from within the kingdom overview menu, harder to tell if a unit is completely blocking a path or not (seems the pathing is also more forgiving so it's easier to sneak past heroes), 8 character only save file names and no spaces, can't move all garrisoned units to a hero at once (or vice versa) - can't move a hero to the town slot here to have one inside the castle and one right outside (instead a hero acts as if it was garrisoned when placed outside of a town), can't see if a location was visited by the current hero before/this week, overly vague spell descriptions (no numbers), sometimes unit graphics cover up another unit stack's numbers stat when in battle, can't see the current HP of the top creature in a unit stack during battle, archaic battle message interface - since it shows only one line and only briefly it's hard to follow, can't throw away artifacts or disown a town (there are some negative artifacts and you can't choose not to pick up an artifact taken from an enemy hero; you need to lose a throwaway hero carrying it in battle), Minor pathfinding and hit box issues (weird how you can't move behind a tree in battle, some towns and have a weirdly small hit box and the one for the battle tend is also pretty small, sometimes the pathing towards a location becomes longer than it looks like it should), need to click the side menu on the world map to see what day it is, can't press Space or M to re-enter a location that your hero is standing on, trading troops between heroes could be faster - no "move all possible" button, can't delete or rename save files in-game, the game doesn't show the mini-map during the AI's turns (can get disorienting at times), sometimes have to confirm with Esc instead of Enter (end of battles), if you use M to stop moving a hero then you can't use it again to start moving again)
No marketplace (creates economic bottlenecks which can screw you over on some maps as well as abundances of other resources that you can't do anything with)
Armageddon spell (wastes huge armies with little effort - only defense is anti-magic or dragons, very strong with high SP) and Storm (weaker version which heroes can get very early on (too much of an advantage for a weaker army) - if there was a spell to check if a hero has Armageddon and/or getting Anti-Magic wasn't a matter of luck and it could be upgraded to mass/all or AoE it would've been fine
Heroes can't teach each other spells (Heroes 3 scholar skill)
No secondary hero skills (leadership, logistics, diplomacy, etc. - see Heroes 2-3)
Only five creature slots on heroes and in towns when you can build six different creatures per town
Buff spells like bless and protection actually dispel paralysis and blind since a unit can only have one spell effect on it
Some tedious aspects (the large maze with narrow paths+rough terrain in scenario 7, heroes and artifacts usually don't carry over to the next scenario in single player (gets tedious to retrain/rebuild over and over and dampens the sense of progression), wandering creatures are less likely to join you here and you can't pay to make them join - seems more likely if the creature's faction aligns with the hero's faction, no spell recharge locations (usually leads to some backtracking), too many pieces to the digging puzzle in scenario 3 makes it overly drawn out (might be possible to dimension door everywhere and avoid most combat though; scenario 4 also has a lot of them), digging always takes a hero's full movement points, the lack of being able to convince an AI player to surrender makes the cleanup phase take longer - an easier fix could be reinforcements added to an AI player's last held town which can only be used for defense (the game does have "boss" heroes of sorts in some of the later scenarios of the campaign which have a large army and sit around in one of their towns however they don't reinforce after battling them once), scenario 6 - takes too long before you can make ships)
Some trial & error (using town gate if the nearest town is occupied means you waste movement points (it doesn't pick the next unoccupied town), beating a hero on a boat while on land also removes the boat, final scenario (8) is harder than previous ones and requires a more defensive and focused strategy where you don't go for the green player first and optimally recruit certain wandering creatures, a creature can't counter if hit while paralyzed (means you can't do anything - not even retreat - if there's only one left and the enemy has high knowledge), some mechanics - how retreating and summon boat work, can't retreat/surrender if your last unit is blinded or berserked, cursed artifact (avoid the blue pendant/emblem - the AI does avoid it though so you don't get it from battling it here), a player cannot cast spells or use their archery tower in a castle if all their units are blinded or paralyzed, location effects,
Very barebones story for the campaign mode (little to no focus on characters or world lore, so-so sense of progression (random starting hero for each scenario besides their class/faction and returning heroes all revert back to level 1+their default armies and (lack of) equipment), the debriefing for the first scenario doesn't take into account if you wiped out the other heroes or not - they are always described as having fled, scenario 3's debriefing is also the same regardless of if you wiped out the other factions)
Predictable or stupid AI in some ways (almost always goes for your ranged units in battle, somewhat evenly distributes its troops among all of its heroes, falls for kiting tricks with fast units, doesn't time its attacks properly and sometimes doesn't expand properly during the campaign, tends to attack the unit it just blinded or paralyzed (canceling the effect))
Wandering creatures never increase in strength/numbers here
Hero selection in taverns is close to random and some are worse (can only choose between two per week)
Some factions are under/overpowered or severely limited strategy-wise in multiplayer (Knight has no flying unit (neither does Barbarian but it instead has two shooters, Sorceress has both 2 flyers and 2 shooters+can go first with phoenixes, Warlock is the overall strongest and has 3 flyers+their slow unit is their second to strongest one however they can't skip any dwelling to get to their strongest one in the tech tree); Trolls are OP vs the CPU?, Warlock has an easier time to expand early on (1 shooter+2 flyers)?, Genies are OP (less common though and you can only recruit a few per lamp) and so are ghosts due to a bug (can get around it by avoiding using lots of weaker units))
Can only fight 3 opponents in a skirmish game and you can't set the teams (only make them all ally against you with the King of the Hill option)
No choices to make regarding heroes/artifacts/troops prior to a scenario during the campaign here
No branching paths in the campaign (Heroes 2)
Can't force ranged units into melee (need to walk up next to the enemy thus wasting one turn)
Some slowdown (morale and luck effect animations)
No difficulty options for the campaign
No deployment or manual siege weapon control mechanics (some control in that units will deploy corresponding to their slot in the army where the leftmost slot=the topmost position in battle)
No caves/underworld (Heroes 3)
No unit or castle upgrades (makes it less important to hold onto towns and the first one tends to max out long before a scenario ends)
No map/scenario editor
The music restarts when exiting or entering a town screen
Somewhat fuzzy sound for the music (below CD quality in the GOG release)
No hero battle sprites here (they appear in some artwork stills so they could've used those, added in a mod)
Some delay after gaining a new artifact
Some spells like Meteor and Armageddon become overpowered with high spell power or knowledge (Teleport) while others do not evolve enough
The campaign gets repetitive after a while (destroy enemy, capture location, dig up an artifact are the usual missions; also repeating the build up phase each time)
Scenario 8 can only be finished by taking over the dragon city - taking out the enemies doesn't end it
If you kill a hero carrying a dug up/ultimate artifact then it "mysteriously disappears"
Bugs:
-The ghosts' overpowered ability is even more overpowered when they are counterattacking. For each creature killed by a counterattack, not one, but two new ghosts are added to the stack. (fixed in mod)
-A Hero can use the Town Gate spell while being on a boat. It teleports him to the nearest town or castle along with the boat - This gets you stuck if the town is surrounded by land only
-Amount of units in shipwreck doesn't vary (fixed in mod)
-Can freeze if you spam click during an animation
-Can encounter a stack of 0 units in the last scenario (the AI once had a stack of 0 phoenixes during my playthrough)
Notes:
-Tournament edition mod (russian only): https://www.h1.acidcave.net/mods_&_utilities.html
-Nice manual art
-Bad luck (half damage) exists in the game but is unused
-Campaign took 753 days (Minotaur rank - spent more time than needed on various scenarios)
Comment:
Finally went back and played the original in the series (my introduction was 3). It's pretty barebones with fewer units, no skills, only 4 factions, and it has some quirks like no marketplace that create economic bottlenecks, no battle speed options, no splitting stacks within a single army, one less army slots, etc. The different mana system is kind of interesting, it makes some spells really strong if you can up your knowledge and/or SP quickly, but you might get unlucky and not get those spells as the selection is pretty random. Being able to cancel debuffs with buffs is just kinda weird. As in 2, there's the armageddon spell and also a weaker version in the storm spell - these I don't particularly care for as it's a lot of damage with little effort, luck-based if you get it or not, and a bit too "do or die" in how you handle it which is with anti-magic (no mass/hit all version here) and/or dragons, the latter of which can only be recruited by one faction's town type.
In the campaign you can pick your faction and then you keep it throughout, battling the others in the later scenarios so each one plays 8/9 scenarios in total. The story is generic and almost non-existent, sadly. But I do like the music and the overall aesthetic besides the silly battle sprites. The core gameplay is also mostly all there and it's still pretty addictive, I find myself playing for multiple hours at a time without realizing it so there's obviously something good there already in the first one, they just needed to tweak it a bit.
There's also a mod which adds a few interface improvements, but it seems to be in russian only atm. While I won't replay this, it was still fun to check it out and see how it all began (though arguably it began with King's Bounty and Warlords!).
Level Design-6.5 Frustration-7 Fun-7 Originality-6.5
Overall Score-6.5
*town views and world maps/adventure maps
**Last scenario
+
Effectively mixes town building & management sim with exploration, turn based battles and RPG elements (borrows some ideas from King's Bounty and Warlords 1-2)
Good interface overall (hotkeys (cast field spell hotkey=C), kingdom overview, field movement speed options, mini-map with drag and drop viewport, tooltips, etc.)
Plenty of content (different heroes, spells, artifacts, map encounters)
Save/load anywhere outside battle (many nameable slots)+auto-save feature
Some advanced features (terrain effects on the world map - barbarian heroes ignore this so they make good scouts/resource+unguarded genie lamp grabbers in rough terrain (warlocks are better scouts elsewhere having as good movement as sorceresses and the best sight range), diplomacy, morale (creature loses or gains a turn - mix 3 factions and morale is lowered by 1/mix 4 and it's lowered by 2/don't mix them and you get +1) and luck (more/less damage) bonuses, artillery for siege battles, teleporters)
Auto battle feature (the AI isn't great though (for example it might use armageddon or anti-magic when it's not useful/attack a debuffed enemy/protect your archer unit when it's not useful/occasionally not use certain units at all), can cancel it with Esc, can't make it not use spells)
Some cool spells (summon boat (teleport friendly boat to your hero), anti-magic (can't cast spells on unit), teleport in battle, resurrect, field teleport/dimension door, town gate - teleport to nearest town)
Decent customization (spells and artifacts, mix troop types from different factions, 4 hero stats)
4 mostly diverse factions to play as with some unique strategies
Difficulty options (for the skirmish/standard game mode only; four settings: easy-expert (five in Heroes 2-3), can also set the CPU AI difficulty level for each opponent (4 levels) as well as number of opponents, The AI cheats in that it starts with more resources+nearby resources and can see further on higher difficulties+knows your creature stacks (?)+has better luck with getting neutral creatures to join its army)
No need to build a tavern to recruit heroes (Heroes 3)
Decent art direction outside of battle (nice town views and world maps/adventure maps, so-so battle animations, often goofy looking sprite animations and silly sounding sfx)
Introduced the ultimate artifact treasure hunt puzzle (randomized location and artifact - can be one of four artifacts which add +12 to one stat here, became the grail in Heroes 3)
Can disband/dismiss heroes
Music changes depending on where you are on the map (the switching isn't dynamic though) and there's good use of ambient sfx depending on where your currently selected hero is as well
Local (hot seat)+network and online (modem) multiplayer (with save feature, 4 players, teams or free for all?)
Short but decent sprite-based cutscenes (intro and ending only here)
Holes from digging stay on the world map view
Optional challenges that can give an advantage in the form of extra income or artifacts (usually dragons)
Fund transfers between players in multiplayer?
+/-
Huge time sink (especially in multiplayer; due to limited movement points and some interface+economic bottleneck issues)
The heroes play a supporting role (casting spells, buffing/debuffing, morale) and aren't manually controllable in battle
No castle gates during sieges (less of an advantage for the defender)
Only 4 factions though there are also 4 neutral creatures (knight (castle), barbarian, sorceress (rampart), warlock (similar to dungeon))
Doesn't have these spells: clone, visions (gives relative strength of an army camp and whether that camp will offer to join the hero), hypnotize, haunt (deflags a mine and sets 4x Power ghosts to guard it), earthquake, summon elemental, town portal (choose which friendly town to go to), chain lightning, disrupting ray (lower a unit's defence), Shield (protect against ranged attacks)
Can't cancel/rewind a wrong move (if you click during a luck or morale animation it still counts)
Quite micromanagement heavy (need to keep visiting map locations/encounters with your heroes for weekly bonuses and troop dwellings, also need to trade for different resources from time to time)
Only one campaign which is pretty much the same for all factions (9 scenarios however each faction only goes through 8 of them (one of scenarios 5-8 is different depending on the faction chosen since each of those are about taking out the lord of one of the others))
No mana/MP here (instead the knowledge stat directly determines the number you'll have of each spell (in Heroes 2 you got 10 MP per point in knowledge) however you also need to go back to the town with the mage guild containing a spell to recharge that spell) - seems to make some spells like dimension door and fireball OP after the early game since they don't eat into a shared MP pool when used
Luck plays a big role (what certain locations/encounters will teach, some luck/morale/movement locations, spell selection in a mage guild is semi-random (in scenario 4 I didn't get any attack spells despite various towns), which heroes come up in the tavern (only 2 per week unless you recruit and dismiss on purpose, in scenario 4 I didn't get any warlocks for at least a month), which artifacts you find, morale (=extra move for a unit which can pretty much turn the tide in a battle) and luck bonuses in battle, unbalanced terrain and resource layouts, daemon cave encounter and whirlpool teleporters, some towns can't get some spells in their guilds (you can still learn them via other towns though), can't gain control of the catapult (the artifact that makes it shoot twice helps but you might not get it))
It takes fairly long to learn how to play well
All tiers of units and spells can be built from the first scenario on in the campaign onwards (only some wandering creatures and artifacts aren't seen yet) - lessens the sense of progression
Can't cast haste on slower units outside of battle (might've been OP; slowest unit in an army decides how far the hero can move though this can be circumvented somewhat when in towns?)
Dimension door is OP (can avoid guards of resources and items here+the knowledge instead of MP thing+no wisdom stat so anyone with a spellbook can use it)
Defense doesn't help against spells
Knights are better than barbarians in battle since DEF (their main stat) is kind of OP (A stack of 20 dragons with +10 defense will beat a stack of 50 dragons with +1 defense) and their units get +1 morale; they're also better than warlocks without good offensive spells and sorceresses without paralyze) - however they start with peasants and most maps have either rough terrain or some water
No diplomacy between factions
Towns are a bit faster to build overall than in Heroes 3
No ballista or first aid tent
No mass/hit all versions of buff & debuff spells
Can't move through the small weeds (marsh) and branches (desert) in battle
No ambushes (battles where creatures surround your army)
No roads
Only one artifact that doesn't increase or decrease a stat or increase gold income (Ballista of Quickness - catapult shoots twice per turn, no other resource income increasing ones)
Heroes can use more than one of the same artifact type at once here (2+ weapons for example) - there are no specific slots on a paperdoll screen like in Heroes 3
Can't destroy towns
Indestructible catapults
Can't dispel temporarily resurrected creatures? (they also stay alive after battle) - resurrect seems to show up a bit less often than other spells
No side quests besides digging for the ultimate artifact here
-
Some interface/control issues (limited unit stack splitting (can't use the same unit type as two separate stacks in a hero's army - only split from one hero to another or into a town (this+one or more tile narrower battlefields makes archers less powerful?)), no "wait" command, no collective recruitment menu for all units (can't recruit from the overview (well) screen) and no "buy max of all units in town" button - have to click each dwelling separately, no grids during battle, no battle movement speed options, slow and somewhat choppy scrolling, can't go to individual hero or town views from within the kingdom overview menu, harder to tell if a unit is completely blocking a path or not (seems the pathing is also more forgiving so it's easier to sneak past heroes), 8 character only save file names and no spaces, can't move all garrisoned units to a hero at once (or vice versa) - can't move a hero to the town slot here to have one inside the castle and one right outside (instead a hero acts as if it was garrisoned when placed outside of a town), can't see if a location was visited by the current hero before/this week, overly vague spell descriptions (no numbers), sometimes unit graphics cover up another unit stack's numbers stat when in battle, can't see the current HP of the top creature in a unit stack during battle, archaic battle message interface - since it shows only one line and only briefly it's hard to follow, can't throw away artifacts or disown a town (there are some negative artifacts and you can't choose not to pick up an artifact taken from an enemy hero; you need to lose a throwaway hero carrying it in battle), Minor pathfinding and hit box issues (weird how you can't move behind a tree in battle, some towns and have a weirdly small hit box and the one for the battle tend is also pretty small, sometimes the pathing towards a location becomes longer than it looks like it should), need to click the side menu on the world map to see what day it is, can't press Space or M to re-enter a location that your hero is standing on, trading troops between heroes could be faster - no "move all possible" button, can't delete or rename save files in-game, the game doesn't show the mini-map during the AI's turns (can get disorienting at times), sometimes have to confirm with Esc instead of Enter (end of battles), if you use M to stop moving a hero then you can't use it again to start moving again)
No marketplace (creates economic bottlenecks which can screw you over on some maps as well as abundances of other resources that you can't do anything with)
Armageddon spell (wastes huge armies with little effort - only defense is anti-magic or dragons, very strong with high SP) and Storm (weaker version which heroes can get very early on (too much of an advantage for a weaker army) - if there was a spell to check if a hero has Armageddon and/or getting Anti-Magic wasn't a matter of luck and it could be upgraded to mass/all or AoE it would've been fine
Heroes can't teach each other spells (Heroes 3 scholar skill)
No secondary hero skills (leadership, logistics, diplomacy, etc. - see Heroes 2-3)
Only five creature slots on heroes and in towns when you can build six different creatures per town
Buff spells like bless and protection actually dispel paralysis and blind since a unit can only have one spell effect on it
Some tedious aspects (the large maze with narrow paths+rough terrain in scenario 7, heroes and artifacts usually don't carry over to the next scenario in single player (gets tedious to retrain/rebuild over and over and dampens the sense of progression), wandering creatures are less likely to join you here and you can't pay to make them join - seems more likely if the creature's faction aligns with the hero's faction, no spell recharge locations (usually leads to some backtracking), too many pieces to the digging puzzle in scenario 3 makes it overly drawn out (might be possible to dimension door everywhere and avoid most combat though; scenario 4 also has a lot of them), digging always takes a hero's full movement points, the lack of being able to convince an AI player to surrender makes the cleanup phase take longer - an easier fix could be reinforcements added to an AI player's last held town which can only be used for defense (the game does have "boss" heroes of sorts in some of the later scenarios of the campaign which have a large army and sit around in one of their towns however they don't reinforce after battling them once), scenario 6 - takes too long before you can make ships)
Some trial & error (using town gate if the nearest town is occupied means you waste movement points (it doesn't pick the next unoccupied town), beating a hero on a boat while on land also removes the boat, final scenario (8) is harder than previous ones and requires a more defensive and focused strategy where you don't go for the green player first and optimally recruit certain wandering creatures, a creature can't counter if hit while paralyzed (means you can't do anything - not even retreat - if there's only one left and the enemy has high knowledge), some mechanics - how retreating and summon boat work, can't retreat/surrender if your last unit is blinded or berserked, cursed artifact (avoid the blue pendant/emblem - the AI does avoid it though so you don't get it from battling it here), a player cannot cast spells or use their archery tower in a castle if all their units are blinded or paralyzed, location effects,
Very barebones story for the campaign mode (little to no focus on characters or world lore, so-so sense of progression (random starting hero for each scenario besides their class/faction and returning heroes all revert back to level 1+their default armies and (lack of) equipment), the debriefing for the first scenario doesn't take into account if you wiped out the other heroes or not - they are always described as having fled, scenario 3's debriefing is also the same regardless of if you wiped out the other factions)
Predictable or stupid AI in some ways (almost always goes for your ranged units in battle, somewhat evenly distributes its troops among all of its heroes, falls for kiting tricks with fast units, doesn't time its attacks properly and sometimes doesn't expand properly during the campaign, tends to attack the unit it just blinded or paralyzed (canceling the effect))
Wandering creatures never increase in strength/numbers here
Hero selection in taverns is close to random and some are worse (can only choose between two per week)
Some factions are under/overpowered or severely limited strategy-wise in multiplayer (Knight has no flying unit (neither does Barbarian but it instead has two shooters, Sorceress has both 2 flyers and 2 shooters+can go first with phoenixes, Warlock is the overall strongest and has 3 flyers+their slow unit is their second to strongest one however they can't skip any dwelling to get to their strongest one in the tech tree); Trolls are OP vs the CPU?, Warlock has an easier time to expand early on (1 shooter+2 flyers)?, Genies are OP (less common though and you can only recruit a few per lamp) and so are ghosts due to a bug (can get around it by avoiding using lots of weaker units))
Can only fight 3 opponents in a skirmish game and you can't set the teams (only make them all ally against you with the King of the Hill option)
No choices to make regarding heroes/artifacts/troops prior to a scenario during the campaign here
No branching paths in the campaign (Heroes 2)
Can't force ranged units into melee (need to walk up next to the enemy thus wasting one turn)
Some slowdown (morale and luck effect animations)
No difficulty options for the campaign
No deployment or manual siege weapon control mechanics (some control in that units will deploy corresponding to their slot in the army where the leftmost slot=the topmost position in battle)
No caves/underworld (Heroes 3)
No unit or castle upgrades (makes it less important to hold onto towns and the first one tends to max out long before a scenario ends)
No map/scenario editor
The music restarts when exiting or entering a town screen
Somewhat fuzzy sound for the music (below CD quality in the GOG release)
No hero battle sprites here (they appear in some artwork stills so they could've used those, added in a mod)
Some delay after gaining a new artifact
Some spells like Meteor and Armageddon become overpowered with high spell power or knowledge (Teleport) while others do not evolve enough
The campaign gets repetitive after a while (destroy enemy, capture location, dig up an artifact are the usual missions; also repeating the build up phase each time)
Scenario 8 can only be finished by taking over the dragon city - taking out the enemies doesn't end it
If you kill a hero carrying a dug up/ultimate artifact then it "mysteriously disappears"
Bugs:
-The ghosts' overpowered ability is even more overpowered when they are counterattacking. For each creature killed by a counterattack, not one, but two new ghosts are added to the stack. (fixed in mod)
-A Hero can use the Town Gate spell while being on a boat. It teleports him to the nearest town or castle along with the boat - This gets you stuck if the town is surrounded by land only
-Amount of units in shipwreck doesn't vary (fixed in mod)
-Can freeze if you spam click during an animation
-Can encounter a stack of 0 units in the last scenario (the AI once had a stack of 0 phoenixes during my playthrough)
Notes:
-Tournament edition mod (russian only): https://www.h1.acidcave.net/mods_&_utilities.html
-Nice manual art
-Bad luck (half damage) exists in the game but is unused
-Campaign took 753 days (Minotaur rank - spent more time than needed on various scenarios)
Comment:
Finally went back and played the original in the series (my introduction was 3). It's pretty barebones with fewer units, no skills, only 4 factions, and it has some quirks like no marketplace that create economic bottlenecks, no battle speed options, no splitting stacks within a single army, one less army slots, etc. The different mana system is kind of interesting, it makes some spells really strong if you can up your knowledge and/or SP quickly, but you might get unlucky and not get those spells as the selection is pretty random. Being able to cancel debuffs with buffs is just kinda weird. As in 2, there's the armageddon spell and also a weaker version in the storm spell - these I don't particularly care for as it's a lot of damage with little effort, luck-based if you get it or not, and a bit too "do or die" in how you handle it which is with anti-magic (no mass/hit all version here) and/or dragons, the latter of which can only be recruited by one faction's town type.
In the campaign you can pick your faction and then you keep it throughout, battling the others in the later scenarios so each one plays 8/9 scenarios in total. The story is generic and almost non-existent, sadly. But I do like the music and the overall aesthetic besides the silly battle sprites. The core gameplay is also mostly all there and it's still pretty addictive, I find myself playing for multiple hours at a time without realizing it so there's obviously something good there already in the first one, they just needed to tweak it a bit.
There's also a mod which adds a few interface improvements, but it seems to be in russian only atm. While I won't replay this, it was still fun to check it out and see how it all began (though arguably it began with King's Bounty and Warlords!).