i hate that the nerfed the implosion spell though

in Homm 3 it was the spell to cast

in Homm 5 it doesn't do jack

HOMM3 no doubt.  It is a great game.  I wish it had a setting for widescreen monitors though.

3 and 5... but 3 is the ultimate, i place 3 in a separate class of game w/ gc2. The rest of the gaming world should bow to their imaginative glory.

Defining factors for me is although 5 has exceptional artwork and wonderfully realised factions, the scale is just not satisfactory... no matter how big of a map I choose it still feels like I'm playing in my backyard. Coupled with this is the fact that to temper this, they have paced 5 to play ALOT slower... I'm currently playing a six faction large map that I have failed to finish on 5 separate occasions...It's just so darn slow you feel like the game is generating it's own heavy gravity field (I'm not talking about performance here - my performance is top notch - what I mean is creature damage/lack of gold/insanely slow level ups post 18). HOMM3 on the other hand is light, fast, unbridled in terms of character potential and growth, gargantuan maps, tons of artifacts, the graphics are somehow timeless and you just FEEL happy playing it.

Also, the music in 5 is horrendous, I had to mod every track just to play it. Which I did Now it rules...Excalibur soundtrack for the orc faction is awesome.

Enjoy HOMM!

PS: Note how niether H3 nor GC2 would be considered balanced for multiplayer. I think this is what keeps them interesting tbh, diversified challenges.

I enjoyed HOMM 3 and 4.  3 was definately more challenging.  But I am probably one of the few that enjoyed 4.  5 I have yet to play.  I keep waiting for them to release the entire HOMM5 and the expansions in one 'box' but I do not see this happening.  Looks like I will have to buy them seperately. 

If you are getting into HOMM, I would try 3 and its expansions first.  And HOMM 2 was very challenging thought the graphics look dated.  

Matt

I started playing at HOMM4, which I liked a ton at the time, but now I'm strictly playing HOMM5.  The demo didn't do it justice.  I played through it twice and was still undecided, but after I bought the full game I became hooked.  I also picked up the 1st expansion download from Ubi.com for 10 bucks, and grabbed the second expansion for about 10 off eBay, so there's really no need to wait for a "Gold" edition, since it's pretty cheap to pick up all three.  The second expansion is especially cool because it adds a third upgrade for each unit. 

That said, since playing the new King's Bounty demo, I haven't touch HOMM5 since!  Wish I had the capital to fund that addiction. 

I say 3 or 5.    4 isn't bad per se, but 5 is better and 3 is probebly the best of the classic set (I say 3 is better than 4, but some features in 4 are kinda neat)

The new KB maybe is better than 3, but if you're looking to play a Heroes game, it's not.  It's an rpg with an army instead of a character.

As for the differences between the versions, 5 is basically 3, with even less balance between the sides, and 3d graphics that get in the way as much as they help.  It's completely devoid of the charm the rest of the series has, going for a darker picture, and lacks adequate space on the tactical maps to do a lot with the armies.  They do have magic versus might more balanced.  If you play 3, you'll soon find that might either hits fast, or dies horribly.

4...  All potential, no class.  3DO was going under when they released it early as a last ditch effort to stay afloat.  It's very poorly balanced, the heroes go from massively powerful to nearly worthless, and they drop like flies early on while being all but invincible by the end of the game.  You can win the campaigns by just having all hero armies after they gain the experience off the first couple maps.  Vampires are so hard to kill that you guarantee defeat if you let a necro get too many of them, I've even lost to the AI because I couldn't get rid of them, and the AI is even worse than it is in 5.  They have some very nice improvements, like caravans, but it's visibly unfinished.

Some people have said the campaigns in 5 are good, but I'm just not grasping that one.  Story maybe, but they're almost entirely script driven.  The AI is utterly incompetent, and you win or lose depending on how bad you suck.  If it takes you two weeks to run across a map because you suck, you'll survive the two weeks worth army that hits when you get there.  If you do it in one, you get butchered.  If you spend a month dicking around, it's not even a nuisance.  They're a little slow in 3, but at least they aren't just scripted encounters that reward playing like crap and penalize playing well.  The best campaign is 2, but it's seriously old school, and seriously unbalanced.

Personal preference, H3 complete, but H5 does flow a little better for multiplayer games.

Thanks to everybody who responded to this post

I have decided to go with HoMM3 which over here in England comes boxed with the expansions and HoMM4 and expansions for only £5!

Now all i have to do is wait for it to arrive

Thanks again people.

The Watcher

We'll miss you.  

If its as good as its supposed to be then that may well be the case

You'll be back.  Look at my member number.      I've been around since the Galciv1 days.  But I've been on long hiatus about 3 times now. 

If all the old HOMM3 strategy sites are still up, you may very likely run across some of my strats.  I contributed a fair amount of stuff to how to play HOMM2 and 3.  Suffice it to say, Expert Slow is your friend.

After you've played 3, you still might want to consider looking at 5.  Five has a much more detailed hero advancement system and a TON of new special abilities for the various creatures, plus the second expansion is stand alone, so no need to collect the whole thing if you don't want to play the campaigns.  I also like the special abilities each race gets.

But it does take after 3 heavily, and 3 is a fantastic game, no doubt.

Too late 

2 was great, but it's a bit old now.

I found 3 boring in the long run. Too much sameness.

4 was the best. By far.

5 is crap.

Oh well, 3 is playable, I guess.

Heck, I liked 1.  That was the great classic that started it all; happened at around the same time as Warcraft I and C&C I, when RTS was a new thing.  The comic-book artwork is cheesy, but it grows on you.  Come to think of it, I never finished playing all the maps in HOMM1....   I bet it requires Windows 95 to play.   hee hee hee hee....

HoMM - tribe sof the east is the best : it take the best options from 3 and 4. With a real new faction (the orcs that don't have magic but blood rage). Everything that people liked about the 3 are in the 5.

It's stand alone, and you can finf the two first campaigns on the net. So you can play each campaign with all the improvements of "Tribes of the east".

The only drawback of 5 is the comp you need to run it with smoothness.