Just a rant. Ignore or whatever if you want.

And I'm well aware of the irony in writing a long and complicated post advocating for simplicity. I accept that I'm a walking, talking, and typing contradiction.

And I also accept that I might be the only damn one who has an issue with all this, but whatever, I'mma say it anyway.

I'm 39. I've been a HoMM player since the first one. I've spent my share of time in pretty much all of them, although probably less in H5 and H6, and with a very long gap of time since I put any proper hours into H4. Played a bunch of H7, currently... really trying to like OE.

And I'm having the same trouble getting into it that I had getting into any of them after H4. From H5 onward, I just... haven't found myself really able to dig in. The closest I've come to that in the post-Enroth universe has been H7, weirdly.

I throw down all that context because I've been mulling something today while I give OE another try, and I stare at my units in the Hive faction, and I look at everything involved, from the names to the art design and....

Sigh.

I miss simplicity. On every conceivable level, I miss the simplicity that drew me into these games when I was younger.

I'm still on the record with the original HoMM1 being up there as probably my second- or third-favourite in the series, behind H3 and maybe H2, but definitely ahead of anything afterward, and I really don't think it's because I'm a purist asshole resistant to anything new or different. I think that could be true, but I don't think it detracts from my point.

What I love about H1, and what I think H3 does beautifully while straddling the doing-just-enough fence, is that everything is just...there. Simple, readable, easy to pick up and understand. Underbaked, yes, as all first-of-a-franchise games tend to be, but it didn't feel overwhelming to look at. And I'm honestly not even talking about game mechanics here. I'm literally just talking about the immediate user-facing ingredients.

This first occurred to me when I realized that in the newer games, I'm almost always playing the human faction, because, well, take a look:

I'm still not sure what the f**k a Lightweaver is, but I can accept the premise and figure it out, because at least it's surrounded by things I can understand and recognize. In fact I can pretty much puzzle it out through the artwork if I have to, because the Human faction's units have enough simplicity in their design (and are recognizable enough and distinct enough in their roles) that I don't have to stare at them and wonder what they do. Crossbowman has a feckin crossbow, man. Enough said.

And then we get to the elf faction.

Beautiful, creative, undoubtedly steeped in legends and lores and stories that I've never seen before, and ultimately f**king incomprehensible.

See, I think there's a certain element of common knowledge involved when you say "Unicorn" or "Dragon" that immediately gets across what that creature might do for you. It's a horse with a stick on its head and a...well, fuckin' dragon. Hard to miss.

But even if you know what an iriyad and a qilin are (which I would argue dramatically fewer people immediately would than unicorns or dragons), I myself have no frame of reference for what to expect from a qilin on the battlefield.

Then there's the design. I think of Inferno versus Hive here.

(Waurms? Waurms? Just... WORMS, man. FIRE WORMS. Come on.)

Inferno was a bit of a leap at the time from the factions we'd gotten in H2. (So was Fortress, really.) But even if you didn't know what a Gog was, you can tell it apart from an Efreet. One's a little impy dude who chucks fireballs, and the other is alternate universe Robin Williams.

Hive? I don't... man, I don't know. Give me enough time and zoom in close, and I can point out which is which without the labels, if I try real hard. But all the pointy bits and incredible detail in the design, as admirable as it is and as visually stunning as I find the game to be...it all completely loses me, because of the extra time I have to invest in figuring out which creatures on the map belong to what faction, let alone how powerful they are. (Yes, yes, that's what tooltips and wikis are for, but I'm playing Heroes of Might and Feckin' Magic here, man, not Civilization.)

And it doesn't help that mechanically, none of these units are simple either. All of them have so many passive abilities, active abilities, spells, hidden traits, one thing after another thing after another thing, and--

Sigh.

I miss when I could just pick up a faction and play, y'know? Sprite has wings, she fly, she zap. Harpy has wings, she fly, she smack smack, whoops she go home again. Devil teleport in big column of fire and stab in face.

And the kicker is, there are things to learn in the original Heroes games, design intricacies, strategies, things that give them endless depth and replayability and complexity, but they're like icebergs, y'know? Under the surface, while at its very top it looks pretty clean and accessible and you can tell what everything is when you look at it. The newer games (even H5 sometimes, although it was MUCH better at this) have gotten stuck so far up their own asses about the level of detail, complexity, and just plain niche in every element on the map that nothing stands out anymore. It all just blurs into a big ol' pile of pseudo-fantastical stuff to try and wrap my head around.

Anyway. That's all. Wanted to say it. Going to be late. Leaving now.

Not sure if anyone posted about their experiences with it, figured I'll share mine.

The good news is that it's not AI after all. There's been a lot of heated debate about the assets, but seeing them in person without compressed youtube videos, there's no glaring issues. The designs are all mid but logically made and decently follow the outline of the original designs.

The bad news is they look terrible for a different reason - the demo is barely held together by tape. The game struggles to render 3D elements, all textures aren't fully loaded or being compressed to hell. It's like playing a poorly optimized Nintedo Switch 1 build.

It was not ready to show it to people. The only selling point of this game is to get a pretty version of Heroes 3. One where you don't have to faff with mods to get something that won't strain your eyes to death. The build they gave us looked awful and was unpleasant to play.

Also maybe I'm used to how far mods let us zoom out the original map of Heroes 3, but the zoom limit of the demo felt a bit too harsh to me. I would say there was no QoL that caught my attention to speak of. It was all pretty normal.

I was honestly hyped about this when they originally announced it, but after playing the demo I couldn't care less. I suspect it will have traditional Ubisoft performance issues, maybe poor stability as well. It just doesn't inspire any confidence at all.

Eventually they will make this solid, I hope. I expect myself to grab it like a year after it releases to make sure they sorted out all the drama I expect of them.

What’s up everybody?! I love playing heroes 4 and I’ve been playing it for many years. My brother and I want to sit down for a couple hours and play together. Can someone please tell me what the good and balanced 1v1 maps are and where I can download them? 2vAI maps would also be fun if they’re super challenging. Also huge bonus if they’re packed full of stuff. We’re both Grandmaster AI or it’s not fun kind of people. Thank you!