Heroes of Might & Magic 4

My roomate got Heroes of Might and Magic IV (HoMM4) finally. I had been looking forward to it - I've been playing the HoMM series since the first one, and a bunch of friends from college who played the game loved 4 and were just really impressed. I'm not sure what to think. Some things, like the magic and heroes structures, are just so different, you can't compare. Things like graphics and music are a billion times better, of course. But it is SO flippin' hard! There is NO gold - actually, an obvious lack of gold in the game, so it is really hard to buy up creatures and things, and even on the easiest settings, the computer has massive armies that you can't beat. Admittedly, I like to win - though I don't want it to be too easy, this game is way too difficult.

Your hero is a character that can be built up through actual combat on the battlefield, too. While your hero could increase in skills in previous HoMM games, other than casting spells the hero wasn't really a part of battle, keeping battles soley about your army. I think that in this incarnation of HoMM the hero character is really distracting on the battlefield and takes away from the army.

And I don't like the colors for the heroes - there's only red, blue and green that are halfway decent. *shrugs* There are a lot of improvements, like the interface and buying all the creatures at once in your town, but it seems like a different game all together - whereas HoMM 1, 2, & 3 are almost the same game, just bigger and better each generation.

Overall, HoMM4 is a totally different creature than its predecessors and in ways I don't care for.