OVERVIEW

Heroes of Might and Magic III (HoMM3) is a game that made me sit in front of my PC for hours in autumn 1999. At first just curious but then I fell in love with it. Anyway, what is it all about? When you launch the game for the first time you can (or must) watch an introduction. Briefly saying: you are one of the knights who come back to their homeland - Erathia - to notice that the country is no longer in one piece. You fulfil orders of the princess - the daughter of the rightful ruler of the land (you'll see what had happened to him further in the game). Your goal is to unite the whole land - which is not as easy as it seems. So, this is the beginning. You can choose whether you want to play the campaign or just a scenario. Campaign is a set of scenarios - there are six campaigns, but only three available. To gain access to the rest you have to go through the first three. Unfortunately - or fortunately -, you have to lead the forces of good as well as the forces of evil and the neutrals. It's a little strange for me - but it's only my opinion. In every scenario you have a goal to achieve. Sometimes it's just defeating the enemy, sometimes you have to conquer some city or get the artefact. Playing the campaign is obviously interesting for the plot, but only the single scenario - preferably on the biggest map - is a real challenge. Nevertheless I do encourage you to try both.

GAMEPLAY

HoMM3 is a turn-based strategy, although you can't see any hexes and your heroes move incredibly fluently. You always move first, ahead of AI players. If you chose "new game" and then a single scenario you should see a screen where you pick the map, the city you want to start with (there are 8 of them in the game - but you'd better start with the castle), your hero (16 per city), the initial supply and finally set difficulty. So you've started. I won't describe everything step by step, because you can find it in a manual, just several things I want to mention. The cities are generally for getting a steady money flow (build town hall and the capitol), recruiting heroes (in the tavern), recruiting armies (all cities have their unique creatures) and learning magic spells (build mage guild). Simple rule: the more cities you've got, the more powerful you are, so look for poorly defended cities that you can upgrade. To upgrade cities (build new things) you need supplies like wood and stones. Go out and find lumber mills and other industry that you can occupy (a lumber mill for instance gives you 1 wood per turn). Heroes are your generals who lead your armies. Each hero has a set of features (attack, defense, power and knowledge) that influence their ability to cast spells and command the army, a set of "special" features (many of those - up to 8 per hero) that are developed through the game by gaining experience and a specialty (e.g. increased damage made by casting a spell). Heroes gain experience by collecting treasure chests and fighting. Artefacts are useful items all over the map that give your heroes some advantages (e.g. increase speed). Your task is usually to defeat all other players' heroes. So upgrade cities, buy armies and conquer....

STRATEGY AND TIPS

Some tips are for the beginners. These may seem obvious for the experts, but keep in mind that this guide has been made for everybody.

• at the beginning go for the capitol as quickly as possible - remember: money is substancial;
• usually it's good to have more than one hero;
• pay attention to special features of the heroes you recruit: wisdom is, for example, needed;
• when you get more and more experience your heroes develop more features - go for air magic, earth magic, wisdom and diplomacy;
• diplomacy increases the odds that creatures met on your way will join you instead of fighting (once I got 200 green dragon to join my army);
• try to get as many lumber mills etc. as possible - it's also a kind of income;
• buy cheap units in the beginning only; later in the game they become useless - they die to quickly in the battle; I buy only two or three best units in the given city (e.g. champions and archangels in the castle);
• during the battle pay attention to "special powers" that some units have; e.g. black dragons make 150% damage while attacking titans;
• protect your shooting units - they are usually fragile;
• collect artefacts - very useful stuff; my favourite - angel's wings lets you fly!
• some spells are invaluable, look for these: town portal, implosion, fly, water walk;
• upgrade mage guild to gain access to the best spells;
• upgrade your units, e.g. angels to archangels; upgraded units are always faster and more effective;
• if you play on the map with water send one of your heroes out to the seas to collect wood and money;
• if you can't win the battle, escape - you save your hero and can recruit him again in the tavern;

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

• Computer System: IBM PC and 100% compatibles
• Operating System: Windows® 95/98 or NT4.0
• CPU: Pentium® 133; (P166 recommended)
• Memory: 32MB RAM
• CD-ROM Drive: 4X Speed
• Free Hard Disk Space: 200MB
• Sound Card: All major sound cards supporting DirectX®
• Video Card: DirectX 6.0 compatible, capable of 800x600 16-bit display
• Peripherals: Keyboard, mouse
• Multiplayer: 28.8 modem or greater (modem/internet play); TCP/IP or IPX protocol (network play)