For most video game franchises it takes two or three entries to flesh out the formula, and this is especially often the case with those that started back in the DOS era. But HoMM incredibly plays today as fresh as it did back then. Most of the changes in the sequels are quality of life improvements and expansions of the ideas introduced here, but the core gameplay is the same. This game is very addictive, easy to pick up and hard to put down.

If you've never heard of HoMM, in this game you own a city where you can construct buildings and recruit armies, and then you gotta take over all the resources and other cities on the map. The battles are turn-based, as is the rest of the game.

I'm not a huge fan of campaigns in such games because they feel like an arbitrary set of tasks that limits the freedom of your gameplay, and they don't tend to have a good story either. In fact I would advise against the campaign here. It does have some interesting scenarios, but they can often drag out because you didn't complete that one specific task even if you've murdered everyone on the map. And the tasks may sometimes be unclear. It's much better to start a standard game and customize it to your liking.

I think the one area where the game feels most dated is the graphics. They have their own charm and certain landscapes are quite pretty, but the character sprites look extremely goofy. You do get used to it though, as the gameplay overshadows its visuals. When you can finally recruit those purple dragons that can incinerate two enemies in a single attack, you're gonna think they're badass regardless of how they appear on the first glance.

The music, on the other hand, is still very good by today's standards. Of course it's gonna get eclipsed in the future by the godly music of the third game, but it's still one of the best soundtracks you'll hear in any game ever. If only the visuals could match the atmosphere that the music establishes.

This game's biggest flaw is that it does not respect the player's time. The animations in battle are pretty slow and cannot be sped up. And there's no auto-resolve button, as far as I can tell. There is a button called "auto", but I think it just makes the AI play the battle for you in real-time. Another thing I disliked here is that you can sometimes pick up artifacts with negative bonuses, and you can't throw them away. And, as far as I can tell, there's no way to determine whether the artifact is negative before you pick it up. Also, the interface in the cities is a little unintuitive. Though you do get used to it, it can get pretty annoying in the late-game when the pressure is high.

There are a couple of things that are neither good nor bad imo. For example, the magic system here is somewhat different from HoMM3, as your spells are like expendable items. Another example is how the battlefields have much less space to maneuver, but that also means it's easy to create a wall of melee soldiers around your archer, which can help if the enemy has no ranged units. This leads to a different strategic approach, but does not make the game worse or anything. Of course this does make it slightly less balanced, and the HoMM series has always had balance problems. And here the balancing is probably at its most unhinged. But honestly, at this point this is more of a feature than a bug. Once you get acquainted with the game, you start enjoying how certain factions and units are more/less powerful than the others, as this makes them more unique and realistic. After all, you can always tweak the difficulty or increase/reduce the number of opponents.

In the end though, I'd say after a few hours of gameplay you start feeling like you've seen everything the game has to offer, and it does start feeling a little tedious. There isn't a lot of content here, and I imagine this was perfectly fine for 1995, but the following entries in the series kinda make this one obsolete. However, if you can get this game on portable devices, I think it can work as a nice little time-killer. And having less complexity would serve it better in this case. I think I'll try to install it on my PS Vita in the future.

While definitely inferior to its sequel, I believe it is worth playing the campaign at least once before moving on to the second game. The quick start guide in the manual is a super easy and fun way to get into the series and there is certainly some charm in its simplicity and silly sprite art and then seeing how the series has evolved is nice. Plus it still has the extremely addictive gameplay loop the series is know for.

Also this was my game number 666 and I finished it on 1st april. Not sure what to think about that. (also my review number 100 in this site, but that's p much intentional)