RE: Heroes of Might and Magic 3 - Immortal game
Hahaha the good old HOMM3, awesome game I still enjoy playing it although I for one started the whole HOMM adventure with HOMM4 - bought my first PC in 2003. Yes, many called HOMM4 a disaster but I enjoyed it in spite of all its imperfections and HOMM3 and 4 are two of my favorite games all-time.
I would suggest buying the Complete version on GOG - they had a summer sale before Steam so you missed the big discount - instead of the HD version. A word of caution, HD is the base game with no expansions whatsoever (SoD and AB) so you are missing a ton of content if you buy the HD version.
If you enjoyed playing HOMM3 and still do and you like stories, then you should also try the Heroes Chronicles saga - if you still didn't obv. It's based on the HOMM3 engine and tells the story of Immortal Hero Tarnum from his humble beginnings to his adventures in Enroth. Great game for all HOMM campaign lovers.
Oh Homm4 and 5 i enjoyed those for months. In H4 i didn't like how overpowered heroes were. Combat skill tree was broken, necromancy was broken with vampires raised, demonology summons were ridiculous. It was possible to play without units. It was very fun, i didn't care about balance back then, just running around map and "squashing like a bug" . Some very interesting concepts were introduced, like stealth heroes who could snatch loot without fighting guards, or 30ish custom hero classes.I love it even today. About chronicles - you are completely right, very cool campaigns, i just wanted to keep article shorter. I can write 100 pages about heroes, and saddest part was deciding what to mention, how to make it readable for people who didn't play it, without boring them to death. Anyway, feel free to write suggestions, if you feel i left something important out. Because comments are just the right place to extend the article, and they prove people really care about the subject. Feel free to write all small things you can come up with, like setting up hamachi, random map generator templates, artifacts, favorite heroes and even tactics. :) Thats the point of engaging content, we can all build it brick by brick.
As a matter of fact that what I loved most in HOMM4 the fact that you could very well flip the script from a classic Heroes-like TBS to a very interesting RPG experience where you could annihilate your foes with your Hero only , no actual armies involved. Leveling up a Barbarian and using Potions of Immortality at will was indeed overpower for the clumsy AI but a worthy experience in my book. Not to mention leveling up a Nature hero and focus on the summoning skills :D The narration/storytelling is fantastic in HOMM4 better than any other HOMM imo.
Back to the HOMM3 though, indeed, I could also write 100 pages about the game :P and you did a good job keeping it short for all the casual gamers to read it. I could also mention about modding and the wonderful job the HOMM community does after all these years. Mods like In The Wake of Gods and variations of it like ERA/VCMI add even more playability and replayability - I don't even know if that's a word hahaha - to HOMM3. The casual gamer who wants to try out the game should also definitely check those mods.