Continuing...)
Fourth mission. This is where I understood what the advice about the mentor in the third mission was for, because by the time my heroes had been running around the map, so much time had passed that the map had turned into a simulator of fighting thousands of neutral creatures. Perhaps this is the most important mission in the campaign, because here you need to prepare our valiant rulers for the final battle, which requires a lot of hero development. In principle, the mission is very simple, but long, and if you drag it out too much, it will happen like it did with me. The enemies are weak. The Dark Elf is not a real opponent, and the Red Demon, although equipped with considerable forces, has level 1 heroes. Both can be defeated very quickly if desired. In general, just level up the heroes, collect as many spells, stats, and artifacts as possible for all three. Orange Demons are already serious opponents, but most of them don't have spells. In general, heroes of the AI often don't have magic, and that's a bit strange. Don't be afraid of the development in three places (Master with four castles and heroes at the start says hello): this is not a problem and you can quickly find a way between the locations of Alex, Alaron, and Cyrus. I ended up with Alex at level 32, Cyrus at 32, and Alaron at 31. I gave Cyrus and Alex the Dark magic as a mentor, and after getting acquainted with the fifth mission, I had to add it to Alaron as well, and also get the Tome of Darkness for Alex, because he was incredibly unlucky with Subdue. The side quest with the Tear of Ashi is very long and not very useful: most likely, it will be built too late unless you get it at the beginning of the game, knowing its location in advance. Maybe it somehow affects the fifth mission, but hardly: it lacks an economic component. In general, the sea is too big, because there are not so many loot and islands in it compared to the free space. In general, it's a good mission if you fix the AI.
Fifth mission. A remake of the final mission of the original game, but without the siege of the city with Biara. We enter, get beaten by Kha-Beleth, and go back to the fourth mission to adjust the hero development. Due to the huge stats of the father and son, Isabel's outcome of the battle largely depends on the correct use of magic, so pure builds for damage and defense are not effective. Kha-Beleth himself deals little damage, and in essence, you just need to defeat the sequentially appearing demons, who have a lot of attack and defense. Alaron unexpectedly turned out to be the weak link: you can't win much here with just Light magic. But Darkness works, as always. There are not many artifacts, but they are there. Kha-Beleth, casually sending Agrael on a trial (apparently a reference to the same-named scenario), immediately after they tried to defeat him with a crowd of people, mages, and elves, is included. The mission itself is a good test of medium difficulty.
General conclusions. In general, it's a good campaign, the main drawbacks of which are the AI and typos in the dialogues. The plot is good, there are even interesting ideas, like the intrigues of the Voidwalkers with a hint of a sequel. I also noticed that the creature weeks are not disabled, which can be very annoying in story missions. And there is another drawback: sometimes there is an imbalance in the protection of objects/mines, when the same thing can be guarded by a great army and some trifle. Or +1 to attack is guarded by dragons for the last coin. The strengths of the campaign are the level design, the landscape, and the ideas.
7.5 offended Godricks out of 10
Sincerely,
AstralLein
Added 9 hours 18 minutes ago
By the way, thank you for the hard work in map creation)
And I remembered another point, as alternative upgrades in the campaign are not available to the player (orcs don't count), but there are a lot of neutral creatures with alternative upgrades on the maps. And I would close my eyes to this, but I was given these alternative upgrades several times, and then it was very sad to refuse these units)
Yes, alternative upgrades are completely up to chance here, perhaps the most annoying thing is the blue archers, which Alaron may not have enough of.
I played without Darkness. 240 archers on Alex one-shot everyone up close, even through defense. Alaron kills everyone with one Holy Vengeance.
(342 days on the campaign with a hero, exploring all the upgrades)
P.S. in the original, where the combined artifacts were moved, they could not be bought and found randomly (from Dragon Utopia, etc.)
342 days is a very good result, considering the complete clearing! And yes, the balance of combined artifacts is a separate topic here, a kind of stumbling block between the unusualness and balance of the campaign.
