Gray Alliance

Good afternoon, I played through this campaign for the first time, and I'm sharing my impressions. It has a lively start, it's a bit challenging, but just right. I played through the first map with Alex, cleared all the neutrals, but because of that, I didn't have enough of an army to deal with the demon, so I had to start over. The second mission, as mentioned somewhere in the posts above, is more difficult and boring, due to the fact that the starting army is not enough for such difficult battles, which are even in the starting mines, so I had to sit and wait for the elf archers to multiply. A funny situation happened: a hero with a single pixie was scouting the map and was mercilessly killed by a berserk demon, who soon after ran away somewhere into the fog of war. After that, he periodically flashed on the edge of visibility while I was clearing out the rest of the neutrals with Alaron. He was eventually killed by me, and when I looked in the tavern and saw that there was an Agrael somewhere on the map with a huge army, I got nervous because I thought that this horde would rush me right after that demon. It turns out I was wrong, and all the AI on the map are just sitting in their castles, waiting for their inevitable death. As a result, completing "Blood Revenge" came down to slowly clearing the entire map, one attempt to defeat the dark elves, realizing that I needed to sit and farm troops and attack again in a couple of months. I'll digress: by the standards of any other player and what I read in the posts above, I don't know how to play Heroes at all, so the dark elf army seemed imbalanced to me. I had to defeat it not with skill, but with numbers. Fortunately, two castles against one allowed me to do that. The bow, which I traded for 50 gems, was very helpful in the battles. Agrael caused a stir at the end of the mission, sending me to chill in the tavern once, so I had to gather more troops and skip more weeks. As a result, after 6 months of playing, "Blood Revenge" was finally completed. Next came "Sands of Death". After reading reviews about this campaign, I spoiled myself by knowing that the necromancers are sitting on their territory and don't go anywhere from there, so I calmly turned Cyrus into a warrior through light, luck, and attack/defense, cleared out the neutrals, built castles, upgraded Alex, and after another round of farming units, I cleared out the ordinary necromancers without much difficulty, who didn't put up much resistance, but the boss turned out to be very good - the battle with him was very interesting due to my low gaming skills, and almost all of my army was left lying there, but I enjoyed playing as Cyrus the warrior. And now I finally reached the fourth mission. I don't see the point in repeating everything that has been said, I agree with every word above, there really aren't enough beacons and loot in the sea. But what I will say about this map is that it turned out to be incredibly difficult for me. I even felt like giving up on the playthrough because I spent a very long time building castles, fighting, and leveling up, all the neutrals grew to thousands in size, and even an ordinary battle for the Mercenary Tent became a terrible test for me, in which a large part of what I managed to gather before the castles and dwellings over the long months died. I was simply amazed by the size of the demon armies guarding the portals. For me, it was just too difficult. I had to lose my entire army, defeat the mentor, and re-train everyone in darkness, fortunately, a lot of castles with 5th-level mages allowed me to catch all the necessary spells. But because of this, I couldn't play with the builds I wanted. However, this was not the end. Because I still had to face the army of the final demon, who guarded the portal to Shi'o. This was a horror that lasted for several more months of gathering troops and farming artifacts. As a result, after 13 (!!!) months, I finally gathered enough troops, gave everything to Alex, and won this scenario. However, the name of the scenario deceptively misleads us - this is not the last war, because there is still a fifth mission ahead. Its identity to the finale of the fifth Heroes warmed my heart more than the fire of Shi'o that was raging everywhere. In general, already having the darkness build from the previous scenario, it wasn't particularly difficult to complete. It was fun and very nostalgic, even though it required a couple of attempts. In conclusion, I want to say that the campaign turned out to be good, nostalgic, at first I thought that the absence of alt-upgrades was a minus, because how do you play? I don't even perceive the blue knights, the mages are 50/50. However, it turned out that this decision brought unexpected emotions to the game - warmth and memories. It turned out to be so canonical that sometimes it even seemed to me that I was playing the first part of the 5th Heroes, despite the orcs and neutrals. The spirit of the old Nival was slightly felt in these conversational cutscenes, side quests, and map design, although the author's style is very visible. In general, this is a very good nostalgic campaign, but for me, the fourth map turned out to be too difficult, but that's my fault, not yours, Author. What I can note is that the side quests are weak, if there were at least 3 large side quests on the 4th map, and more interesting than the one with Ashi's tear, then it would be much more fun to play it. But overall, I liked it. Thank you for your work, and I wish you inspiration for new achievements. Good luck!