Gray Alliance

Good day, I've completed this campaign for the first time and I'm sharing my impressions. A brisk start, a bit challenging but moderate; I ran through the first map with Alex and cleared all the neutrals, however, because of this, I didn't have enough army to deal with the demon and had to start over. The second mission, as mentioned somewhere in the messages above, is harder and more boring, given that the starting army is insufficient for such difficult breakthroughs, which are present even at the starting mines, so I had to sit and wait for the elf archers to multiply. A funny situation occurred: a hero with a single pixie went to scout the map and was ruthlessly killed by a frenzied demon, who shortly after vanished somewhere into the darkness of the fog of war. After that, he periodically flickered on the edge of visibility while I was clearing the rest of the neutrals with Alaron. Eventually, I killed him, and when I checked the tavern and saw that Agrائيل existed somewhere on the map with a huge army, I got nervous because I thought this horde would rush me right after that demon. As it turned out, I was wrong, and all the AI on the map just sit in their castles awaiting inevitable death. In the end, the walkthrough of "Blood Vendetta" came down to a leisurely clearing of the entire map, one attempt to crush the dark elves, and the realization that I needed to sit and farm troops and attack again in a couple of months. As a side note: by the standards of any other player and based on what I've read in the messages above, I don't know how to play Heroes at all, which is why the dark elf's army seemed imbalanced to me. I had to beat her not with skill, but with numbers. Fortunately, having two castles against one made this possible. A bow that I traded for 50 gems helped a lot during the breakthroughs. Agrائيل caused some chaos 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. Eventually, after about 6 months of gameplay, "Blood Vendetta" was finally completed. Next were the "Sands of Death". After reading reviews of this campaign, I spoiled for myself that the necs sit on their own territory and don't venture out, so I comfortably built Cyrus into a combatant through light, luck, and attack-defense, cleared the neutrals, built up the castles, leveled up Alex, and after another round of farming units, I broke through the ordinary necs without much trouble as they hardly resisted, but the boss turned out to be very good — due to my low gaming skills, the battle with him was very interesting, and almost my entire army ended up lying there, but I enjoyed having Cyrus as a combatant. And so I finally reached the fourth mission. I see no point in repeating everything that has been said; I agree with every word written above, there really aren't enough beacons and loot in the sea. But what I will say new about this map is that it turned out to be incredibly difficult for me. I even felt the urge to quit the walkthrough, given that I spent a very long time building castles, fighting through, and leveling up, all neutrals grew to the size of thousands, and even a simple battle for the Mercenary Tent became a terrible ordeal for me, in which more than half of what I managed to collect for the castles and dwellings over long months perished. I was simply shocked by the size of the demon armies guarding the portals. For me, it was just way too difficult. I had to lose my entire army, break through the mentor, and respec everyone into darkness, fortunately, a bunch of castles with a level 5 Mage Guild allowed me to catch all the necessary spells. But because of this, I couldn't play with the builds I wanted
However, that wasn't the end. Because I still had to see the army of the final demon guarding the portal to Shio. This was a horror of several more months of gathering troops and farming artifacts. In the end, in 13(!!!) months, I finally assembled a sufficient host, gave everything to Alex, and won this scenario. However, the scenario's title deceitfully tricks us — this isn't the last war, because the fifth mission is still ahead. Its identity as the finale of Heroes V warmed my heart more than the fire of Shio that raged everywhere there. Overall, already having the darkness build from the previous scenario, it didn't take much effort to complete. It was fun and very nostalgic, although it required a couple of attempts from me.

Summing up, I want to say that the campaign turned out to be quality and nostalgic. At first, I thought the absence of alt-upgrades was a minus, because how are you supposed to play? I don't perceive Blue Knights at all, and mages are 50/50. However, it turned out that this decision brought unexpected emotions to the game — warmth and memories. It came out so canonical that sometimes I even felt like I was playing the first part of Heroes 5, despite the orcs and neutrals. The spirit of old Nival was slightly felt in these dialogue videos, side quests, and map designs, although the author's style is very apparent. Overall, this is a very good nostalgic campaign, though the fourth map seemed too difficult for me, but that is my fault, not yours, Author. What I can note is that the side quests are a bit weak; if the 4th map had at least 3 large side quests, and more interesting than the one with the Tear of Ashi, it would have been much more fun to play. Other than that, I liked everything. Thank you for your work, and inspiration for new achievements. Good luck!