2 Varti. 3DO was the publisher of games in the Might & Magic universe and owned the rights to both game series. After the bankruptcy, nothing remained. As you said, the "old-timers" messed up the 4th installment, so it's good that Nival developed the game (I really liked Demigods, I'm a fan of MtG in general).
Yeah, it's good that 3DO went bankrupt, otherwise, instead of 5 Nival-developed Heroes, we would have gotten a real piece of... well, you know.
Personally, for me, the 4th installment simply doesn't exist! I played it a little at first, but then I got completely tired of it... I just don't find it interesting to play the 4th installment! I can spend days playing the 3rd, but not the 4th... it just doesn't "click"!! But the 5th one is great... for now... I'll see how it goes over time!! And for now, I'm very happy with it!!!
Well, if someone other than Ubisoft had bought it, it might have been even worse! But I'm certain (IMHO - 100%) that 3DO and NWC would have done a better job!!!
And you're wrong to criticize 3DO and NWC for the 4th installment because there's already a lot of criticism, and there's simply no room for more. You're judging (excuse my expression) unfairly and unrealistically (for example, the interface is much better than in the 5th, and you can't argue with that)! If you say that the 4th is the least popular in the series, I agree. But if you say that it's complete garbage, then you have a very narrow range of games you've tried. Because there are truly "terrible" games, and the 4th is not one of them.
I read somewhere (I don't know if it's true) that when creating the 4th installment, they took into account the opinions of fans and considered their ideas and suggestions. If this is true, then that's exactly what happened.
Because it's obvious that the game was made with an emphasis on maximum convenience and novelty (apparently, they didn't just want to make the same Heroes but with new graphics, although they probably wouldn't have gone bankrupt that way). But something went wrong, and it turned into a mess. But try to say what's "wrong" with it and verbally improve the game, and you'll probably just end up going back to Heroes 3 in parts. And try to change the game significantly by adding a lot of new and cool things, and the game will again be cluttered with junk, even if everything looks great at first glance (because when they first told me about the innovations in the 4th, I liked everything). And the conclusion from this is: what's best is what's already there, and there's no need to change it!!!! (And having learned this, they would have made a great game, but that didn't happen, and this conclusion was already made by Ubisoft and Nival (sadly:( ))
