The main drawback of Heroes 4 is the too raw and buggy version 1.0. In fact, because of it, a huge part of the series' fans turned away from the game. Even now, when talking with professional Heroes 3 players, it is clear that the impression of version 1.0 still dominates. Further study of the game did not happen, and a rigid stereotype formed. "Sad but true." :( :)

I agree with that. Moreover, I will say that the developers have not found this balance in any part of the Heroes series. The basic versions of all parts are considered unbalanced. You don't have to look far for examples: for Heroes 3, Horn is developing the Tournament Edition, for the fourth game, Dalay's team is working on Equilibrium, for Heroes 5, Moz and his colleagues are introducing the TE. And this is absolutely normal, because professional players should adjust the balance – it's logical, the developers are simply not able to fine-tune this balance without proper gaming experience. Therefore, this is just a normal phenomenon. By the way, in Heroes 2, there is no balance at all. No one, ever, and nothing can be done about the combination of Dark Knight + Barbarian. That's the balance (we're talking about Price of Loyalty). :) :)

In summary, we can say that yes, NWC released a raw, revolutionary 1.0, which is bad. Later, the game was brought to perfection, of course, both by the developers and by the players in Equilibrium, but many did not see this, unfortunately. At the same time, the game turned out to be much more complex and deeper than the other parts, which is good on the one hand, but on the other hand, it scares away newcomers. That's it. :)