Posts from Demon invasion.

I barely managed to defeat Kha-Belekh. Based on what I read on the forum, I knew that battles with Duncan and Faidaen awaited me on the other side.
Unfortunately, at the very beginning of the mission, I decided to focus on leveling up Grol, relying on dogs. And everything would have been fine, but I never managed to get the Darkness skill on him. And when I reached the mentor, he was already guarded by 4 stacks of angels, each with 400+ units.
Without Darkness, with a weak Chaos hero, minimal spells, and growth from only one Castle (the other enemies successfully burned down the rest), it was impossible to break through.
I later realized that I could have leveled up Nimues in parallel, but it was too late...

At that point, I only had one Castle left, and Vampirism appeared in it, which, in theory, could have been used to defeat the angels if I had gathered enough creatures.

But...
I didn't take any stat-boosting secondary heroes, and therefore, Nimues was too weak in stats to perform well in that battle.

And there was no time to run around the map and collect them, as my only city was constantly being besieged by another knight. Besides, Kha-Belekh's creatures were also growing in numbers, and I had already spent too much time fighting him, and there was simply no room for further delays.

What was the result? I had to free the mentor using a cheat... because without Darkness, my Grol simply wouldn't have survived.
I did manage to win the final battles even with my meager army, but because I still didn't complete the map without using a cheat, the aftertaste was bad, and I didn't feel any relief after completing such a difficult mission.

Knowing the map, it can be completed. But that's a completely different story, and I simply don't have the strength or desire to spend more time replaying it without using a cheat.

As was written earlier in this thread, the Master is a great master in creating maps, but he is also a great master of disappointment. His maps cannot be completed on the first try (even on the lowest difficulty). They need to be painstakingly worked through, constantly stumbling over your mistakes and starting over...

This is not relaxing. It's pure stress. I haven't encountered more difficult maps yet.

I don't even know if it's worth starting a war against the Orcs if I already know that I'll have to replay.

Yes, the second map is the most challenging. After that, everything seemed to get easier. It's more of a tactical war without hordes of units.

A good and challenging map of the Archipelago of Pao. One drawback is that the Fortress on the hill produces different troops than the Castle. This is what leaves a bad aftertaste from the map.

There is a bug/exploit in mission 4. If the Cave Dweller units from the hero's specialization defeat all enemies with a Fireball spell at the beginning of the battle, and the battle ends, they remain and are added to the army (interestingly, this does not work in battles against demons). Out of curiosity, I completed the mission using this bug, and by the time Duncan arrived, I had 10,000+ Cave Dwellers.

Are you planning to continue the story?

I plan to finish the final campaign, but definitely not in the near future.