If it's any help I've had it recommended to me a bunch of times in various places because I like HoMM. The caveat seems to be that the AI is a bit below par so you need to play on the hardest difficulty. More of a relaxing game than a challenging one.

It sounded good enough that I was tempted to pick up a copy for a long time. It was very hard to get the full gold edition in the UK so I was perpetually put off, not wanting to buy an incomplete package with no means of picking up the remaining expansions. Then GoG acquired the gold edition and not longer after put it on promotion so I took the plunge. Not got around to playing it yet; too many games and too little time.