Quote Originally Posted by Blodrast
The fans are kinda divided into 2 camps: some that think homm3 was too cheesy/obsolete, and the (considerable) changes that homm4 brought were great, and some who think homm3 is the core of the series, and homm4 is completely messed up.
There's some people in between the two extremes, but not that many. It all comes down to personal taste, in the end.
Um, I am not sure it is personal taste. The HommIV strategic AI is plain broken. Most scenarios, the AI just does not fight you. Its heroes die against random monsters, fail to flag resources or muster significant armies. This is in marked contrast to Homm3, which has very good AI.

The Homm4 battlefield AI is fine and I really like the hero character development system & better balancing of spells. But those virtues - like the pretty graphics - just makes the fact that it is a broken game more painful.

The other big plus for Homm3 is pace - it romps along at a fine rate so you can play a big scenario in an evening. Homm4 drags a bit; something Homm5 suffers from too - I blame the graphics.