I'm aware I'm in the minority in that regard though, but the common consensus seems to be that it's the most faithful to H3's gameplay and spirit out of all the sequels. I also love H3 but my favourite one in the series is HoMM5. Overall, it felt a lot more strategic to me Plus, having multiple heroes in a single army, you can't use so many monsters anyway Playing with AI, it's cool to acquire a castle with different monster choices than your original. For humans, there generally are better choices, so maybe in MP, it doesn't make much sense. + Having to choose between the monster types in a castle adds a change to the game. Potentially lumping in with this, monsters on the map moving also makes things a bit more difficult + Units moving on their own is such a blessing to do some menial tasks of grabbing resources. + Skill development is a lot more fun and can create different combos, especially if you want to role play a bit rather than stack the ultimate combos

Initially, I had a knee jerk reaction of everything you pointed out, but after several hotseat games with friends, I saw all of those in a positive way, with examples of: I have been a huge fan of the series since 2, and I know it's not a popular opinion here, but I liked 4 the most.

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