Hey, Arnout! Nice to see you here as well. Yes, I definitely remember playing AoW for the first time and thinking, nice, that's like playing an improved Warlords II, except the combat is infinitely better..
I remember buying a Sega Genesis with a Japan adapter specifically in order to play "Advanced Daisenryaku" or Advanced Military Commander (which in 1994 was ported by SSI to a game called Panzer General), then going nuts on Master of Orion in 93, with Warlords 2 as a welcome diversion, replacing the latter with Panzer General in 94, going back to Warlords 2 Deluxe version in 95, and then in 96 becoming irrevocably hooked on Heroes of Might and Magic 2.
Anyway, I'm really curious what you guys came up with for your new game. You know, I've been in a professional relationship with Ubisoft since 2005, and when Ubisoft decided not to continue the work with Nival for HoMM 6 (or M&M: Heroes 6 as it was called), I tried to get them to contact you, because I thought, if someone would be able to come up with a HoMM game design that would blow all predecessors out of the water it would be Triumph Studios, but alas, they had other plans. As it turned out (imo, at least) Ihad been right then, because you came up with AoW 3 which I felt was exactly what a sequel should be.
I tried 3 some time ago, but couldn't get warm with it.
And rituals are pretty cool.
I didn't play 3 & 4, but 5 is too much hands off style. I feel like I don't have enough control and strategy seems a bit limited since it's all auto-controlled but I guess that was the same in 3 already. The only real part of control is at pretender creation (the big improvement in 5 apparently where you can personalze blessings) but then I've got no clue at what I'll fight so I just create something that looks cool and there's no reason to change it beetween games unless I think of something even cooler (or pick another nation).
The only big plus is the convenient multiplayer system, no need to sit hours in front of PC to play multiplayer
You can pull off some cool stuff through scripting, if you know what you are doing (arrow catchers and the like comes to mind).
I played Battle Isle as well. Was tempted to go for the Platinum collection on GoG, but decided to buy Battleworld Kronos instead. I also have Spirit of War on my wishlist, which is a Matrix Games remake of History Line. Looks pretty cool, actually.Brings back good memories these classics. I played a lot of Battle Island and History Line 1914-1918. And I was totally addicted to Heroes 2 as well.
And don't forget the Triumph interview at 17:30
See I'm on the other end of the spectrum. I think the classes were mostly fine (Though I liked undead as a race better...) but the graphics were just not what i'd call good. I don't think AoW made a graceful transition to 3D as a lot of the unit models are just really really bad especially compared to the art from the last game.
