Heroes 3 overcomes this with high-resolution 3D-rendered units and much more sophisticated location control screens where you upgrade your towns and castles and build units or recruit mercenaries.
Despite this new look, it is still faithful to the core values of the series - strong gameplay and immersive fantasy settings.
The story takes place in the mythical land of Erathia, whose king has been murdered and resurrected as a warlord who leads an invasion of his former kingdom.
He runs amok, slaughtering the local peasantry like turkeys at Christmas, until his daughter Enroth returns to free her father from his undead
body.
The game follows the usual turn-based style - you guide your units around a map, which contains both resources and enemies.
You beat the baddies and grab the loot, using it to build up your towns, castles and units. As you get stronger, you get better resources, but find bigger monsters.
It sounds simple, but Heroes 3 is a subtle and deep game with many clever features, especially in the control screens which let you micro-manage the game in fine detail.
The game has three basic graphical modes - the map where you move units, the control screen, and battle. When you engage in combat, the 2D map switches to a side map in rendered 3D where you can watch in high-res as your units slug it out.
One small disappointment is that single units represent groups which makes the scale of combat somewhat unrealistic.
As well as firepower, you need a good set of spells and from my early forays these seem to be the key to success in battle.
Heroes 3 isn't a game that will be played out in a couple of weeks.
It has a set five-level campaign structure following the above storyline, 45 single missions, a map editor and strong multi-player options, using Heat.net, Microsoft's zone.com and mplayer.com for Internet games.
Required: Pentium 133 (166 recommended), 32Mb Ram, 4xCD-Rom, 800x600 video card.- Peter Eley
