Heroes of Might and Magic III: Shadow of Death

Crag Hack vs... Sandor?

Shadow of Death is the second expansion pack for Heroes of Might and Magic and the reason I played this first is due to its campaign being a prequel to the core game. You start by playing one of four campaigns in which you take the role of heroes like the barbarian genie Yog, the druid Gem, the ranger Gelu and the barbarian Crag Hack. Crag Hack and Gem are approached by the wizard Sandro and tasked to find these hidden artefacts to aid with the fight against the necromancers. Meanwhile Gelu has just finished his training and been assigned to investigate some necromancers activity at the AvLee-Dejyan border. Lastly Yog are escaping his mother in Bracada and cast of magic to become a barbarian like his father. Sandro is then revealed to be a necromancer and the artefacts he collected are combined into two powerful artefacts which he would use to raise an army of death to overrun all of Antagarich. The four heroes converge and tries to stop him, but Sandro is to strong so they retreat to find a combiner artefact to combat the powers of Sandro. It's an interesting story and fairly simple to play through. Of course the combiner artefacts are overpowered as hell. Sandro's artefacts enables him to cripple most enemy soldiers and afterwards turn them into liches meaning a steady supply of fresh meat. Really that is the most fun mode though, that and Gelu's supper archer abilities. Something that bothers me is that you play the first heroes first, then as Sandro and when we return to the original heroes, the careful created super heroes I put together are more up to chance. Mostly the game can't remember the build or even be a contingency for completely screwing up the build. Yog is a perfect example of that since he can't use magic in his first campaign due to story reason (although that is just a hassle when magic is one of the most important skills in the game) and if you have time you can probably get a better selection of skills.

Sandor, you look a bit pale

Really, this improves a lot. The combiner artefacts most obvious and the campaigns actually teach you how to use them and which to connect. Although there is some problems here and there. For example when you get Gem back for her second campaign you get the wrong character and the next episode Gem is back, but back to level 0. Also something that irritates me, and that was already in the original is that the necropolis wraith portrait seemed to be switched between the upgrade. Best part is that you actually play as the heroes... or villains in Sandro's case since it actually makes it fun to play barbarians like Crag Hack to Yog which I hate since the barbarians are one of the most boring setting.  Also nice that they explained Sandro since in the original game he's just a prisoner in the necromancer campaign, glad they explained it here... what do you mean it was shown in the bonus campaign in this campaign? What bonus campaign? Specter of Power? How do you access that? Loading the save after clearing the game? B-b-but I already overwritten it with the next campaign! Dammit!