Heroes of Might and Magic players familiar with the Heroes series will immediately notice many improvements to the familiar interface and gameplay: Now you can actively lead multiple hero-characters into battle to fight alongside troops for an intense combat experience. You'll encounter all-new heroes and over 60 creatures in 6 massive campaigns and 24 scenarios. With an all-new game engine, lifelike isometric view, breathtaking graphics and richly detailed landscapes, the adventure map comes alive! Heroes IV combines the latest technology with the best features of the classic strategy game. With 48 Hero Classes and all-new skill and magic systems, summon all your strategic insight, tactical cunning and leadership abilities to ascend to the throne of this perilous new world!

Newcomers to Heroes of Might and Magic will find that, while the game includes very detailed scenarios and hero possibilities, the series itself is renowned for its ease of use. Much of your time will be spent exploring the maps and continents, collecting resources, and engaging the enemy in battle. Visit towns, explore forests and raid castles. Each of these places is a new opportunity to build up your army, earn gold, and gain new territory and hero-characters by creatures.

Heroes of Might and Magic IV Features:

General

• For the first time ever, bring hero-characters into battle as super-soldiers in your army!
• All-new game engine!
• All-new isometric viewpoint and informative interface.
• Tweak the new personal scenarios and map editor to make levels and quests for your friends!
• Over 140 hours of gameplay and 6 unique campaigns.
• 11 starting Hero classes, 37 advanced classes - choose the specific classes of each member in your army!
• All-new magic system - Complete Hero customization at your fingertips.
• 60 varied creature classes to control.

Adventure Map

• More than 300 Adventure Map structures to interact with.
• Resource mines appear in multiple states: undeveloped resource deposit, working mine, abandoned mine (guarded by creatures), and run-out mine (no longer producing resources).
• New "Fog of War" map effect: clear for recently explored terrain, gray in areas visited in the past, and black for areas not yet visited.
• Watch out for Wandering Monsters. If they find any of your armies and they think they can take them out, prepare for battle!
• Creature stacks controlled by the player will run away if overpowered, join your army if they feel like it, or fight.
• Hero Classes, Creatures and Armies
• Each player can control up to 8 armies, each consisting of up to 7 individual hero-characters and/or troops of creatures!
• 11 starting Hero Classes, each with two starting skills (Barbarians have 3), and 37 advanced Hero Classes. 9 Hero Primary Skills, each with 3 associated Secondary Skills (27 total).
• 66 types of creatures!
• Hero-characters and creatures have similar stats: Damage, Hit Points, Speed, Movement, Spell Points, Shots, Luck, and Morale.
• Hero-characters of any class can equip themselves with any artifact.
• Creatures have a backpack so that they may carry but not equip artifacts.

Combat

• Each combat screen grid can be a different terrain, with associated bonuses and negatives for Hero Classes/Creatures.
• Hero Classes can participate in combat; they can move, attack, defend and retaliate just like creatures!
• Combatants can face in 8 different directions on the Combat Screen.
• In siege combat, Creatures at the base of a town wall can attack defenders at the top of a wall and vice-versa!

Towns

• Six town types: Academy, Haven, Preserve, Asylum, Necropolis and Stronghold.
• "Outpost" towns may be captured by the player and converted into any of the six town types!
• 5 Schools of Magic: Life, Order, Death, Chaos, and Nature.
  

Heroes of Might and Magic IV Minimum System Requirements

• Windows 95/98/Me/XP
• Processor: Pentium II 400MHz CPU or faster
• DirectX 8.0 or higher
• 64MB Ram
• Video card: 16MB DirectX™ 8.0 compatible graphics card
• Sound Card: All major DirectX 8.0 compatible sound cards
• Other: 1GB free hard disk space, 4x CD-ROM drive, mouse and keyboard