GoG Homm2 vs fheroes2 comparison review

Hello, Enrothians! It's been a while the last time I made a visit here. I thought about your current project worth a try to play with which is non-other than fheroes2. I already played with the GoG version of Heroes 2 Gold.....a lot. As I played with fheroes2 a few games already, (which happened to be brutally similar to the android version of the game whatsoever) I realized a lot of things going around with that version of the game and I have seen some interesting features which actually gave me a huge help in getting information about my own controlled heroes and total prediction and management possibilities of my resources in most case situations, but of course it was just a chunk of what I already noticed about it and here I am to mention everything here in details.

• Battle Only & Configs menu implemented in the main menu
  
  The new kinds of scripts and the actual battle setup to play it out without a game scenario to be played is really awesome and the mere fact you can actually give yourself some buffs in the global map in-game is insane. Well, kinda not wanted features by others, but even if this way is much easier to get my hands on resources, gather key informations about the enemy and even blocking plagues from happening to prevent creature loss being unpurchased is also huge.....yet again, might be overpowered, so I just don't touch it as the way I already get used to in the regular game.
  

• Rich possibilities on townscreen
  
  I really love the addition of I'm not forced to go and upgrade creatures right away in my town as I can buy unupgraded units of those creatures for a stack which is really honorable and one of my most wanted features missing from the old game. I love the capability to select to buy the minimum and maximum number of recruitable creatures and even split them up in multiple stacks quarter the time like how I do it in the old game. The new changes according to that brings some quality of life for my heroes during gameplay. Just like the kingdom menu, clicking the resources on the right spot of the townscreen now allow me to know my income status of specific resources and gold altogether quickly, so I don't have to exit the townscreen to take a look at the already faulty and false information of my possible income in he kingdom menu. The well now offers me a huge amount of help to actually buy creatures with my own discretion as I can clearly see how many of those available for me. I can actually hide my heroes inside the town and put them into garrison to defend the town, my selected hero is going to get a shield emblem in his/her interface so I'm informed about that hero is defending in one of my towns.
  

• Visible movement points
  
  This one is really interesting and I like it. Now with this addition I can clearly see each heroes with Pathfinding and Logistics secondary skill they have major increase in mobility on global map to discover more things turn and do more actions right away. Well, most of us never actually calculated the movement points just went for the resources and visitable objects, however in fheroes2 it's possible and as I do, I have considerably longer turn times as now I give way more time thinking over my steps and decisions for the next turn and for my reasoning in strategy.
  

• Detailed information about visitable objects
  
  I wanted this one long ago in the old game because I get used to I have it in Homm3. Never happened up to this day until the point I discovered your project, guys. Now I can tell if it's totally worthless to visit a magic shrine or a witch hut once I already visited them with at least one of my heroes. Huge help in decision making and much appreciated that it's implemented in fheroes2. The possibility to occupy Magic Gardens, Water Mills and Windmills and get resources and gold out of them each week feels really overpowered, so I just stay with the initial options here, where I actually have to take some effort to get those Gems, extra resources and weekly 1000 gold if possible.
  

• Increased chance for Set Guardian type of magic spell occurance in Mage Guilds
  
  The more I hated to get them in Raw Homm2 Succession Wars formerly because of the lack of knowledge of how to use them effectively, the more I love it now that I can get them from level 4 Mage Guild purchase once again. With my spell casters (mostly Sorceresses) I'm capable to actually effectively defend every single one of those mines the pesky little AI try to occupy them one by one force me to revisit them and back in the day I was forced to haunt those mines to prevent them being captured by any hostile heroes. Setting different Elementals now feels more effective and actually worth it as the stats of the Elementals feels more consistent in this game unlike before. My Fire Elementals recently could handle an average amount of army I usually meet with during scouting my town's surroundings. Sad, but true that global map overview based spells doesn't work at all as they are not available. (for how long I have no idea) Huge mistake, which should be taken care of to build as actual working spells to the game. The downside of getting Set Guardian spells in fheroes2 with increased chance is that our heroes less likely going to get the chain lightning attack spell. With fheroes2, I'm getting attack spells on 4th level of Mage Guilds 33% less time than in regular version which is bad in both early and late game wasting so much money on getting just a spell I really want. When playing Wizard faction, it can be even worse paying another dose of valuable resources just to risk it getting at least meteor shower if not getting chain lightning on otherwise topnotch spellcaster hero but with lack of mobility on land to actually learn key spells in battles against armies and really powerful creatures, so Heroes2 Gold is better if it's about getting good spells.
  

• Thieves Guild
  
  Now not just the best heroes and such things I can finally see by visiting the Oracle, but now the castles and towns in number are accurately shown of which player has them in most numbers unlike in the old game where it mostly happened to me that the game calculated towns as castles being built and the information somehow didn't actually update after the AI made it's move to build up a castle, or at least what happened to me repeatedly in Gold version. Outdated information from Thieves Guild (who knows, possibly a bug) often led me to surprise how much of army supply the enemy had during all that time I wasn't suspicious of them, which further made me lose 5 woods in each town quickly and it's money I needed the most to buy new dwellings and maybe new scouting heroes. Now having no Scouting secondary skill does not punish me that much as before cause i can prepare my army against a powerful hero attempt to siege my castles and is lurking around in the cloud of undiscovered territory with a devastating army. Just never again, New World Computing! Just never again!
  

• Speed variations in global map movement speed and battle movement speed from both player and AI
  
  Well, the 2-hex creatures movement animation kind of looking broken at times, but at least they step into the space where you actually commanded those 2-hex creatures to move unlike in the old game. In the old version it was frustrating my wolves moved one square forward compare to where they supposed to stop moving and even get around obstacles was difficult for them. It's extremely crucial at Cavalry and Champion situations which accumulates damage over movement distance. Griffins often didn't chose to attack enemy shooters from the direction and position I told them so. In fheroes2 it works just fine. The smooth and versatile animation speed to choose from is better for the eye than choosing between just 3 options, which are the "terribly slow", the "average" and the "ridiculously fast" possibilities. fheroes2 offers with 10 different speed level of animations and for me, the 6th or 7th option feels to be healthy battle speed variation. The jumps in global maps weren't really appreciated and rendered the enemy often really invisible to my eyes of what they did up to the next turn. The speed in the old version to it is far from as versatile as the fheroes2 version one. Well, a few components in the battle and global map options missing but who cares? There's the right click to take a look at our and enemy's health in combat, so it's literally not much of a loss.
  

• Background music options
  
  Basically, the Midi old school of music versatility is enough of what fheroes2 has, but Homm2 Gold of GoG version of the game has this in the bag and I prefer sound blaster version of it with singing in bg. If we listen to all Midi and Sound Blaster townscreen soundtracks we realize each of the tracks are shuffled modern versions of each others theme which is interesting, like Wizard got Knight's theme in sound blaster version, Knight got Barbarian's and Wizard's theme as both of them were having the same Midi music, while Barbarian got Necromancer's, Necromancer got Warlock's, Warlock got Sorceress's and finally, the Sorceress faction got a unique sound blaster theme which has no midi version whatsoever because Barbarian and Wizard has each others theme in midi. The Price of Loyalty addon of the musics are all quite unique and I love all of them. Knight's theme in POL is however non-other than a full version of Homm2 and Homm3 signature Win Scenario Theme with major changes. Yet, even that version counts kinda unique on it's own. The one does not fit to Sorceress is Sorceress's 1999 version of music which happened to be a way better song to Dervish faction in Homm3 SW. Overall, the best setup of all themes is what Gold version has. Organized and tasty.
  

• Creature sounds
  
  Orcs and Bone Dragons happened to get new sounds in fheroes2. Really interesting. Their old Elf and Dragon sounds however did not disturb me. I'm clearly alright whichever will be kept in the final version of fheroes2. I'm totally okay with that either way.
  

• Level 1 heroes and special heroes getting higher stats over time
  
  The fact that heroes on level 1 getting better stats are more reasonable factor to pay 2500 gold on each and actually worth every penny as good stats will easily outmatch any heroes in battle who has the same level as we have. In a case like that the script of heroes being expensive in a case like this is justified. In Gold version, 2500 is what you have to pay for just any hero. The best way to hire the enemy hero with their valuable stats and artifacts is to force them to surrender and render their money income to be impossible for them, so they won't be able to get their hands on their own hero.
  

• Campaign videos
  
  In fheroes2, they doesn't really exist. In Heroes 2 Gold, those are fascinating and really well-made. I like the way Roland and Archibald is talking to me to summarize the campaign I was in recently and what comes up next.
  

...and with this I think I already mentioned everything important about my experiences between the two versions of Homm2. I hope fheroes2 will become more loyal to it's former game, but only in it's positive way.

Hello, @Tibor0803!

Nice, that you've spent so much time exploring our project! You've made a great work, comparing two games!

I want to note, that our current project's main goal is to make stabilized, flawless game without bugs (even those, the original game has!)

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So you won't see lots of new content in game now (until we release 1.0 version of fheroes2). Even those features, you can see in CONFIG option menu, were mostly implemented before us. Some of them can not work properly. Some of them effect game balance.

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The possibility to occupy Magic Gardens, Water Mills and Windmills and get resources and gold out of them each week feels really overpowered

You've noticed this options change game's core mechanics.
That's why we don't support the majority of them, as we have more important things to work on.

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While talking about enhancements we are currently adding in the game:

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features which actually gave me a huge help in getting information about my own controlled heroes and total prediction and management possibilities of my resources in most case situations

It is one of our current priority development tasks.

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Huge help in decision making and much appreciated that it's implemented in fheroes2.

Our team wants fheroes2 to become even more user-friendly, than the Original Heroes2. We want player to see all the needed information to make a decision, without relying on memory.

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it was just a chunk of what I already noticed about it (features)

More new UI features are going to be implemented up to 1.0 release.
I think, we'd make a full guide, to teach players, how to use the most of new features and mechanics.

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Sometimes original Heroes of Might and Magic II logic requires some improvements. Overall, original spell occurrence was not bad, but in some cases the operation behaviour is needed to be reworked.

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so Heroes2 Gold is better if it's about getting good spells

Spells occurrence logic in mage guild is still in development. Lots of algorithms are needed to be polished as well as creating new for special cases.

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Well, the 2-hex creatures movement animation kind of looking broken at times, but at least they step into the space where you actually commanded those 2-hex creatures to move unlike in the old game.

It's a known issue, we currently working on. The nearest time all creatures on a battlefield would move, as you're expecting from them.

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A few components in the battle and global map options missing but who cares? There's the right click to take a look at our and enemy's health in combat, so it's literally not much of a loss.

Some options are still waiting to be implemented as well as being switched off due to not working properly.
But I promise you, fheroes2 would be as much close to the original game, as it can, except the cases, we can make it better.

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Talking about musc and sounds:

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Basically, the Midi old school of music versatility is enough of what fheroes2 has, but Homm2 Gold of GoG version of the game has this in the bag and I prefer sound blaster version of it with singing in bg

Current version of fheroes2 supports all music themes.
For now (it's temporary solution) you should simply place "Music" folder into "files" folder of fheroes2 project, and change in fheores2.cfg file the type of music output to "external":

Edit: Current pre-release version supports default music folder. Just place all fheroes files into original game folder.

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Orcs and Bone Dragons happened to get new sounds in fheroes2. Really interesting. Their old Elf and Dragon sounds however did not disturb me. I'm clearly alright whichever will be kept in the final version of fheroes2. I'm totally okay with that either way.

This are the original sounds from free demo HoMM2. That's how both of this units supposed to sound. I'm really curious, why does original HoMM2 developers made a decision to change them to the sounds of elves and green dragons...
Our team is struggling to decide, what sounds should be made for both of this creatures. (In my point of view, I'd prefer to hear this unaccustomed sounds more, than have some creatures sounding in the same manner in the game)

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In fheroes2, they doesn't really exist. In Heroes 2 Gold, those are fascinating and really well-made. I like the way Roland and Archibald is talking to me to summarize the campaign I was in recently and what comes up next.

As we currently working hard on optimizing, texture quality, game mechanics and logic, we haven't worked on implementing full campaign features. I hope, the nearest future you would enjoy entire content of the original heroes2.

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In conclusion I'd like to note, that our project is still in development (It's just 0.8.1 version), and we haven't implemented lots of decisions we would like to. Currently, we have more than 400 issues at our main project page FHereos2 Issues. So the game would look much better, when we cope with all of them. (We're fixing a bunch of issues every day!)
At the same time lots of work was already done. Our team implemented completely new rendering engine, that would help to fix lots of problems and bugs, left from the previous development team, as well as adding new features and content in future.
Yes, we are planning to create a separate add-on with new features and mechanics. We'd like to bring into the game new experience, by adding necessary and relevant components, which will not impact the existing game balance drastically, and won't touch the initial stats and characteristics of the original Heroes of Might and Magic 2.


Thank you, @Tibor0803, for your open, sterling and objective review!
I hope you'd be in touch with our next releases.