Pure Class (Heroes Complete Edition).....with pics!

[Richard Hallas]

One other thing of interest regarding the Heroes Complete Edition.

As I said above, I've only just received it this morning, and given that I have work to do, it's going to be a little while before I start installing anything from the box!

However, something that does intrigue me, and I look forward to finding out the answer, is what the situation is regarding the first three Heroes games. (I've always loved these three games, so I'm not sorry to get new, updated copies - which is what at least some of them appear to be, compared with the old ones I had before.)

The first three games of the series (with their expansion packs) are all presented in this Complete Edition on a single DVD. And I'm interested to see what will happen when I install them, because the presentation format is quite different from the original editions. Recall:

1. Heroes I and II used to ship on mixed audio+data CDs, and the CD needed to stay in the drive if you were to hear the wonderful music.

2. Heroes III was self-contained, but had annoying copy protection that required you to keep the CD in the drive.

So I'm interested to find out what's changed, and whether Heroes I and II have had their music re-encoded in MP3 format or whatever. I do hope so; I can't imagine that the music will have been left off for this edition; I mean, it's such terrific music, and an essential part of the game experience. I'm really hoping (a) that the music will have been turned into MP3 format and updated to play from the game itself rather than from CD, as with Heroes III and later; and (b) that the CD-based copy protection has been removed. Lovely though the Complete Edition box is, I don't want to have to open it up and ferret my way down to the bottom to get at the appropriate DVD to insert every time I want to play any of the games!

Similarly, I'm hoping that Heroes III no longer requires a disc to be in the drive. I know it's possible to circumvent that requirement (e.g. by installing the third-party WoG expansion), but quite honestly I generally prefer the plain Heroes III Complete experience to playing with WoG installed.

A further question is:

3. What music do you get with Heroes II? The Price of Loyalty expansion had different castle-themes from the original game, and when I used to play Heroes II regularly, I liked to be able to swap between the CDs to choose which music to hear. But what I always really wanted was for the game to play the original music for an original-format map, and the expansion music for an expansion-format map. I don't suppose that wish will ever be satisfied, but it would be a real pity if the original castle-themes were not present (as I fear will be the case). The expansion pack's music is just as good as the original music overall (some themes I like better, some I like less well, some are just different), but it would be a shame to lose the older music entirely.

Anyway, since it's going to be a while before I have chance to play around with the game installations myself, I wondered if Magelord or anyone else with the Complete Edition might like to comment on the above matters.

[erased. over. out]

Appreciate the detailed response and links, guys. I think I'll wait it out and see if I can get it at the official site sometime in the future. I'm very tempted to purchase it off the French Amazon site, but I've been spending too much of late. Many thanks though!

[Magelord]

As promised but with a twist!

I was not able to procure the digital camera a second time so on the way home from work stopped at the local Library and scanned the requested images from the Heroes Art Book.




@ Angelspit

Here is the comic as well as a Celestial Heavens Title banner I marked for ease of viewing, found on page 167 of the book. As you can see our dear Mr.
Kuzmanov is totally credited for all to see!






@ Dex

I originally searched the internet sure that I would find a good High-quality Red Dragon concept art Image but alas I could not! Ergo, this to my knowledge must be the only image of the Red Dragon in its concept art form to appear anywhere on the internet!





@ Richard Hallas

Sorry bro I'm still playing the final campaign and haven't loaded any of the older games yet myself. Chances are you'll discover this mystery before anyone else.



@ erased. over. out

Good Luck with that. Hope you come out on top in the end and feel free to pipe in on this thread with a new source for the Complete Edition if you get your hands on it so others can have a chance to own this package deal as well.

[Richard Hallas]

Following up on my previous post about the situation regarding copy protection of Heroes I to III and the CD music of Heroes I and II...

I've only had time for a brief exploration with Heroes II so far, so what I'm about to say isn't definitive. However, without having checked every last detail, I expect it to be correct.

I'm sorry to say that the Heroes I to III situation is a great disappointment. What I was hoping for was:

1. The game music of Heroes I and II played from files on the drive (MP3s or whatever), like in Heroes III, rather than as tracks in an audio session on the CD;

2. Removal of the need to have the disc in the drive to play any of the games.

And I'm afraid that both of those hopes appear to have been dashed. What we have, in fact, is the worst possible situation. Namely:

1. NO MUSIC AT ALL! The game code appears to be exactly the same as before (i.e. there's the usual choices for CD- or MIDI-based music). But the audio tracks are simply not provided any more, so all that wonderful music is lost. That's a terrible, terrible shame: the music in Heroes I and II was one of the very best aspects of the game, which added immeasurably to the atmosphere. Without it, you get only half the experience and lose a lot of the game's immersive quality. The MIDI music can still be used, which is better than nothing, but it's hardly the same. This is a great disappointment. I never imagined that such a fundamentally important aspect of the game would be just discarded.

2. The CD-check is still there in Heroes II (and so, I assume, for the other games). This is particularly irritating, because:

(a) Getting the DVD out of the Complete Edition box is a major undertaking. You have to take off the (enormous) lid, lift out the art book, lift out the poster, lift out the T-shirt, remove two printed manuals and a floating sheet of paper. Then, having done that, you've finally to remove the box containing the game discs and remove the Heroes IV disc before you can get the Heroes I-III DVD out. It's not a problem if you only have to do this once to install the games, but to have to do it every time merely to play the game is a complete joke!

(b) At least having the music on the disc would make the above disc-extraction worthwhile. But the only reason you're doing all of the above is to prove that you've got a legal copy of the game, and the wonderful music isn't even on the disc any more. So having to insert the disc is an even bigger farce.

What a pity. I'm just relieved that I do at least still have my old Heroes I and II discs, and hence can (a) use those instead (they're more accessible) and (b) still hear the lovely music.

I really do think this is a terrible drawback. There was a fantastic opportunity here to present the best-ever edition of Heroes I and II, and actually it's the worst ever, because it's incomplete without the music and the disc is as inaccessible as it could possibly be, given that you're required to put it in the drive every time you want to play.

At least there's one small consolation from my personal point of view. The version of Heroes II included here is the Gold edition, and I've never had that before. It includes a few extra maps over the version I had previously, so it'll be nice to play those.

[berntie]

1. NO MUSIC AT ALL!

That's a shame. I would have understood if they just left the music as CD audio tracks instead of MP3 files, but removing it alltogether is as incomprehensible as can be.

BTW, could you tell us if King's Bounty comes with the version of Heroes I included (as was the case with the original HI release)?

[Richard Hallas]

1. NO MUSIC AT ALL!

That's a shame. I would have understood if they just left the music as CD audio tracks instead of MP3 files, but removing it alltogether is as incomprehensible as can be.

BTW, could you tell us if King's Bounty comes with the version of Heroes I included (as was the case with the original HI release)?

That's a good question. I remember reading somewhere that Jon van Caneghem considered King's Bounty to be "Heroes Zero", and representative of where it all began, so it really ought to be included in the complete set.

There's absolutely no mention of it that I can see in the printed material or on the Heroes I-III DVD label. However, hunting through the disc contents... yes, it does appear to be there, buried within the Heroes I directory. I haven't tried installing it yet. However, I can't immediately spot a manual for it. (I should stress that I haven't had chance yet to explore the contents of these discs very thoroughly.)

So it's just the Heroes I and II music that's gone AWOL. But that really is an unforgivable omission! How could they...?!

Really, despite its name, the emphasis of this box is strongly on Heroes V, and everything else is a bonus feature. And that's ironic really, given that it isn't even the final release! As I've just read in an interview with Fabrice, they're expecting to continue patching Heroes V beyond the end of 2008! So this 'complete' edition is going to become out of date pretty soon, I imagine.

Anyway, I'm pleased about some aspects of what's provided in terms of the earlier games (e.g. the fact that it's Heroes II Gold, which I didn't have before, and that it appears to be the Windows version of Heroes I, whereas I only had the DOS version previously - though I haven't installed it yet to see what differences there are). I just wish it were even better, and that they hadn't shown such disregard for the music.

But the bonus material all relates to Heroes V; the soundtrack CDs are all for Heroes V (the Heroes IV soundtrack CD, which was available as a separate disc a few years ago, isn't included); the art-book is devoted to Heroes V; and so on. It's very much 'Heroes V with its antecedents'. I'm not complaining about that, really; UbiSoft has probably put as much in as it could have done in terms of the material it inherited from 3D0, and the production quality really is beautiful. (At least, if you overlook the typos; I've found several of those.) But my favourite games of the series are actually I to III (in ascending order). I like Heroes V, and will enjoy playing the two new (to me) expansions, but Heroes V doesn't quite recapture the magic of the earlier games for me.

Actually, one other thing occurred to me when I was looking briefly through the bonus contents was that I was surprised not to find a bonus that I expected to be there: the beta music tracks. When Heroes V was first in beta, it had a menu theme that reused the Sorceress tune from Heroes II in a new setting, and there was a version of the Haven theme in which the words were sung in English. (I'm glad they changed that, because the words were really trite! Something along the lines of, "Long ago there were heroes, heroes everywhere".) I really expected those pre-release music tracks to have been included, but I don't think they're there. (Not certain, as I haven't had chance to really go through in detail.) I'm glad I kept those tracks from the beta, anyway!

[berntie]

BTW, could you tell us if King's Bounty comes with the version of Heroes I included (as was the case with the original HI release)?

There's absolutely no mention of it that I can see in the printed material or on the Heroes I-III DVD label. However, hunting through the disc contents... yes, it does appear to be there, buried within the Heroes I directory. I haven't tried installing it yet. However, I can't immediately spot a manual for it. (I should stress that I haven't had chance yet to explore the contents of these discs very thoroughly.)

IIRC, Heroes I didn't come with a manual for King's Bounty. So, that's probably not UBI's fault. Well, at least KB is there. That's a good thing.

Really, despite its name, the emphasis of this box is strongly on Heroes V, and everything else is a bonus feature. And that's ironic really, given that it isn't even the final release! As I've just read in an interview with Fabrice, they're expecting to continue patching Heroes V beyond the end of 2008! So this 'complete' edition is going to become out of date pretty soon, I imagine.

Yeah, it's not that the complete edition is bad or something, but they could have done better. For instance, I really can't see why the Chronicles are missing. Where's the problem with including them?

Anyway, I'm pleased about some aspects of what's provided in terms of the earlier games (e.g. the fact that it's Heroes II Gold, which I didn't have before, and that it appears to be the Windows version of Heroes I, whereas I only had the DOS version previously - though I haven't installed it yet to see what differences there are).

The only difference between the DOS and the Windows version of Heroes I should be that the Windows version included the map editor whereas the DOS version didn't.

[Richard Hallas]

Really, despite its name, the emphasis of this box is strongly on Heroes V, and everything else is a bonus feature. And that's ironic really, given that it isn't even the final release! As I've just read in an interview with Fabrice, they're expecting to continue patching Heroes V beyond the end of 2008! So this 'complete' edition is going to become out of date pretty soon, I imagine.

Yeah, it's not that the complete edition is bad or something, but they could have done better. For instance, I really can't see why the Chronicles are missing. Where's the problem with including them?

Yes, that's another good point, and something else I forgot to mention myself. Given that Heroes III is my favourite of the entire series, I really wanted to play the Heroes Chronicles. I didn't buy them at the time they were on sale (I hoped they'd be brought out in a single edition, frankly, and maybe even make it to the Mac, as Heroes III Complete did), so I missed out on those.

As it happens, I did manage to get them eventually through eBay (and I've played four out of the eight so far). I accept that they're not considered to be especially great; they're pretty easy, lightweight campaigns for beginners, and they probably weren't a great commercial success. Nevertheless, they're actually pretty good fun if you're after a non-stressful Heroes romp with a decent story integrated, and they're easy enough to provide some quality Heroes-time without any great frustration. So I've enjoyed the first half of the series and look forward to finishing the ones I haven't got round to yet.

They're absolutely part of the overall Heroes story, though (indeed, they provide a bit of story background to Heroes III itself, and provide a story transition between Heroes III and IV), so they really should have been included in this Complete Edition. I can't imagine why they weren't - not least because they're now by far the most difficult Heroes games to obtain. Copies of Heroes III are easy to find on eBay and elsewhere, either alone or in compilations, but the Heroes Chronicles are really difficult to obtain. Not to mention the fact that you have to buy the four big original boxes, and the later Final Chapters CD, as separate products, and then try to find the two downloadable chapters on the net. (They're on Celestial Heavens, of course, but aren't that easy to find unless you happen to know where to look.)

A Complete Edition would have been the perfect place to bring all eight Chronicles together on a single disc. I really wish that had happened; then I could have got rid of my four huge and vastly space-wasting Chronicles boxes.

Anyway, I'm pleased about some aspects of what's provided in terms of the earlier games (e.g. the fact that it's Heroes II Gold, which I didn't have before, and that it appears to be the Windows version of Heroes I, whereas I only had the DOS version previously - though I haven't installed it yet to see what differences there are).

The only difference between the DOS and the Windows version of Heroes I should be that the Windows version included the map editor whereas the DOS version didn't.

Right. I thought I'd read somewhere a while back that the Windows version was very slightly upgraded. E.g. that it gave you a choice of colour or B&W mouse pointers (as in Heroes II) and maybe had a handful of extra maps. Some years ago, when I had the Mac version of Heroes I, it let you pick coloured pointers, but my DOS copy only provides black and white ones. I'm not saying the above claims are correct, but I'm sure I remember reading them. Anyway, I can investigate that later.

[Avonu]

One question - does Heroes Complete really is "complete"? Has it Heroes Chronicles (all eight chapters)?

EDIT:
Nevermind - thing to remember: read earlier posts.

[Myrk]

Hello Magelord.

Congrats for this wonderfull edition!


I have 2 questions regarding soundtracks cds from this box.


Are there any tracklist for these cds inside the box?
I know it contains 25/25/27 tracks.. but are those tracks titled ?

Could you provide us complete tracklists of the 3 cds if they exist?


Finally.. a bigger request.. could you scan pictures of these soundtracks cds?
That would be awesome! Thanks.

[Magelord]

Hello Magelord.

Congrats for this wonderfull edition!


I have 2 questions regarding soundtracks cds from this box.


Are there any tracklist for these cds inside the box?
I know it contains 25/25/27 tracks.. but are those tracks titled ?

Could you provide us complete tracklists of the 3 cds if they exist?


Finally.. a bigger request.. could you scan pictures of these soundtracks cds?
That would be awesome! Thanks.

Sorry for the late reply Myrk been away from the computer for a bit. It seems you are talking way out of my league of interests for this package and lazy artist that I am it could be months before I get to the sound tracks on the CD's. PM Richard Hallas this thread, he seems to share your interest and might be willing to help if he has the time which in my line of work is too precious to give up researching things I'm not that savvy on in the first place. Good luck

[Wulfstan8182]

ok, where the heck to you get these pics of hot dungeon chicks which say "Magelord Responds"?

[Magelord]

ok, where the heck to you get these pics of hot dungeon chicks which say "Magelord Responds"?

Haha, thanks for the complements on my work Wulfstan8182 I am the one and only source as I draw them on my computer. I am as well as an avid gamer an artist who in turn loves to draw what I play in my games!
see!

glamor shot


falling to pieces

[Nicolai]

I have a question: could someone scan page whiw Tieru's art from artbook?

[winfola]

Tieru's art from artbook

[Milla aka. the Slayer]

Woooow...oh my oh my...it's just...wow!
I had decided not to get it but now I'm not so sure...it's just that it costs 600 Danish Kroner here [/u]

[Magelord]

Woooow...oh my oh my...it's just...wow!
I had decided not to get it but now I'm not so sure...it's just that it costs 600 Danish Kroner here [/u]

Tis nice! Although I will admit if it wasn't Christmas here in the states at the time I purchased it I might not have justified the expense myself but........I'm glad I did.

[Dex]

Maybe someone could also scan the page with the druids or the green/emerald/crystal dragons.

[Nicolai]

Tieru's art from artbook

Thank you, this art was needed by my friend, thanx. I know I ask for it late, but could you or someone others scan Nicolai's art page (look at my nick)?

[winfola]

definitely these will be the last scans for me, but really, this artbook is a wonderful thing for a fan of H5