I have played this game since it first came out in 1996, over fifteen years ago. I have bought the game, bought the Price of Loyalty expansion pack, and I gave my original CD to a friend so instead of downloading it I bought the original game again. Many people say Heroes 3 is better and they are right (at which I was astounded when I first tried the game). However the campaigns in Heroes 2 are so much more fun to play. Heroes 3 campaigns are nothing more than story-linked regular maps with few rewards other than high-level heroes. In Heroes 2, the continuity with troop alliances are awesome and add a great twist to otherwise straightforward maps.
It is time for me to move on, but before I sink my teeth too deep into Heroes 3 I figured I would speed run through the HOMM2 campaigns one last time, shooting for less than 200 days, which I was not sure if it was even possible. I was astounded at just how fast I could do them, clocking Roland at 198 days and Archibald at 148 days, far lower than any other numbers I can find on the Internet. My ten year old self would be astonished.
For Archibald, I was saved 25 days in the Gauntlet scenario by picking up 16 wandering dragons for greater glory. Not having to wait for the Dragon army to grow saved me roughly 4 weeks. (You say lucky, I say… yeah, you’re right. Even then my score would be 175 days – still really low.) Also in Country Lords, instead of killing the enemy scout stealing resources, ignore him and charge north for a free maxed out Knight castle in 8 days! I used David Mills’s guide at GameFAQs for other ideas for speed boosts but I destroyed the posted scores in the guide, leaving me a bit confused. I also realize due to the whole wandering dragons deal posting top campaign scores is a bit useless as it is highly dependent on luck. If there is still interest for this ancient game I’ll write something up for it one day (and it will also let me verify results through repeatability).
Checkpoints for campaigns:
Roland – 36/54/67/87/95/109/163/186/198
Archibald – 22/33/51/57/74/82/108/137/148