You reached a point where your hero with all the enchants and leveling buffs could solo almost everything.

In AoW1 it was a hero bulldozer and most of the stuff quickly lost its meaning as your hero gained levels. In terms of balance or design? I truly believe 3 and 4 are just much better games. AoW3 I think suffers specifically in the charm department from a serviceable but lackluster art direction which I think is the worst compared to the other 3 games in the series. And 1 and 2 I think feel better in this department because each race choice locked you into a very specific unit set. If you want to compare stuff like writing, charm, flavour then yeah, it's a competition. It's funny how AoW3 and 4 are compared negatively to 1 and 2&SM, or rather: it's funny WHY they're compared negatively. I'll agree that the specializations are not impactful enough, but the class-race setup is more than varied in itself. As far as elements not being differentiated enough, the class system is more of than than any of the previous games.

The insertion of balance is there to keep the tension on the tactical scenarios and remove the more extravagant combinations of MoM (which admittedly are strategically a lot of fun, but on another level). Following that criteria, AoW 1 was atrocious in so far as the hero abuse made tactical manoeuvring and unit variety often pointless. I would say the point of these games is to develop tactical battles on a strategic field, with an emphasis on the individual unit characteristics. In that sense it's not flawed at all, if anything this series knows very well what it's doing. The third game is the accomplishment of said balanced design. I disagree with the consensus here, too much nostalgia bullshit as usual AoW always was meant to be a more balanced version of MoM. I'll admit the writing on the first game was cute, and the rest is bad, but it doesn't matter. Who plays these games for the story? Jesus.

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