YMMV / Horn of the Abyss

• Awesome Music: Following in the style of Heroes games, the all-new music for this mod composed primarily by the late Docent Picolan is absolutely incredible.
  • Cove's theme feels right at home with the original soundtrack, perfectly capturing that "late 90s PC game" feel and just being a cozy piece of music all around.
  • The atmospheric Highlands and Wasteland themes are of course less bombastic than the town themes, but no less enchanting.
  • The Factory theme is a beautiful, sweeping orchestral track reminiscent of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and other classic Westerns. Its central melody even pays homage to Docent Picolan's original piano track from the town's initial reveal.
  • Factory's campaign theme was composed by Paul Anthony Romero, the base game's original composer. It's a subtle piece that incorporates Factory's main leitmotif.
• Broken Base:
  • The campaign mode: a challenging but well-made set of missions that tell a fun Original Flavor story, or an overly-punishing glorified Fan Fic that strays too far from the canon? You can find plenty of arguments in either direction, and that's leaving aside people who agree with part of one side and part of the other (for example, liking the story but finding the actual missions overly punishing).
  • For as beloved as Horn of the Abyss is to casual and competitive players, it's actually widely disliked by the wider modding community. Strangely, HotA is itself notoriously hard to mod, specifically to discourage spinoff mods. As such, modders tend to prefer open-source mods like VCMI and WOG.
  • The "all or nothing" approach to the mod's features. Unlike other big overhaul mods, HotA doesn't offer any option of customisation, so using it meaning the whole package, as designed and as implemented in the current build. This is a particularly contentious issue, because there are many features that this or that person is not going to be fond of (new items and Interference skill are particularly divisive), but there is no way of selecting just a few. Supporters point out that this makes competitive gameplay easier to balance, but detractors throw it right back that maybe they don't want to play competitively, either.
  • Speaking of which: the mod is extremely divisive when it comes to its self-declared "competitive balance", and one that's non-negotiable due to lack of any custom settings. It is particularly contentious when it comes to what is often seen as the modding team pushing their own meta gameplay (first strike capacity, no way to block utility spells or often blatant favoritism toward their factions of choice). It eventually created a massive rift in the player community with an ever-increasing number of rebalances.
  • Unsurprisingly, the Factory generated split opinions when it was revealed. There are fans who hate the sci-fi elements, even if it is heavily toned down from the Forge. Then there's people who like the steampunk, but dislike the cowboy theme, saying it's too modern compared to the rest of the game.^note The cowboy part was severely downplayed by the time of the town's release, compared to its initial announcement. This was pretty much an Intended Audience Reaction - after "playing it safe" with Cove, the HotA crew wanted something bolder for their next town.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: Some players find the difficulty of the Factory campaign so frustratingly impossible that they recommend actively cheating just so that you can get a chance to experience the story.
• Memetic Mutation: Men of the sea^Explanation The upgraded form of Cove's Crew Mates are unfortunately called Seamen, which will get your video demonetized on YouTube if you say it too frequently. To get around this, Seamen are universally called "men of the sea" on the platform, which has been picked up by a lot of the community.
• More Popular Spin-Off: Horn of the Abyss started as a spinoff of In the Wake of Gods, another mod for Heroes III that was previously considered the biggest. HotA has more than eclipsed that mod and is now considered practically an official expansion by much of the community.
• Nintendo Hard: The campaigns of Horn of the Abyss were designed by pro players, for pro players, and it shows. In several levels, you will be constantly starved of resources, be on a short timeframe to get things done before your enemies come in and wipe you out, and winning will require several high-level tactics just to survive. It's winnable, for sure, but not intended for the average Heroes player. The developers have even stated that it is not intended to be winnable if one plays on the Impossible difficulty setting (where you start with no resources). It is also worth mentioning that the higher level adventure spells like "Town Portal", "Fly" and "Dimension Door" are coded to not even spawn in the mage guilds, particularly in the third campaign in which their presence would've greatly reduced the difficulty and duration of the XL-sized maps.^note Strangely, one of the factions (representing the Wizards of Bracada) still has access to Town Portal despite their Mage Guilds not carrying it
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: The Horn of the Abyss campaigns are much, much more difficult than those of either Armageddon's Blade or Shadow of Death. The Cove campaigns are, as previously mentioned, designed for high-level competitive players, although they still play like regular maps. The Factory campaign, on the other hand, takes this up to eleven, with some players having stated that the first map plays less like a strategy game and more like a puzzle game.

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