I consider Heroes III being my childhood obsession, a turn-based strategy game that introduced me to a vast lore, memorable heroes and mythical creatures, all being interconnected in the Might and Magic franchise during the New World Computing era.

With all that being said, The Shadow of Death was one of the few games I haven't really touched until it was part of the Complete Edition sold on GOG, originally being a stand-alone expansion game. The story takes place between the events of Might and Magic VI (the RPG game) and Heroes III: Restoration of Erathia. The stories of four army-leading heroes revolve around Sandro, a necromancer who is set on gathering artifacts to create powerful combinations, as a fuel for conquering the realms in the Antagarich continent. The main campaign's premise sticks out well to go between the aforementioned heroes, both new and familiar, that interweaves their stories together into an intense culmination and eventually with events that lead into what's happening during the Restoration of Erathia.

This game takes along the contents that's been introduced in the expansion game "Armageddon's Blade", so there's a majority of creatures to interact and fight with. But The Shadow of Death introduces even another interesting feature: The combination artifacts that give powerful benefits to the player and playing important roles during the campaign, such as casting spells at the battle's start for one side of the army, increasing army creature generation or boosting army's hit points ie. It's a welcome feature that I wished to have been made in other Heroes games.

If you're getting this game for the story, keep in mind that this game puts more emphasis on the gameplay challenges than the depth of the campaign's plot. In that sense, I'd recommend this for fans of the turn-based strategy genre or the M&M franchise itself. Personally, I've been more on the latter part lately and therefore resort more to quick combat mode for the sake of story progression. Still, I'm glad to get even with a game that's in tangent with my childhood gaming experience, so I'll leave a positive rating on this, with all things considered.

For this time and age, I would recommend that you download the HD mod that community have lovingly provided, to keep the game aging on a better scale. After all, you won't find this on the Heroes III HD game that was released on Steam. So, until the devs somehow bring the expansion contents into the HD edition on Steam, I recommend you to get the Complete Edition with HD mod added for this game.