You'll be back.  Look at my member number.      I've been around since the Galciv1 days.  But I've been on long hiatus about 3 times now. 

If all the old HOMM3 strategy sites are still up, you may very likely run across some of my strats.  I contributed a fair amount of stuff to how to play HOMM2 and 3.  Suffice it to say, Expert Slow is your friend.

Too late 

2 was great, but it's a bit old now.

I found 3 boring in the long run. Too much sameness.

4 was the best. By far.

5 is crap.

Oh well, 3 is playable, I guess.

HoMM - tribe sof the east is the best : it take the best options from 3 and 4. With a real new faction (the orcs that don't have magic but blood rage). Everything that people liked about the 3 are in the 5.

It's stand alone, and you can finf the two first campaigns on the net. So you can play each campaign with all the improvements of "Tribes of the east".

The only drawback of 5 is the comp you need to run it with smoothness.

My thoughts:
HOMM2 - good, but was kind of hard. Especially the mission where you have to kill all the dwarfs, ick. Graphics are a bit dated at this point.

HOMM3 - My favorite. The best of the series IMHO. I also liked the expantion pack Shadow Of Death.

HOMM4 - Nice graphics, horrendous AI. It feels almost like there is no AI and you are just fighting random creatures on the map. Hard to imagine that they actually made the AI worse, it was so good in 2 and 3!!

HOMM5 - I did not finish this, my system was not powerful enough. Game was a major resource hog and initial release was buggy. I'll have to try it again on my new system with the latest patches.

HOMM 3 rules!

I'll make this simple for you.

Start with HoMM II, it has great charm and simple core mechanics.

Move onto HoMM III, its such a natural evolution of HoMM II that you'll appreciate it.

Then try HoMM IV, its not for everyone, but approach it with an open mind and you might love it after awhile(it took me some time to warm up to it)  Its different enough that you would want to play it at the same time you're playing other HoMMs.

But for THE best HoMM experience ever made, Play All the Heroes of Might & Magic V games, they have a great story and blend every element from all previous titles.

1. HoMM 5 series

2. HoMM 3

3. HoMM 4

4. HoMM 2

5. HoMM 1

6. That nifty little HoMM game on PS2 for forgiving fans like me, hehe.

I think I'd have to say V. I prefer III, but I come back to V more often because III gets entirely too repetitive to me.

To be honest I think King's Bounty is a much better option. The game is simply fun . . . and new, so it'll look pretty. Or pick up Disciples II. Or. Or. Or.

V to me is a logical evolution of III, but some prefer III, I guess.  It does change the nature of the heroes though, so they are kind of in between III and IV.  They take turns like the units, and can even attack creatures like units, but don't move on the maps, and cant's be themselves directly attacked.

To me, attack magic is better ballanced in V than in III.  It can make a huge difference, but the implosion spell shouldn't be able to wipe out whole stacks of powerful creatures to the point that might heroes have no chance.  V does it better, althought the Warlock class can still do severe damage with his attack spells.

I also really like the fact that all classes are unique.  In III, they all look alike, really.  There's a few slight difference in skills and stats, but nothing really unique about any but the Necromancer.  V fixes that, so they all have unique skills, plus the new skill/ability system allows even heroes of the same class to play quite differently from each other.  So I definitely say V is the ultimate so far, if your system can handle it.

The only thing i am finding with homm3 is that on my widescreen 19" monitor the images dont scale too well and there appears to be no way to run the program in a windowed mode...

Plays wel,l though i have only just completed the tutorial

http://www.maps4heroes.com/heroes3/in_the_wake_of_gods.php

Since this adds a lot to the game you may want to play Homm3 without the mod until you are comfortable with the game. This mod add a lot replayablity to Homm 3 for many fans who was disappointed with Homm 4. Thus it's more like  Homm 3.5 .

 Here's where you can dl "Equilibris" for Homm 4.

http://www.equilibris.celestialheavens.com/eng/downloads.html

 I would recommended you run this mod for the beginning since without it the AI is almost non-existance (the AI is still weak but the mod does help) and the mod deals with some of 4 balancing issues.

LOL Liking HoMM3 so much ihave now ordered HoMM5 too

If you're that into them, don't pass on 2.  The first you can do without, but 2 really is a classic.

Be sure to take the expansion tribes of the east. The vanilla HoMM5 isn't so great.