Not Heroes, I mean the RPGs.  Not a sequel, I mean the original.  That game has come a long way since those beginnings, but I've been pleasantly surprised by how much stuff has STAYED IN all this time.  I'm not as familiar with VI onward, but I know that over the many years that that series was developed, it kept a lot of its baseline philosophies (gems as spell components, food when you need to sleep, violent little gnomes, hidden back story behind the world). 
 
One thing I miss, and am glad the second game onward had it: automap!!
 
Argh.  
 
The sequel is where things got more interesting. I'm wondering how much I want to play this game, since I feel a bit too punished at times.  I guess I'll see.
 
edit: Spoke too hastily in the comments. I guess you can sleep and still find the treasure chest.  Not sure why I thought otherwise.
 
Also, the lack of colors in this game is starting to affect my temperament. I think it's starting to make me a bit depressed, actually!  I'm temped to download the hintbook from GOG and just see if I can't get a map of the starting zone so I can orient myself better.  I get the feeling a big problem I have with this game is that the density of interesting ideas for the amount of time you have to invest in it is too low.  Maybe when this was one of the few games on the market of this complexity it was cool, but apart from nostalgia (which I have for the second one, not this one) I don't see too many people enjoying this game very much.   I did manage to use the Jump spell to get past some guards, though, which was nice.