Five times in a few months? It always amazes me how fast some people can play... or how much time they have. I usually only get home around 18:00 after work, and barely have time to play 1-2 hours apart from weekends, plus playing KB no-loss is arduous - you have to redo battles every once in a while - so playing the games just once took me many months. I have played the Legend with all three classes (using different army setups), and AP/Crossworlds about 4 times, but it was a long process (am still finishing my CW gameplay with Mage/Demons).
But yeah, I recall how I replayed the demo over and over again when that was released.
KB has taken the place as my favourite TBS for me - granted it lacks the major overworld strategy aspect of HOMM, but in the tactical battles part it outclasses the newest HOMM games. Especially after the disappointment that franchise has turned into ever since Ubi has taken over.
And yeah, I also played AP first in russian... found out you can easily put the text files in Google Translate and copy them back, and understand things despite the mangled english.
With the Legend, on my playthrough as a Mage I decided to go "Necromancer" and have an all-undead army. This was not easy until I got to the Elven lands, but you can get by surprisingly well with the lower level undead units + werewolves too. I ended up creating a new spell with a mod to reanimate undead troops like in HOMMIII, though, to make no-loss possible.
Same here. I put together a nice army (Jotuns, Ice dragons, viking units) by the time I stopped playing, but I still stopped because the bugs were annoying - the only valkyrie I found had an ability that did not work due to bugs (Christa's gift), many spells and skills crashed the game or did not work at all, or not properly, and overall the main problem was the "boringness" of the levels - none of the funny quests or clever maps of the other KB games was there. I played for 3 weeks maybe, trying to make myself to like the game, then gave up - and I rarely do that, mostly I finish all games I start (eventually, it might take years).