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Guess there will never be a heroes 3 again

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 15 / 24
Date: May 27, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Heroes 3 was possibly the best turn-based strategy game ever. Two sequels were made up to now, 4&5. I didn't like 4, and it seems (although I didn't play it much) I don't like 5 either. I guess my expectations as a HOMM 3 player are diffrent.

I just don't get the idea of making the HOMM series 3d. It just doesn't fit. Why fix somthing which is not broken? not all the games in the world should be 3d. IMO HOMM is one of them.
So it might be a great game, no doubt. But I guess it is the end for HOMM 2&3, replaced with blazing 3d graphics.

Bottoms up goes to the music, which sound amazing (Rob King and Paul Romero).

I gave it 3.5 stars, where I guess should be read: as a new game - the ranking should be more, and as a HOMM3 sequal, less.

A great *FIRST* for those not familiar with (STRATEDGY GAMES) or the "HEROES" series.......

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: December 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

If you can look beyond the jaded comments of some of the other reviewers who refuse to let go of HEROES III, you'll find a pretty fun game in HEROES V. Gone are the some of the SNOOZE-FILLED hours of micro-managing that usually turns off most gamers (even RPG FANS like myself)...it's basically a pick-up and play game for anyone and you really don't need a (P.H.D) in the lore of the heroes saga to enjoy it.., the beginning movie just about says it all. I've played HEROES IV which also got a few whines from the die-hard fans and enjoyed it, but then again, I'm not one to really take the opinion of others when it comes to games....we all dance to the beat of a different drummer in that aspect. Heroes V took me about a 1/2 hour to pick up and i was off slaying the enemies. If you've ever even aspired or played at least one game of chess, you'll get into this title 'toot-sweet'. The interface is simple-(there are many help windows just point at anything and the explanation is right there), the graphics are good (thier 3-D) compared to previous heroes games(2-D battlefields) and the fun factor in my opinion...gets 5 stars. I guess because this one isn't as complex as the others, many of fans are snarling about it, but as for me-(YES,I'M A NEWBEE to the HEROES SERIES, but a long-time FAN of the 'MIGHT and MAGIC series..I OWN THEM ALL)- so far, I'm enjoying my money's worth and plan to buy the expansion pak soon. Lot's of fun. A 5 STAR game. B.T.W- Iv'e expierenced no bugs at all that others wrote about (so far) and I'm running it on an old DELL DIMENSION 2400-1GB of ram and (get this) a Visiontek (PCI) 128mb Radeon 9250 videocard and it runs pretty well w/ graphic settings at just about medium. But as another reviewer wrote, it could be that the more HIGH-END your machine..the more problems your'e likely to run into. Well..I'm going to test it on my high-end and see what happens. ENJOY THE GAME !!-Darvius9

Gameplay shines, but dull campaign and no map editor take the sheen off

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: June 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

As a very late newcomer to the HOMM game universe, this latest reboot of the franchise is very much a mixed bag. The game has the same colorful imagery and atmosphere of previous entries, given a fantastic 3D facelift. Granted, the graphics aren't up to the high standards of Oblivion or Age of Empires 3, but they give the game a whole new dimension that hasn't been seen in previous entries. Spell effects are suitably impressive - in fact the Armageddon and Meteor spells caused the game to crash several times.

The gameplay mechanics are a pleasant combination of both 3 and 4. The heroes are no longer movable units, but they can still inflict damage on the enemy via spells, melee or ranged attacks. Kudos to Nival for making such a good design decision. I would've preferred the addition of caravans to make transferring troops easier, however.

Now onto the bad - the biggest being the corny, cliched and totally ham-ridden campaign storyline. The voice acting isn't really that dire, and the dialogue is pretty decent. But for anyone who's played Warcraft 3, in particular the human campaign, the ending is very very predictable. The biggest problem with the story-based campaign is that there's far too much Warcraft and not enough HOMM, if you get my drift.

Even worse, it was virtually impossible for me to progress past Campaign 4 Mission 1 due to a script-triggering problem. I shouldn't have to cheat and download a savegame just to finish playing this campaign. There are several other campaign maps which also have similar bugs. It's infuriating and spoils a pleasant gameplay experience.

And the worst omission is the complete and total lack of either a map editor or software development kit. A game with as much potential as HOMM5 screams...no BEGS for user-added content. A lack of this feature will severely shorten the longevity of this game - hopefully Nival is working on a map editor as we speak.

In conclusion, HOMM5 is a game with the tremendous potential to be a classic. But a poor and overly tedious single-player campaign, and the lack of a map editor to add user-based content, severly impacts both the enjoyability and longevity of this game.

The game that i was expecting when i bought HoMM4

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: December 01, 2006
Author: Amazon User

If you loved HoMM3 and thought that HoMM4 was a flop, you will not be disappointed in HoMM5. The artwork is phenominal. The animation is solid. The implmentation of a 3d engine is near perfect. The game play is wonderful. Then i got to the story. The diologue in the cut scenes made me want to cry and vomit at the same time. The only other thing that erked me was that it did not come with a random level generator, but my suspicion is that they were not finished with it when it was released. The expasion, which is sitting next to me, but not installed comes with a random map generator.
So to summerize, if you are looking for a gripping story with deep character development, and an intellegent plot, don't even consider this game. However, if you love turn based stratagy games, or HoMM 1 through 3 (and maybe some people liked HoMM4) prepare your self. Be aware (at least to my knowlage) you will have to buy the expasion to get the random map generator.

Such a terrible disappointment...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: May 17, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I have played all of the Heroes games since their initial creation with the original Heroes of Might and Magic game. So when I saw that Heroes V was coming out, I waited anxiously for it and ordered it as soon as it was available.

After the excellent gaming experience of all the other Heroes games (which I very highly recommend), I expected the same enjoyment from Heroes V. I was sadly disappointed. The game should be issued with a warning that, unless your computer was created yesterday, the game will not work. Oh, it shows up on screen and you can play, but the video staggers and is halting, lagging at every move. I could understand this if I was playing on an old computer, but mine is a gaming laptop that is only one year old.

Another reviewer mentioned patches, I have downloaded many and found that they still do not help the game display as much as I would like. Adjusting the game speed did help, but not as well as I had hoped.

Ultimately, the game doesn't perform well enough and its glitches make it too frustrating to attempt to play it. This is a seriously disappointing gaming experience.

Beware - spyware installed with game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 19
Date: June 23, 2006
Author: Amazon User

There are three important things you should know before buying this game.

1) The game installs spyware on your computer and sends information back to Ubi Soft without your explicit permission. They have a vague statement in the user agreement, but do not specify what information they are collecting. According to Spy Sweeper the spy Heroes 5 installs is high risk. The only solution that I know if you want to play the game on a PC connected to the Internet is to have a good firewall program that blocks the Ubi soft spyware. Personally, I find this tactic by Ubi soft to be unethical.
2) The game is slow. So slow that on my PC is an AMD X2 Dual Core Processor and 2 GB of RAM that it is unplayable. I loaned the game to two friends (hoping to sell it actually), but it the game would not even run on either of their PCs.
3) The last bit of info brings me to point three: the game is not compatible with many PCs.

I have been an avid fan of the earlier version of Heroes of Might and Magic, but given the above I'll have to pass on this one until and if Ubi soft can fix the bugs, and more importantly, stop surreptitiously installing spyware.

Bottom line: Don't waste your money.

Mediocre game in Heroes of Might and Magic Standards = Pretty Good Game Overall

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: July 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

As you can probably derive from my title, I have played the predecessors of Heroes of Might and Magic 5. Just to give you an idea of how much I've played them, I have beaten all their respective single player campaigns and have spent at least 200+ hours on hot seat duels for Heroes of Might and Magic 2 through 4. So I hope you consider me credible enough to place each series in order of my liking (I'm just providing opinion here so I can effectively compare HMM5 to the rest of the series. I'm not trying to spark a heated forum of arguments).

From Best to Worst: HMM3, HMM2, HMM1, HMM4

With that being said, I would place HMM5 right in between HMM2 and HMM1 on my personal hierarchy of the series. I made this call after completing the single player campaign and dedicating roughly 20-40 hours to the multiplayer maps (I have not competed against online opponents yet). Ok, now onward to the esthetics of the game.

Graphics 4.5/5
After Ubi Soft inherited the series (from 3do after HMM4), they successfully translated HMM universe into a gorgeous 3d graphic environment. While the creatures and terrains in HMM5 have been rechristened into 3d, they still retain their cartoon like feel and image. The revolutionary ingredient of the 3d aspect is the town view. Ubi Soft must of invested in real life architects to create the layouts for the towns because they look absolutely beautiful in their fully rendered appearance. The animation is also great in this game. The frames per second is very high consistently high wether you're looking at the doodads on the worldview screen (however there tends to be slowdown when zoomed out all the way) or watching creature movements/attacks in the battles. What I wasn't impressed by was the introduction video which was only semi-thrilling in my opinion. The in game cut scenes are also mediocre at best in terms of the graphics aspect (if you've played warcraft3 you will notice that cut scenes are done in the exact same format).

Music and Sound 5/5
One thing that the HMM series is renowned for is for composing an incredible in game soundtrack. With that being said, the HMM5 soundtrack will not leave you disappointed. In accordance to tradition, each faction/town has a their own theme when in the town view screen. But whats new in HMM5 is that each faction has a remixed version of their theme in the following scenarios: when a hero is traveling on grassland on the world view screen, when a town is under siege on the battle screen, or whenever an AI controlled opponent takes its turn on the world view screen. The general sound effects do a great job of enhancing the dynamic atmosphere of the game. Also, the quality of the voice acting was surprisingly satisfactory throughout the in game-cut scenes (no oscar winners here but they definitely spent the money to hire professionals).

Gameplay 4.5/5
Overall the gameplay in HMM5 is very good but just so far from being perfect. Per many of the previous reviewer's assessment, this game plays just like HMM3 and I believe that is a huge plus. If you've never played HMM3 then don't panic, the tutorial (the first mission of the single player campaign) will guide you through the every detail of the mechanics of the game. However, if you've played HMM3 then this mission along with the entire first campaign will prove to be very painstaking and monotonous as you'll be flooded with hundreds of tooltips. Essentially, the battle system is very similar to that of HMM3 where units travel horizontally across the battlefield to attack each other. What HMM5 implemented was the concept of "initiative" where the higher the initiative rating the unit has the more often it gets to take its turn instead of having the tradition back and forth combat where each unit gets one turn per round. The creatures are all equipped with a large assortment of abilities that make the strategy anything but monotonous (I don't think that there's a single unit that doesn't have at least one). Also, the heroes in this game have access to a much larger scope of skills and abilities when leveling up which are now introduced in a tech tree format (some abilities have prerequisites or are only available to certain factions). I feel that both of these additions are beneficial to the gameplay as they manage stay true to traditional HMM strategy and at the same time present something new. As for storyline, I feel that the developers did a great job on this one. My primary qualms about the gameplay of HMM5 all have to deal with the in game interface. One important option that is missing from the game screen is a kingdom overview button that allows you to see how many mines/towns/heroes are under your kingdom's control. Now you kinda just have to scroll all over the map to check to see how many of each resource mine you control. The second problem is the camera angle. I know that the developers were making their best effort to translate the game into 3d but it is such a nuisance when you have to scroll around a tree to allow your hero to pick up certain resources and items.

Longevity and Replay Ability 3.5/5
I do think that HMM5 tends to suffer in this category especially compared to its predecessors. After finishing the single player campaign I did not forsee myself playing this game for much longer. Whats the main for reason for this you ask? There is a very very limited selection of multiplayer maps roughly 8-10. As of right now, no campaign editor is available (they claim to release one in a future patch but I personally doubt it) so you can't be creative and make your own maps and all of available scenarios are FFA. No Team maps whatsoever. Hopefully this flaw will be greatly rectified in future patches but as of right now I'm critiquing the game on its current state.

Bottom Line: As you can see I aimed this review mostly towards fans/consumers of the previous HMM games. That being said, I say purchase this game if you've at least played the HMM3. If you haven't then I would probably try out the demo before shelling out $50.

Surprisingly good

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: November 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The Heroes of Might and Magic franchise used to be the best of the best when it came to fantasy turn based strategy games. But after the release of Heroes of Might and Magic III, the series has been going down hill rather quickly. With New World Computing, the developer behind the series, going out of business, the future of the Might and Magic series was in question. But then Ubisoft announced that it secured the rights to the Might and Magic series and that Nival Interactive would be developing a sequel. Most people seriously doubted whether or not Nival could actually breathe new life into a series which most already considered dead and buried. So expectations were not exactly high for this sequel. The good news is that Nival surprisingly managed to resurrect Heroes of Might and Magic from the dead and bring back its charm it had lost over the years.

If you have played either Heroes II or III, then you should know exactly what you are getting into in this game since it shares a lot in common with both of those. You start off most games with one hero and a low level castle. From there you must build up your armies to crush your enemies. But to do that you must go exploring, fight enemies, and build up your castle. The amount you can move is based on a daily allowance. Once you have moved all you can, you must end your turn. This moves the game ahead one day, allowing you to rest and giving the other players a chance to make their moves.

The maps are filled with resource to collect, artifacts to find, enemies to defeat, dungeons to explore, towns to capture, and much more. Capturing mines will put them under your control, giving you a set amount of that particular resource per day. But many of the resources on the map are guarded by neutral creatures, so you will have to fight to control them.

Battles take place on a grid with one army on the left and another on the right. Both sides take turns moving their creatures. A unit with a number on it represents a "stack" of that many creatures and will behave as a single unit. The amount each unit can move depends on its initiative, with faster units attacking first. The amount of damage they do depends on the creature's stats as well as how many units are in that stack. Many units have their own special abilities that they can use in combat. Also, heroes can directly attack units as well or cast spells with their turn comes up. There are over 100 different unit types in the game, giving a good amount of depth to the combat system. Knowing what units to attack and when to attack them is extremely important, as is positioning your troops on the battlefield and effectively casting spells. The AI does a pretty good job playing smart and will keep you thinking during these battles.

When you win, your hero will gain experience that you can use to learn new abilities. There are tons of different skills that you can gain, way too many to list, but they range from having your troops take less damage from melee attacks to being able to move greater distances each turn. No two heroes will have exactly the same set of skills, making each of them somewhat unique.

With all of the resources you collect, you will be able to upgrade your castle. There are a few different types of structures you can build. Some of them will allow you to recruit new types of units for your army while others, such as the mage guild, will teach you new spells. Some buildings will add defenses to your castle like turrets and others will increase the population growth of all your creature dwellings per week. The buildings you can create are listed in a tree diagram, which is similar to some RTS games. Many buildings have requirements that must be met before you are allowed to build them. Building your structure that gives you your best units before your opponents get theirs will give you a pretty good advantage in battles.

The single player game in Heroes V consists of six different campaigns, each of which consists of five separate missions. The storyline in the game is actually decent and is told through various in engine cutscenes. While the storyline and voice acting isn't anything special, it is good enough to keep you interested. Each mission has multiple primary and secondary objectives to complete in order to finish it. All of the missions are pretty well designed too, with lots to see and do. Most of the missions take multiple hours to complete, making Heroes V a pretty long game.

The game also features a few stand-alone missions as well as a few multiplayer maps. You can play the multiplayer maps over the internet, a LAN, or in hot-seat mode where you and a few friends take turns playing on a single PC. Multiplayer missions end when you destroy the other player's hero and capture his castle so he can not recruit another hero. This can take a pretty long time, meaning online matches can easily take a few hours to complete. Also, waiting for other players to take their turns can be pretty boring, making the online multiplayer not very appealing.

If the game's storyline doesn't suck you into the world, the games fantastic graphics probably will. Heroes V is the first game in the series to make the jump into a fully 3D world. The game features a pretty good art style. Everything in the world is beautiful with a good amount of detail in their textures. All of the trees and water animate, as well as many of the buildings, which makes the world come alive. The combat animations, especially those of spells, look pretty cool. Although, it is a bit annoying that the characters mouths don't move when they talk during the cutscenes. Also, sometimes you will have to rotate the camera around to see past buildings and trees. But overall the games 3D graphics is a great addition to the series.

Overall, Heroes V feels like an updated remake of Heroes III, which is great considering that many feel that Heroes III was the best in the series. The combat and tactics are as solid as ever, and the 3D graphics and interesting enough campaign make the game extremely fun to play. If you consider yourself a turn based strategy game fan, Heroes V is a game you should seriously consider picking up.

Great Sequel

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: July 21, 2006
Author: Amazon User

First of all i read almost all of the reviews, and what i have to say is this, come on guys its a great game all it needs is more maps.
I've been playing the series since HOMM 3 was out, and luckily most of the factor's in this game are taken from HOMM 3.
Lots of buildings, skills and creatures are an addition. It's a great game and has the potential to be your favorite for a long time.
The graphics are stunning, the cities look great, the battle system is astonishing and the AI are smarter than they were in the previous game.
Finally i repeat it's a great game and all it needs is more maps. A must buy if you're a fan of the series.

Not happy.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: February 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I got the game along with the expansion. After downloading all the patches and actually playing the game I realized the RGMs seems less customizable than in HOMM III. Also, the loading time between turns is stupidly long. In the other HOMM's on your first turn the AI turn was almost instant...in HOMM 5 it took almost 60 seconds...for the FIRST turn. I wasn't happy. Also, the camera controls didn't impress me either.

Positives: Graphics are cool, voices aren't bad, cool new features.

I ended up sending it back.

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