Heroes of Might & Magic 5

Long time player of the Heroes series. Still maintaining Heroes 3 is the one to get, if you're looking into them. Heroes of Might & Magic 3 Complete

Pros:

* Loved the graphics; clever little toon models that are lots of fun.

* Fun for a while.


Cons

* Fun for a while. Just for a while.

* Gameplay is just ridiculously balanced. Or unbalanced. Or something. Just never seemed that tactical or strategic: like it's better for kids.

* Doesn't add anything new or exciting.

* Almost completely square: no great creative swing on this one.


Get Heroes 3 instead, it's just the better game. Honestly, I even enjoy the graphics more today.

We bought this game as a gift for my sister-in-law because it is one of our favorites, and soon everyone was playing! The game has one- or multi-player options, as well as LAN play or same-computer play. Excellent game!

First of all, there has been a lot of complaints about this game with all sorts of bugs. Lots of this has been udpated and fixed with patches.

Negatives -
- All your heroes look the same, however different they may be.
- With updated graphics, even the beginning of the game, you actually have to wait for computers to do their turns(not exactly full length) where as with HOMM 3, if you didn't see a computer, you didnt wait for a computer.
- On large maps, as the game progresses and you discover more of the map, things can start to slow with all the movement of discovered things on the map even with my top of the line video card. They have patched this a bit to make a bit less laggy.
- Computers on 'Normal' difficulty play a little less then normal, for instance running by your undefended city and not taking it, even a dumb computer should know better.

Now, with all these negatives, I will now tell you why I still rate this game 5 stars. Please note, that I still only own the the original HOMMV and none of its expansions. Which I intend to have fairly soon.

Positives -
- Graphics are a complete upgrade from any of its predecessors
- Combat still good ole HOMM combat, with improvements such as showing which creature will go next, further improving strategical thinking.
- Re-invented building trees allow different building strategies.
- Compaigns full of hours of gameplay, with a good old fashioned good and evil storyline
- Heroes each have different traits which can provide different skills
- Multiplayer more accessible(provided you have correct version)
Positives(that I don't yet have but have read about) -
- Random map generator, which can provide a endless amount of strategical possibilities and gameplay.
- Map editor, I think we all know what this is.
- Each unit with the 2nd expansion has an alternate upgrade, further providing more strategy.

All in all, this game lives up to the HOMM3 that I still play and love to this day, it was nice to see an improvement to the what I thought horribly done HOMMIV. The biggest negative I listed was actually having to wait on computers that you can't even see, if you can get past that, I fully recommend this game and its expansions which I have just ordered.

I have been a fan ever since I walked into the store back in 1996 and saw Heroes 2. That game blew me away. And while this one didn't get going like HOMM2 did, I liked this one better than 3 and 4.

The graphics were very good, and the beginning and closing cut scenes were great, but why didn't they have those cutscenes in the whole game?? Before, after, and during each mission, we were reduced to watching mediocre cutscenes where their mouths didn't move while they talked. And while they were talking, the characters were way too animated. The sound and music in the game was solid as well.

As for the game, this is where it really shined. You have 6 chapters covering 30 missions, and most of them were quite tough. The only annoying thing was never knowing which missions you had to go slow on and which ones you needed to go fast on. Nothing worse than playing a mission for 4 hours to find out you can't win. ! example was you capture 8 castles, 4 of the necromancer and 4 of the the queens castles. It takes some time, but as you build up your forces, and you own every resource on the board, somehow the enemy in the castle picks up more recruits in a week in 1 castle than you can muster in 8. Not much fun when you waste that much time. Not to mention that I had 2 armies with over 6000 men attacking 1 army with about 5000 and could only kill half of them. The only other think that annoyed me was all he levels that you had 1 month to capture this castle, or 2 months to free a prisoner. they had alot of "timed" mission parts. Still, had a blast playing.

The game was defintely hard as you the easiest setting was normal, and it was tough. I beleive the games would sell better if it wasn't so hard as casual gamers won't touch this because it is so challenging.

After 10 years (though I waited to get this a little longer) of waiting for an HOMM game tha rivaled HOMM2, I have finally gotten it in HOMM5. A must for all HOMM fans.

I played HOMM until I got to the end of one of the senarios where it would lock up . I took the game back to the store two times , But the game still froze up at the end of the same senario . So I sent the game back to the company like I have done before with other game companies . Ubisoft sent my game back to me with a letter saying I had to call , Or email them for payment info before they could fix the game , And top of that the game looked like someone stepped on it . It was smashed . I'm not going to pay them to fix a game they could not make right in the first place . I sent the game back to them with a letter of my own . I never had this problem with any of the other game companies , Because they would just send me a new game , & I didn't have to pay anything . I think Ubisoft is owned by Foreigners , & all they care about is getting more money .