Overview
I would say that I am both impressed and unimpressed by Heroes of Might and Magic 5. While they have made some awesome leaps forward, especially in the area of graphics, they have also backtracked many of the forward steps taken in Heroes 4.
For the uninitiated, the HOMM series is a set of turn based strategy games based around commanding an entire kingdom in the Might and Magic world, with armies of trained warriors and mythical creatures under your control. Similar to such games as Age of Wonders or Disciples, the HOMM series has always ended up being the benchmark against which other games were measured. You generally start with a single castle and hero under your control, and over time must build creature dwellings and buildings in your town, capture other towns, hire new heroes to lead more armies, hire stronger creatures for your armies, and gain experience and strength for your heroes. All with the goal of defeating the other players on the map.
Most of this review will compare this game to previous ones in the series, so for those who have never played a HOMM game before this review may not be of as much value. But I hope it will help those trying to decide whether it's worth it to upgrade now or play Heroes 3 and 4 until the price drops on 5.
For reference, I have been playing this game using the following hardware:
Athlon 64 X2 5400+
HIS 256MB Radeon X1550
1 GB RAM
Logitech X-530 surround sound speaker system
Heroes of Might and Magic V - patched to v 1.41
Graphics
I'll get the graphics out of the way first. These are absolutely fantastic.
The world map now looks extremely realistic, even on the lowest graphic settings, and the game will make full use of whatever gpu you have. Like when Heroes 4 came out, I would complain that it's difficult to easily take in what's on screen, but I imagine that will come with time and experience. You can zoom in and out using the mousewheel, though the neutral armies are difficult to distinguish above the very closest zoom level. The cursor is a bit of a nightmare as you now have to point with the tip of the horse's head rather than with it's feet, as in earlier games, but this is again something that will go away with time. There is a serious mouse lag issue with weaker graphics cards, though you can switch to a hardware cursor to fix that.
The town screen is the crowning achievement I think. When you enter, you are treated to a virtual tour, where you get a stunning 3D video flying through the structures. This can be skipped with the click of a button, but retains some of its charm since it is a little different each time you build another dwelling or structure. Commands are done from a zoomed out, still 3D, view of your town, and you get a zoomed in rendering when building a new structure. Hiring units takes you to a new screen where you can see the information on the left and an animated full render of the unit on the right.
The units are very impressive as well. I especially like some of the Inferno's upgraded units, with flames and glowing eyes aplenty. The animation on them is smooth and crisp and, most important of all, relatively lifelike. You're not jolted out of the fantasy world by mechanical movements, but further engrossed by the realism. This makes combat a treat, especially during the occasional zoom-in to see the action.
I would definitely give this game a 5/5 for graphics.
Gameplay - World
This is where I think the developers dropped the ball. H3 was a fantastic game for it's time, and made great strides in both graphics and scope. There was a slew of changes introduced in H4, however, that I think make it a turning point in the series. There were several new structures / items introduced, and several changes made to gameplay, most of which were positive. Instead of building on those changes and tweaking them, H5 goes back to the H3 ruleset in most circumstances, with just a little of H4 included.
Heroes is one place where this was done well. Heroes are back to having attack and defense, both of which affect their troops, just like in H3, and spell power and knowledge for casting spells. They also have a specialization, which helps to give them personality. However, they also have skills and subskills much like in H4, which is a definite plus. If I had to complain about something, it would be that the attack and defense attributes tend to overpower the heroes army, so it takes away a lot of the challenge unless playing against an enemy hero. I liked the way H4 treated these bonuses better, restricting them to a maximum of a 50% increase until you found some helpful artifacts.
Speaking of which, items are one place in the Hero screen that I am not happy. In H4 there were some 15+ items slots for equipping various artifacts. H5 drops that to below 10. I was hoping to see more variability in H5 for usable artifacts; not the other way around. Exploring the world and seeking down powerful items before facing your opponent was one of my favorite parts of H4. I fear a bit of that will be lost now, especially since focus now seems to be on just gaining levels to increase your attack and defense skills instead.
On the bright side the skill system has been revamped into something positively demented (in a good way). Every primary skill allows you to learn up to three secondary skills, like in H4. Unlike H4, however, there are actually 4 or 5 different ones to choose from. Further, some of these are determined by your class. And to make things even more complicated, many have pre-requisites that you will only find details about online, often in the secondary skills of other primary skills, making the whole thing wonderfully convoluted and complex. Now that I understand the system better I plan to sit down and plan out my whole progression before my next game. However, I give a major thumbs down to the fact that all secondary skills are one time events; there's no way to upgrade them. That means that once you reach level 30 or so, there's no more skills to upgrade. Boo!
Anyway...
Mines still exist for each resource and work the same as ever. However, weekly production structures, including external dwellings, are back to a H3 ruleset. You're forced to stop back at them every week to get the benefit, and creature dwellings do not accumulate. Coupled with the fact that only heroes can move on the worldmap, this reintroduces a huge burden of tedious micromanagement. I almost got out of my seat and cheered when I saw it removed in H4, and am appalled to see it back in H5. This game is supposed to be about plotting complex strategies and dealing with unique and exciting situations, not doing the same boring thing with three 'carrier' heroes over and over again every turn. This, alone, may be enough to drive me back to H4 as my game of choice once the novelty of H5 wears off. I've heard something about the expansion reintroducing caravans, which would completely resolve this problem if they worked the same as before, but I'm remaining skeptical until I actually see it in action.
I'd also like to comment on Gold here as well. In H4 the availability of gold was majorly reduced, limiting town generation to 1k per day. This introduced, for the first time, a sense of resource scarcity that drove hard decisions about what to build and when. Getting a top level structure, even with a gold mine, was a serious accomplishment. In H5 you can see 2k per day from secondary towns and a whopping 4k per day from your capital. This tends to reduce those hard choices and, in doing so, take some of the strategy and variability out of the game. It's easier to set a boring old game plan and follow it every time...leaves more time for resource and dwelling micromanagement I guess.
I do have to admit that the way the towns are built now is somewhat interesting. Instead of specific pre-requisites, many structures simply require that your town have x structures built already. I'll need to play more to decide how this will pan out, and try more towns to see how they are setup with pre-requisite buildings and town levels.
I definitely like the fact that all creature dwellings are upgradeable again. I missed this in H4 and I'm glad they went back to the H3 method. Unfortunately, you're often stuck upgrading lower level dwellings before even getting the chance to build higher level ones. This reduces hard choices, and anything that does that curtails strategy variability (and fun by extension).
One major source of disappointment is that you can build every dwelling in your town. In H4, you were forced to chose between two units on each tier. This lead to an amazing amount of variability in armies. It also could lead to completely different strategies forming out of the same town. It also increased replayability. I'm very disappointed this wasn't included in H5.
In short, the worldmap seems to have been purified of complex strategic elements to make room for more micromanagement. It's not as bad as something like Lords of the Realm III, and is still playable, but it's tough going getting over some of the things lost from H4. One of the major strengths of H4 is that you could play the same town over and over again, but end up with different armies each time. Trying new strategies and troop combinations kept the game fun and replayable, and the ability to caravan troops in from dwellings (instead of having to continually stop back) made them a viable option for replacing a standard town troop. That, of course, added even more diversity and replayability. Then there's the fact that in H4, even in the late game, you still have something to work for in your towns, due to resource scarcity. I'm sorry to see it all go.
I'll give a 3.5/5 rating here compared to previous hero games and my expectations for this one, but consider that a 4.5/5 for comparing to other games. Unfortunately it seems like the developers fell into the same trap as many others do these days: assume that graphics are everything and all other aspects are secondary, and assume that your players are morons who just want to micromanage instead of plot complex strategies. *sigh*
Gameplay - Battle
The battle system is something I'm not completely sure of yet, but it will probably grow on me. There are definitely some positive elements, but there are a few changes I'm still unsure of. In any case, I don't think I will ever end up considering it any worse than 'better than average', so I'd probably say I give them a thumbs up here.
'Tactics' plays a larger role in H5. You can position your units before battle even without the skill. In a way I think this is neat, though I worry about how strong it could become with the supporting skill. I've always favored shooting units in my personal strategies, and this could easily make them nearly obsolete. Still, it could make for some interesting variations and add complexity, which is always a good thing.
The battle map itself is less granular than H4. The grid spaces are clearly marked and each unit fits in one (or more), in contrast to H4 where grid squares were often very small compared to the graphic representation of units. As a result, units appear to move a ridiculous distance over a huge map. In reality, the map itself seems a bit smaller than in H4 and units have just about the same speed. Shooting units do seem to get an uncomfortably short time in the green, though.
The initiative system is very interesting and I'm a huge fan. Units no longer get one action per turn with initiative dictated by speed. Instead, units with a higher 'initiative' rating will go sooner and more often than slower ones. Some actions also will only take partial initiative, so the turn order can be changed on the fly. Good morale could occur after each action and just causes that creature to only use half as much initiative as they otherwise would. The whole thing makes speed and initiative extremely important attributes in several ways.
Heroes have a different role than in H3 and H4. The most accurate statement might be to say it's a merger of the two. Like in H3, heroes stand outside the battle arena and cannot get attacked, nor do they take a unit slot; They act more as 'generals', which means only one per army. At the same time, like in H4, they get a turn, can cast spells, and can even take a random axe-swipe at any unit on the board. It's interesting and I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. I already miss the ability to specialize as much (the hero's attack and defense skills act like a built in 'tactics' skillset for all heroes), and don't want to see a loss of the variety that was introduced in H4. Attacks seem to do minimal damage, though, even at higher levels so I won't worry too much about it.
Sound
This was an area of disappointment for me. One of the primary draws of the HOMM series has been it's music. Ever since my introduction to it via H2, I have been hooked. The symphonic composition has always been fantastic, especially in H4, and has always been complimented by beautifully integrated opera during the town sequences. The operatic addition was an option in H2, but was so popular that it became standard in H3 and H4. Even those that don't like opera in general, myself included, still couldn't help but love its inclusion in the HOMM soundtracks.
As you have probably guessed from that paragraph, there is no opera in H5. Well, to be fair, there is a little. So far I have heard it in a single town, and have played as five different towns, so it's a rare occurrence.
The arrangements themselves are good, but I would not rate them as fantastic in any way. They are, true to the name, background music. They certainly do their job and I don't often have any complaints. However, I can't say I actually notice it at all when it's playing and I don't remember a single melody as I sit here typing this. Compare this against the H4 soundtrack, which I manually pulled out of the game folder and placed on a CD which is sitting in my car right now.
As such, I have to give the music a 3.5/5 stars.
Conclusion
H5 is a solid game, but definitely not what I was hoping for after playing H4 all this time. It's certainly more expansive, and definitely has better graphics. However, many of the gameplay elements I was hoping to see enhanced were removed altogether. I imagine I will keep playing it, just as much as I do H4, but I doubt it will act as a replacement. Ironically, almost the same way I feel about the other new game I recently purchased:
Space Empires V. Must be something about the '5' designation...
For those on the fence, I recommend sticking with H4 for now and waiting until the price is down, or you really want to try a new game, before moving on to H5.
