Heroes of Might And Magic 5 (referred as HoMM 5 from now on) is fifth game in popular Heroes of Might and Magic game series, and was developed by Nival Interactive and published by Ubisoft during the May of 2006. HoMM5, as all the earlier installments of the Heroes series, is hybrid of RPG and strategy games taking place of the world of Might and Magic RPG series, containing references to both series in forms of events and characters. This review is written basing on the vanilla 1.5 version of the game, so some of the problems may have been fixed in later patches and expansions.
Graphics
HoMM5 takes huge step graphically when compared to earlier games of the series, turning both the world map and the battle field in the 3D system. While the graphics are not even close to standards excepted from games released today back in 2006 the game was very beautiful. And it still is, with the bright colors and small details of creatures, buildings and terrain, the game is still good to look at.
Even though the graphics are good there are several bugs and annoyances, which while do not make the game unplayable may turn more demanding players away from the game. First problem is that for some reason the game has quite much trouble of displaying the detailed graphics and textures. Even when played in top-end computer, most of the time the terrains turns lower quality of textures, turning the world rather ugly. This problem may occur in random occasions, and the problem exists throughout the rest of the map, and there is nothing that can be done to fix the problem. So, in the other words, the map may start as beautiful, but most of the time in some point it will fail to use the higher quality textures. The same problem occurs in smaller extend during the battles, where the game fails to load one or more creature textures, turning those creatures to ugly looking sprites.
Another problem that I have experienced is that at times the game just shows black screen, even though the game is still running. Fortunately this problem can be solved immediately by alt-tabbing out from the game and then back, which will make the screen appear correctly again. While this problem is minor one it’s quite annoying, and in one occasion the game crashed when I tried to return to the game.
Audio
The audio can be described as good, though nothing revolutionary. Generally the audio is good, and all the videos are voiced, though few times the game failed to play the dialogue audio. Fortunately those moments were rare and not too annoying.
Story, campaign and custom scenarios
The following section contains some spoilers, though nothing major. Read at your own risk.
The story of the HoMM5 takes place in undetermined time, though there are several hints of the general time of the game compared to other Heroes games as well as Might and Magic games. Prince Nicolai is the king of the Griffin Empire. The empire is in war against demon armies of Sheogh, and the basing on the initial video the war has been raging for some time already.
The story of the HoMM5 is told by the series of campaigns, one campaign for each different factions of the game. While the campaigns tell the same story in linear fashion the point of view depends on the faction currently running. This affects which hero is under the focus, and that hero must survive each mission of the campaign for player to proceed to next mission. Each mission consist of series of quests, ranging from killing opposing hero, capturing certain town, reaching certain location before opposing hero to even escaping the opponent without being killed. Compared to earlier games this change is quite refreshing, as the goals in earlier games were mostly either killing certain hero, capturing certain town or just annihilating all the opponents. There are also lots of smaller secondary goals, which make the mission more interesting than before.
The only complain I have with the campaign system introduced in HoMM5 is that, unlike earlier games, there is no possibility of choosing which campaign can be played. This is due the fact that all campaigns follow the same story in certain order. Still I miss the possibility of choosing from one or more campaigns to play.
Generally the story of HoMM5 is well written, with lots of surprising moments and cliffhangers. More than once I was surprised on how the story events turns out, which is only a good thing.
Besides the campaign there are several custom scenarios to be played, all telling own private story taking place in the same world. While the world is same not all of the scenarios are linked to the main story, so playing the campaign is not required to enjoy the custom missions. Bad thing is that there are so few of these custom missions available in the vanilla game, and as there is no random generator those maps offer too little in terms of playing time. On a side note, this problem was fixed in expansions, but I don’t discuss about that more here, as this review is about the vanilla game.
World map and battle field
The majority of the game takes place in the world map. This is where the player moves the heroes around, construct buildings in towns and hire creatures. As the game is updated to 3D the point of view can be turned around, tilted to different angles and even zooming is possible. While it’s nifty feature it also brings lots of problems. The biggest problem is that the tilting and turning is done by clicking right mouse button, and while holding the button down moving the mouse will rotate the camera. Now, the problem is that to get the tool tip of the object under the cursor is also shown by right mouse button, which will most of the time rotate the camera as well, which will move the object away from the location of the mouse, and thus no tool tip is shown. This is very frustrating as the description given in the tool tip also contains details like the vague amount of creatures in the group or in the army, so getting that crucial detail is quite difficult to get. To compensate this problem the game also offers the possibility of using original Heroes camera system, which will remove the possibility of rotating, tilting and zooming. While this mode removes that specific problem it also makes it nearly impossible to notice resources, building and creatures near other objects. So both modes have their pros and cons, and it’s quite difficult to decide which is better, resulting unnecessary changing between the modes. The only good thing is that the mode can be changed on the fly, so no returning to main menu and the reloading the scenario is required.
The battles takes place in special mode called battle field. This mode consists of small map with square grids, armies placed on the different sides of the field. Each creature can be moved separately, the order depending on the initiate stats of the creatures as well as other factors, like affecting spells, special abilities used by creatures and so on. At the beginning of the battle each player can arrange their troops in their side of the field as seen fit, the area which can be used for this is determined by certain skills of the heroes. The game also features automatic arrangement, which works mostly poorly as it tends to place the melee creatures around the ranged units in tight formation, at times making certain units unable to move as their path is blocked. After the arrangement has been done the battle begins, and creatures act in turns, the order depending on factors described above.
Now, regarding the hero usage in the battle, the game combines both systems from earlier Heroes games as well as Heroes of Might and Magic 4. This means that the heroes act as separated units, so casting the spells is only possible when it’s hero’s turn. This system was introduced in HoMM4, and makes the battle more interesting as the player has no possibility of casting those mass destruction spells immediately but waiting for hero’s turn is required. The change to this system is that, like in HoMM3 and earlier games, the heroes are immortal in combat and can’t move nor be targeted by spells. I wonder why this step back was taken, as it was good thing when hero was own separate unit, tougher than normal creatures but still killable.
There is also similar problem in battles as in world map, as the camera can be turned by right mouse button and moving the mouse. When the battle contains bigger creatures this is more than required, as the cursor will focus on the creature blocking the tile behind it. Now, as itself this is not a problem, but as all the descriptions require pressing right mouse button to be shown it’s quite difficult to hold the camera still while obtaining this information. A flaw in design if you ask me.
Heroes of Might and Magic V
Heroes of Might and Magic V
"As we all know, holy men were born during Christmas...
Like mr. Holopainen over there!"
- Marco Hietala, the bass player of Nightwish
Like mr. Holopainen over there!"
- Marco Hietala, the bass player of Nightwish
Building and recruiting
Each turn player can construct new buildings in towns, the number being limited to one building per town per turn. What’s new in HoMM5 is that the construction order of the buildings is more free now, as the game considers town level as major factor of which buildings can be built. Of course certain buildings may require certain other buildings to be constructed before coming available, but at least the player has more freedom of choosing the order. This is major plus, as in earlier games the construction order was very strict, and eventually the order was same regardless of the scenario or the faction played. Another positive change from HoMM4 was returning to the system of earlier games, as in HoMM4 building certain creature dwelling blocked one other building to be constructed. So again it’s possible to recruit all the creatures from one town, that is if the scenario doesn’t block the construction of any dwellings in that town.
The creature recruiting system has also returned to the time before HoMM4, as the dwellings are replenished weekly instead of daily. This was something I loathed in HoMM4, as daily replenishment just distracted from the exploration of the world.
Factions
The game consist of six different factions, each having own set of creatures and heroes available. Even though the factions have been renamed and most of the creatures reworked the link to the earlier games are more than clear. Heaven is new Castle, Dungeon still being Dungeon with some of the creatures replaced, Tower is now called Academy, Inferno still being the same with only few minor changes, Necropolis being most close to what it was back in HoMM3 and Sylvan being new Rampart. While some of the names have changed and some of the creatures being replaced by new ones the veteran player still can feel home with the new factions. The only two missing factions are Stronghold and Fortress, though I don’t actually miss those as both were too underpowered in HoMM3. Noteworthy is that the Conflux faction is also missing, but that was additional faction in HoMM3 introduced by expansion and was way too overpowered for my liking.
The factions are quite balanced, which is definitely a good thing, and diverse enough to make it interesting to juggle between those. So it’s clear that the developers have learned from earlier mistakes in this matter.
Hero and leveling
The RPG aspect of HoMM5, just like in earlier games, comes from the fact that after each battle the heroes gain experience, and with gaining a new level it’s possible to teach them new skills and abilities or improve the old ones. The skill system in HoMM5 resembles the one used in HoMM4, where hero can learn up to four different abilities, and each ability allows the hero to learn three skills, which makes it possible of in total of twelve skills to be learned. This system works very well as it reduces the changes of skills that has no real usage to be forced on the hero.
Heroes can also find and buy items, which will raise stats of the hero, which in turn have effect on the creatures during the combat. This system has stayed as it was, and on the other hand why change a system that works?
Anything else?
One good change in HoMM5 is that the autosave system now keeps last three turns in memory, which makes it easier to recover from fatal mistakes. Back in the older versions it usually required restarting the map if the mistake was made earlier than during the last turn, which was quite irritating especially after a long session, or if the RNG decided to not like the player.
Another thing, which doesn’t affect the score but is mentioned here more as a warning, is that the game did have some bad memory leaking problems back when it was released. I’m not sure if this problem still exists, as I’m using the latest HoMM Complete release which included all the games of the series and my computer can be considered as top end. But I do remember that when I first bought the game back in 2006 and when I was playing the game with computer not exactly meeting the recommended system requirements, the game was unplayable due the memory leak. But as I can’t be sure if the problem still exists it doesn’t affect the score, just be warned that if you are playing with older computer there may be problems.
Last thing, the game has a tendency of having erratic reaction to the clicking of ingame buttons. At times the game just fails to understand that I clicked the button, at times it reacts to the clicking and decides to make the clicking affect to the button in the new screen if the button was directly where the clicked button was in the previous screen. While this doesn’t cause anything bad it’s very annoying to realize that you have went to a different screen than you wanted just because the game fails to read the clicking properly.
Scoring
Determining the correct score for HoMM5 is actually quite difficult. It is a good game, I can’t claim otherwise, but there are so many flaws out there to not ignore them. The problems caused by turning the game in 3D are serious ones, and juggling between the modes just bring new problems while solving others, the graphical problems make the game quite ugly most of the time, and the erratic behavior while clicking buttons just raises the angry meter in my head. But still this game is quite playable, even interesting. In a rule of thumb this game is a must for the fans of Heroes of Might And Magic series, but those who haven’t played this series much should stick in earlier games, especially HoMM2 or HoMM3. But, as all of the games are now available in single packet, there is no real reason to not to try this one out.
My score system: 7/10
GameBanshee score system: 3,5/5
Each turn player can construct new buildings in towns, the number being limited to one building per town per turn. What’s new in HoMM5 is that the construction order of the buildings is more free now, as the game considers town level as major factor of which buildings can be built. Of course certain buildings may require certain other buildings to be constructed before coming available, but at least the player has more freedom of choosing the order. This is major plus, as in earlier games the construction order was very strict, and eventually the order was same regardless of the scenario or the faction played. Another positive change from HoMM4 was returning to the system of earlier games, as in HoMM4 building certain creature dwelling blocked one other building to be constructed. So again it’s possible to recruit all the creatures from one town, that is if the scenario doesn’t block the construction of any dwellings in that town.
The creature recruiting system has also returned to the time before HoMM4, as the dwellings are replenished weekly instead of daily. This was something I loathed in HoMM4, as daily replenishment just distracted from the exploration of the world.
Factions
The game consist of six different factions, each having own set of creatures and heroes available. Even though the factions have been renamed and most of the creatures reworked the link to the earlier games are more than clear. Heaven is new Castle, Dungeon still being Dungeon with some of the creatures replaced, Tower is now called Academy, Inferno still being the same with only few minor changes, Necropolis being most close to what it was back in HoMM3 and Sylvan being new Rampart. While some of the names have changed and some of the creatures being replaced by new ones the veteran player still can feel home with the new factions. The only two missing factions are Stronghold and Fortress, though I don’t actually miss those as both were too underpowered in HoMM3. Noteworthy is that the Conflux faction is also missing, but that was additional faction in HoMM3 introduced by expansion and was way too overpowered for my liking.
The factions are quite balanced, which is definitely a good thing, and diverse enough to make it interesting to juggle between those. So it’s clear that the developers have learned from earlier mistakes in this matter.
Hero and leveling
The RPG aspect of HoMM5, just like in earlier games, comes from the fact that after each battle the heroes gain experience, and with gaining a new level it’s possible to teach them new skills and abilities or improve the old ones. The skill system in HoMM5 resembles the one used in HoMM4, where hero can learn up to four different abilities, and each ability allows the hero to learn three skills, which makes it possible of in total of twelve skills to be learned. This system works very well as it reduces the changes of skills that has no real usage to be forced on the hero.
Heroes can also find and buy items, which will raise stats of the hero, which in turn have effect on the creatures during the combat. This system has stayed as it was, and on the other hand why change a system that works?
Anything else?
One good change in HoMM5 is that the autosave system now keeps last three turns in memory, which makes it easier to recover from fatal mistakes. Back in the older versions it usually required restarting the map if the mistake was made earlier than during the last turn, which was quite irritating especially after a long session, or if the RNG decided to not like the player.
Another thing, which doesn’t affect the score but is mentioned here more as a warning, is that the game did have some bad memory leaking problems back when it was released. I’m not sure if this problem still exists, as I’m using the latest HoMM Complete release which included all the games of the series and my computer can be considered as top end. But I do remember that when I first bought the game back in 2006 and when I was playing the game with computer not exactly meeting the recommended system requirements, the game was unplayable due the memory leak. But as I can’t be sure if the problem still exists it doesn’t affect the score, just be warned that if you are playing with older computer there may be problems.
Last thing, the game has a tendency of having erratic reaction to the clicking of ingame buttons. At times the game just fails to understand that I clicked the button, at times it reacts to the clicking and decides to make the clicking affect to the button in the new screen if the button was directly where the clicked button was in the previous screen. While this doesn’t cause anything bad it’s very annoying to realize that you have went to a different screen than you wanted just because the game fails to read the clicking properly.
Scoring
Determining the correct score for HoMM5 is actually quite difficult. It is a good game, I can’t claim otherwise, but there are so many flaws out there to not ignore them. The problems caused by turning the game in 3D are serious ones, and juggling between the modes just bring new problems while solving others, the graphical problems make the game quite ugly most of the time, and the erratic behavior while clicking buttons just raises the angry meter in my head. But still this game is quite playable, even interesting. In a rule of thumb this game is a must for the fans of Heroes of Might And Magic series, but those who haven’t played this series much should stick in earlier games, especially HoMM2 or HoMM3. But, as all of the games are now available in single packet, there is no real reason to not to try this one out.
My score system: 7/10
GameBanshee score system: 3,5/5
"As we all know, holy men were born during Christmas...
Like mr. Holopainen over there!"
- Marco Hietala, the bass player of Nightwish
Like mr. Holopainen over there!"
- Marco Hietala, the bass player of Nightwish
Good review, but I have to ask: were you using latest patches at the time of writing this review? Most of the problems you mention sound like bugs and it will be a pity if the developers have not addressed them yet.
Still, as I said, I like the review and I think I should add the game to my list of "games to play once the exams are over" right under KotOR. As I die-hard fan of HoMM 2 & 3 (seriously, I think HoMM 3 is my favourite game), I was verry dissapointed of the half backed version of HoMM 4 and decided not to torture myself further with the fifth game. I guess I should give it a try now...
Still, as I said, I like the review and I think I should add the game to my list of "games to play once the exams are over" right under KotOR. As I die-hard fan of HoMM 2 & 3 (seriously, I think HoMM 3 is my favourite game), I was verry dissapointed of the half backed version of HoMM 4 and decided not to torture myself further with the fifth game. I guess I should give it a try now...
As far as I was able to figure out the latest version of HoMM5 is 1.6, and none of the problems I mentioned in review has been fixed. Mind you, some of the problems may have been fixed in expansion, but as this review was about the vanilla game I did not cover those at all. That's because I tend to install only vanilla version for reviews, unless the review is about the expansion specifically. This is to remove the chance of accidentally covering something brought by the expansion.
And yeah, you should definitely give HoMM5 a try if you liked HoMM3 or earlier games. I was too disappointed about the fourth edition of the series, but was pleasantly surprised how the fifth game returned to the original path in many areas.
And yeah, you should definitely give HoMM5 a try if you liked HoMM3 or earlier games. I was too disappointed about the fourth edition of the series, but was pleasantly surprised how the fifth game returned to the original path in many areas.
"As we all know, holy men were born during Christmas...
Like mr. Holopainen over there!"
- Marco Hietala, the bass player of Nightwish
Like mr. Holopainen over there!"
- Marco Hietala, the bass player of Nightwish
Why is there a review for a strategy game in the RPG User Reviews forum?
[QUOTE=Darth Gavinius;1096098]Distrbution of games, is becoming a little like Democracy (all about money and control) - in the end choice is an illusion and you have to choose your lesser evil.
And everything is hidden in the fine print.[/QUOTE]
And everything is hidden in the fine print.[/QUOTE]
As much as i admire Kipi's commitment to reviews to actually continue, i have to quote galraen and agree with him.galraen wrote:Why is there a review for a strategy game in the RPG User Reviews forum?
HoMM series have RPG-like hero-building system, but this alone isn't enough to mark it as a RPG-strategy hybrid. Many strategy games have an experience + special abilities unit advancement system.
Moving it to SYM would be the best thing to do. Unless we want to cover all games with reviews, not just RPG's. I'm okay with that.
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I was considering that too, but as HoMM5, as the whole series, is RPG/strategy hybrd and, as stated in the review rules, all games listed in [url="http://www.gamebanshee.com/games.html"]here[/url] can be reviewed here, I decided to post this review here.
But, if the consensus is that games like HoMM and other hybrids shouldn't not be reviewed here I'm okay with the moving. Though I think it's more up to Buck
But, if the consensus is that games like HoMM and other hybrids shouldn't not be reviewed here I'm okay with the moving. Though I think it's more up to Buck
"As we all know, holy men were born during Christmas...
Like mr. Holopainen over there!"
- Marco Hietala, the bass player of Nightwish
Like mr. Holopainen over there!"
- Marco Hietala, the bass player of Nightwish
I don't have a problem with it being reviewed, I just thought it strange place to put it. It's all a matter of perspective, but I don't consider HoMM to be at all RPG related.
[QUOTE=Darth Gavinius;1096098]Distrbution of games, is becoming a little like Democracy (all about money and control) - in the end choice is an illusion and you have to choose your lesser evil.
And everything is hidden in the fine print.[/QUOTE]
And everything is hidden in the fine print.[/QUOTE]
After giving it some thought (aka not being drunk for once!)..
Look at us, bitching about a non-RPG review, when we do absolutely nothing. As far as i am concerned, one could review chess titans here, and it should still be praised, seeing as the entire forum is dead.
The few of us still visiting it constantly argue about useless things, disagree with everything and do not like any other forum user..
If not for the LP i'd post a few more reviews too.. But at the moment i'm fully occupied with BG2.
Ahoy Kipi!
Keep 'em reviews coming
Look at us, bitching about a non-RPG review, when we do absolutely nothing. As far as i am concerned, one could review chess titans here, and it should still be praised, seeing as the entire forum is dead.
The few of us still visiting it constantly argue about useless things, disagree with everything and do not like any other forum user..
If not for the LP i'd post a few more reviews too.. But at the moment i'm fully occupied with BG2.
Ahoy Kipi!
Keep 'em reviews coming
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Insane Ironman BG2 let's play! [url="http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=81201.msg2140894#msg2140894"]Here[/url]
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Wisest words posted in this thread which I have read!Stworca wrote:After giving it some thought (aka not being drunk for once!)..
Look at us, bitching about a non-RPG review, when we do absolutely nothing. As far as i am concerned, one could review chess titans here, and it should still be praised, seeing as the entire forum is dead.
The few of us still visiting it constantly argue about useless things, disagree with everything and do not like any other forum user..
If not for the LP i'd post a few more reviews too.. But at the moment i'm fully occupied with BG2.
Sure! I'm playing The Witcher now, mostly because I have the second game waiting in my computer already. I was considering reviewing both of those as soon as I have finished.Ahoy Kipi!
Keep 'em reviews coming
"As we all know, holy men were born during Christmas...
Like mr. Holopainen over there!"
- Marco Hietala, the bass player of Nightwish
Like mr. Holopainen over there!"
- Marco Hietala, the bass player of Nightwish
Of course. The review itself was mediocreKipi wrote:Wisest words posted in this thread which I have read!
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