Heroes of Might and Magic® 5: Bundle

Now, I know this is a controversial opinion, but I think HoMM 5 surpassed all of its predecessors, including HoMM 3, in every way. The storyline is well thought through, rich in narrative and full of plot twists. The heroes are likable and unique, they're not just stats and a profile pic anymore. The creatures are more diverse and all posess some particular abilities, many unique. The towns are lovingly crafted, the 3d and the possibility to move your camera around them makes you feel like you actually enter a city, not a store with buildings lined up on the shelves. You can pick one of 4 skills while levelling, instead of two. To reach some abilities you first have to unlock some very specific skills in the intricate skill tree. Even after years of playing i still find new ones. The entire world is fully 3d, so you can move your camera freely in all angles and directions. The combat system is greatly enhanced, since more unit stacks are allowed onto the battlefield, which also increased in size. You'll notice that the queue of turns is now visible, which makes it possible to create more complex strategies. Each faction plays COMPLETELY differently, and using the same strategy for different ones will result in failure. Overall, the game introduced improvements to all aspects of previous games and brought in some new things, making both the campaign and the multiplayer incredibly fun.

Heroes V is a turn-based strategy game, within the "board game-esk" franchise, known for strategic planning and mathematical calculations. If you have played any of the franchise, original, second third forth, sixth seventh? - There's no surprises, it is at its core "the same game". However, its like Grand Theft Auto - Its the same missions, different intro, ending and layout. but its the same game at heart, with the same formula. Heroes V I wont compare in this review to prior games, as someone who went from 3 and 4 to 5, but not really playing the games extensively. I found myself picking this up on sale, for 5 pounds. After I found myself rather enjoying how powerful you could become in Heroes 3 - heroes 4 I vaguely touched, so V no really surprises. The campaign exists, Probably "not worth" going through it. (I do intend to go through at some point myself) the Skirmish is where the game proper shines. VS the a.i. and other players, great - However the a.i. is slow, they take a few seconds to calculate their moves in full and when you have 4 or more players in a match, the times between your moves can seem to really drag. More so within this game. However - the game looks quite nice for a game released over a decade ago - And despite its age and how poor the a.i. speed can be, the game is "well optimized" I have tried running it on my "gaming rig" (cheap I may add) Runs like trying to cook food in an oven, Not on an open fire. Tried running it on a NON gaming laptop - Runs very well, some hiccups, and with the graphics turned back. Still great frame rates. Should you be thinking "I might not be able to run this" because X, Y and Z. - As long as you really have a moderate computer that vaguely matches the specs on the store page? You can run it. I had a early 2000s computer, XP, slow 60gb hard-drive. 64mb graphics card. Ran just as well as a computer with a 100+ quid graphics card, in a computer built last year. I would recommend without questions.

Been playing for a while now, it's great to play with friends over the internet or in the same room through Hot-seat. This way there's no tactical advantage and everyone is more involved. Game itself is a little dated but still looks pretty good. It could be overwhelming in the beginning, but at the end there aren't really many different approaches so it might become a tad boring :)

Wasn't a huge fan when it came out, but it has since grown on me enough to subplant HoMM2 from it's 2nd place into 3rd. So now it's HoMM3>HoMM5>HoMM2>The rest. So to those who are familiar with HoMM 1-3 universe, this isn't it, like 4th, they decided to scrap everything and begin anew, although in this case there's no cool lore explanation like we had in 4, so you just have to roll with it. The Lore byitself is less of a mess than originals, but also more cliche. The only bad thing was that it lacked those elaborate novels written in the game - I rather enjoyed them which was a bit of a bummer. Anyway, so gameplay is changed in the regard to speed, because now speed isn't the only thing that decides who goes first because they have also introduced "Initiative". I'm not a huge fan to this day, but it does add an element of complexity that 3rd lacked - but overall it doesn't matter enough since fast units have usually good initiative - with notable exceptions. The AI is retarded and on top of that takes forever with its turns, on top of that you can't "alt-tab" because the game freezes til you come back allowing you witness those extra seconds tick by as the meter fills up. This is a huge issue for me on custom maps, but in campaigh its tolerable since a lot of it is scripted to a point where it seems smart. Campaign by itself is a bit of a hit or miss in terms of story/lore, but it does offer some interesting challenges down the line. Playing this on max difficulty heroic has been a trial which I enjoyed. Hero & Hero skillwheel; so yeah first and foremost you can now attack units with hero. I think it's a bad change personally but yeah, it does grow on you. Skillwheel is more balanced than HoMM3 and 4, and there are more useful abilities. There are also ultimately abilities you can acquire once you unlock specific skills, but I usually skip them since most of them are not worth it - with notable exceptions. Theres a mod that fixes most of the issues btw.

It's a very good design, reminescent of HOMM3 and it has all the good stuff you would expect. However, the technical implementation of the game is abysmal. And not even a modern PC is enough to brute force through that. A state of the art 2023 PC will still net you 3-5 frames per second when zooming out in certain areas, despite the GPU and CPU remaining almost unused. Frame rates in many parts are not only dropping but unplaybly low, going sub 10 fps. This was the case back at release and it's still the case now.