Heroes of Might and Magic® 5: Bundle

First of all, let me say i'm a huge fan of HoMM series. The second and third instalments are the best by far (and most people on the internet agrees with this). But...this instalment is the worst in terms of the campaign. It's plagued with bugs that literally won't let you advance. Trigger events that don't happen it's the most frequent bug. You need to either restart the mission or use the console's cheat code to either trigger the event or just outright type @Win() and be done with that sucker ! In terms of AI the enemy lacks intelligence and strategy. I feel like playing a match of chess with my pet goldfish and I think that will squeeze more "smartness" than this game. The graphics drips with colours and special effects just for the "eye candy" effect. But for the game play it only gets in the way, the camera is too clumsy and some objects are hidden behind trees and rocks. And at some point you have to reduce your setting because FPS goes down for no reason. The spells are awful, they don't feel powerful at all. The fireball and meteor shower kills only a few enemies and ONLY if they are not immune to fire. The resurrections and blessing feel like a waste of mana too. All the units feel weak, once i was fighting a bunch of peasants with some of my soldiers and it took me like 20 effing turns to kill them. The skill tree progressing sucks, you never know the entire set of skills to plan your hero build ahead. And even after learning the entire skill tree on some fan-made web you still can't build your ideal hero because your hero will choose RANDOMLY a set of skills to advance for you. LAME ! There's plenty of other reasons to hate this game, but those were the main reasons (and they should be enough for you to STAY AWAY from this game). Buy Homm2 or 3 or buy this one and prepare yourself to use the cheat console A LOT !!!

This game has almost all the mechanics of the III instalment, but with updated graphics and sound. The original campaign is not very good, I didn't like the characters and the plot almost all the time, and the world the story takes place has changed to a generic and very shallow dragon gods stuff. But HMM, for me, was all about playing a single game at a time, learning the strategies with each different faction and conquering the map. The GOG version gives you the basic game and two expansions, each adding a faction, maps and a extra campaign. There is a random map generator too, I use it a lot! The factions are similar to what you may be used to, with some exceptions: dungeon is now a dark elf faction (ugh! :P), the barbarians now are an orc faction (but you still have goblins and the cyclops), the "nature" factions is now an elf faction (this one didn't changed very much) and there is no "swamp" fortress again (sad, I know). There is now a dwarf faction, that get the name "fortress", but it has nothing to do with with the first. The dwarves are my favourite faction in HMM5 (and Thanes ARE GIANTS! Giants don't need to look like humans in a dwarven faction, so give me a break!). I think that if you like HMM3, there is no way you will dislike HMM5. If you are like me, for the price GOG is asking, you get almost infinite playing time! So buy it and be happy forever! Or... be happy until you die :D

This Game is worth of your time if you like TBS, but have some flaws: 1) Engine is not optimized enough to run on old computer. I have i4670 + GTX760+8GB RAM and in my FHD Display sometimes I get less that 60 fps. 2) Some mission have still bugs that prevent us from accomplish it, for example tray finish first mission in campaigning Sylvan. I must use cheat codes to finish this, because you can't cross the border but Biara appears and stand on empire territory (out of you range). 3) All Mission from HoF is dull and too quick - you don't have time to accomplish level cap your main hero.

First game released by Ubisoft since acquiring the Heroes of MM Franchise. Its has a nice campaign and story arc, well made factions, good visuals (for its time) and decent gameplay. You also get here both expansions which add a couple more factions. The tactical map felt simplified compared to the last 2 titles, but its still quite a fun game and you will get your moneys worth here for sure.

Finally this game is on GOG so I can add it to my collection :D I am always a fan of HoMM series. I think it's good for HoMM 5 to simplify a few things from 3, and I prefer 5's graphics style more. I had a Mac version of the original HoMM 5 but it is a shame Ubi did not add the expansions and some important patches/upgrades to it. I am currently playing this Windows version on Mac using WINE, and I haven't noticed any drawbacks comparing to the native mac version (except the right clicks are not very smooth under WINE, but I don't care). I tested years ago to run this game using WINE, but the graphics was crap, with the latest WINE upgrade, the time has finally come to complete the whole HoMM 5 missions :D