Heroes of Might and Magic® 5: Bundle

Out of the five missions I've played before losing my patience, two were impossible to complete because the game doesn't trigger the events to progress. Hottest garbage I've played in a long time.

i think the only reasons to dislike this game is that its a little different from HOMM 3 and some find that offensive, and lets face it the story isn't exactly blockbuster. after havning said that, let me just say that i did enjoy the story, but it's no final fantasy. other then that, the game is very enjoyable. with the right patches there is an easy difficulty that is WAY to easy, on normal the game is way more fun. peace.

I’ve been alternating between HOMM 3 and also HOMM 5, so the strengths and weaknesses of both are very fresh in my mind. Many reviews of HOMM 5 contain incorrect misinformation. They say the AI takes forever to perform its turn. But truly no, it does not. In actual fact, their turns complete in less than 5 – 10 seconds. The players complaining about this probably have defective hardware - but that’s not the game’s fault! Another common complaint is the “bad story” of HOMM 5. But at least HOMM 5 *actually has* a story! With HOMM 5, for each map of a campaign, you get a cutscene at the opening, and a ton more as you are going through the missions, and also a concluding cutscene to each map and campaign. Plus, all of them are voice-acted. Yet in contrast, HOMM 3 *barely* has any story at all. When you beat the end of any level, or even the final one of a long campaign in HOMM 3, you get absolutely nothing as a reward: no cutscene to conclude the story, and no text either to describe the (non-existent) ending of a campaign’s story. So the point is: whilst it’s true that HOMM 5’s story is generic, it’s untrue that HOMM 5’s story is somehow “worse” than HOMM 3’s. Really, HOMM 5’s story, imperfect as it is, it is still *infinitely* better when compared versus HOMM 3’s abysmal (non)“story.” As for gameplay, HOMM 5 is also better than 3 in many ways too. Heroes feel more special & engaging in HOMM 5 because you have options either to cast a spell, or physically to attack the enemy, or to cast a special unique ability. For example, the demon lord has a “Mark of Death” ability that lets you mark an enemy stack, which your hero will then automatically retaliate against whenever it damages any of your units. Contrast that with HOMM 3: your heroes can either cast a spell OR...wait a second, there is no “OR!” They have *no* options to participate in the battle *other than* to cast a spell, and none of the spells are unique to any hero in HOMM 3.

HoMM: V. From Ubisoft. In 3D ಠ_ಠ Storyline? I don't... care. I don't care at all. Not a bit. Nothing. 0. NULL. Boring cutscenes that looks like Warcraft III but worse - check! No mouth movement - check! GG no re. I loved walls of text in HoMM: IV. I guess it had better stories to tell. Graphics? Have you ever played Etherlords? Yes? It's same thing. I have nothing against Etherlords but hey, it doesn't look like Might&Magic. When you enter battle it's like Etherlords flashback. The way player and monsters look... Etherlords: Might & Magic Going from god tier 2D art to average, animuuuuu 3D? GG no re. Sound? Etherlords? UI? Complete trash. Looks amateurishly at best. Feels even worse. GG no re. Music... Again, going from god tier, memorable, unique, atmospheric piece of art to generic orchestra bullshit. GG no re. It's not a bad game though! (or is it?) The only thing I enjoyed better in this game than in previous ones was look of undergrounds. Badass. Other than that you got blend of III and IV with worse graphics, story, music, sound, gameplay... Yeah. And why AI is so slow?! After few turns I grew a beard. That's a good thing, plus one star.

As a long time HOMM player this entry into the series was a decent one. The graphics are some of the best in the series but the game runs poorly. And by this I mean the load times sometimes are incredibly long for AI enemies. The corny cut scenes also could have been much better done than they were. But in the end lots of the core HOMM game is there with the combat being true to the first 3 games. That's what really matters and there are quite a few fun missions on the campaign. Certainly well worth 10 bucks or less!