Posted on: May 22, 2012
Wayrest
Possesseur vérifiéJeux: Avis: 11
Fun to play but...
First off, this is just about HoMM 5 as I haven't played the expansions yet. Overall I did enjoy the game and had many late nights because of that "just one more turn..." feeling. Enjoyment is (arguably) the most important thing, so maybe 3 stars is a bit harsh. But... I couldn't help thinking about Civ 4 when playing this game. That won a number of game of the year awards. Why? Because it brought 3D graphics to an isometric turn-based strategy game. That in itself is a rather pointless thing to do, but it was made worse by the fact there was an insignificant (if any) improvement in AI over previous games. Graphics more important than AI in an isometric turn-based strategy game? Well, the same thing was done with HoMM5. THE GOOD - The devs (Nival?) stuck pretty much faithfully to the HoMM formula, so it's fundamentally a good game with enjoyable gameplay. - Sets the scene for Arkane's Dark Messiah Might & Magic. Let's see that on GOG.com, without the SecuRom crap, please. - Quite stable. I had a few random crashes and one corrupt save game following a crash, but nothing serious. THE BAD (in my opinion) - The devs stuck pretty much faithfully to the HoMM formula. This isn't all bad, but for me HoMM gameplay was eclipsed by the Age of Wonders 2 games. - Warcraft, anyone? From the opening screen you could be forgiven for thinking you'd actually downloaded Warcraft 4. The devs already had a set game formula to use/copy. Instead of using their un-taxed imaginations on the graphics, they just copied Warcraft's style. To me the character graphics look pretty ridiculous. Fortunately most of the game is played with the camera well away from them. But those cutscenes....(see below.) - More Warcraft, anyone? I enjoyed Warcraft 3's plot twist with the goody (Arthas?) turning baddie. Still no originality from the HoMM 5 devs here. You can see the same plot twist coming a mile off. - Cutscenes. I think "muahahahaha" sums up the style. Or immature. With no facial expressions on the characters, the dialogue is punctuated by combat animations instead. The constant spell-casting, horse-rearing etc. gets annoying fast. Many times I was tempted to skip them and just read the objectives at the start of the map. "Griffin eternal!" - AI. Was there any? The only challenge came from scripting and being outnumbered. Careful choice of hero skills does seem important though and sometimes it's worth skipping a new skill and taking a sub-skill instead, in the hope that a better main skill will appear at later levels. - 3D graphics again - why? There's a lot of mouse-clicking in the game and you'll frequently find the mouse pointer is 'blocked' by landscape or units. Underground tunnels are the worst. I didn't want to rotate the camera to see the cartoon graphics from different angles, but was forced to rotate it just to be able to play the game. It's made worse by the fact that the mouse cursor's 'click position' sometimes changed in a new battle, so you think you're clicking on one square but are actually clicking on an adjacent one. - If you play with a live internet connection, Ubisoft will be poking your PC. I've no idea why, maybe it's related to multi-player and nothing sinister. Overall, if you think strategy is more important in a strategy game than graphics and haven't played Age of Wonders 2: the Wizard's Throne and Shadow Magic, play those instead. It can't be all bad though, as I did at least complete the game and, I have to admit, it was kinda fun.
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