3 stars. With the expansion packs installed, the game offers: extremely good gameplay, in its core mechanics similar to HOMM3, with some notable changes, if not improvements. Fun and engaging story. Good old poor AI performance. Graphics have aged visibly. My main problems with this game have to do with the editor though. Where do I even start? As primitive as the HOMM3 editor was, it wasn't glitchy and it did everything it should do very well. The HOMM5 editor, on the other hand, is the opposite. A few problems, listed: - No 'undo' option. Just imagine fucking up your terrain by accident and not having an undo button. Tough luck. - Terrain becomes blurry for some unknown reason, after starting up and opening a map for the first time. Not a very big deal, since you can reload the map and the textures return to normal, but still very annoying. - No option to turn off sounds, as far as i know. Have fun listening to squeaks, bangs, grunts, moans and several Crystals of Revelation while you work on a map. - Nothing is thoroughly explained in the editor, for example how to utilise scripts (I know there exists a manual). Everything is made to look so unnecessarily technical and overcomplicated. The list goes on. By making a near-unusable editor, they've buried a lot of potential.
