Homm V

Maximilian

Picked this up over the weekend & was shocked how Sunday evaporated into thin air. Best in the series so far.

garrethg

It did consume an obscene amount of my time at the weekend but my feelings on it are mixed, partially due to the very weak single player mission design but mostly because it’s tries too hard to be HoMM III, ignoring the improvements made in HoMM IV (e.g. caravans) while bringing far too little new to the table. Also there are many issues which indicate it was pushed out the door unfinished: no ability to quit/load from combat, wait button absent, split stack button absent, descriptions missing from some artifacts, etc.

Pugsley

Pretty mixed feelings about this one, the biggest advancements to the series is an excellent skill wheel, and excellent graphics and the heroe interaction on the battlefield is a great mix between heroes 3 and 4, and the new way of working initiative also makes it worth while to have armies of incredably fast, but splatty troops.

However the flaws are pretty insane, first off team balance is just silly, the inferno are the most useless team ever, even worse than the heroes 3 inferno team, their horned deamons are pointless, familiars are only good for their mana drain, balors will die before they ever get a go, and devils are so slow they will die before getting to do anything too, their only decent units are cerberi which are high damage, but they die because they have very little support, and their nightmares which are up to standard but nothing exceptional, then they only have the succubus to compensate for the 4 useless units they have, gating cant save this team, they need to be seriously reworked. All the other teams are pretty close though, with Sylvan and haven being slightly ahead of the pack, but not by as much as say conflux in heroes 3.

Its also worth noting that the AI cheats shamelessly, they have infinate resources even on normal difficulty, seen them have a fully built up town by never capturing a ore mine, and they managed to have 70,000gold sitting in their bank one game to by troops I couldnt afford even though they had a capped city, no ore mine, and a full army. Also doesnt help the battle AI is hopeless, seen the AI cast meteor shower on my squad of cavaliers before, and manage to hit 5 of his own stacks of troops for only 1 of mine, and I have seen them hit their own troops with black dragons too, and not because I made him retaliate into them, he attacked me.

However if you keep AI out of the game, and nobody plays inferno, the game is pretty good, needs a LOT of work though, not a touch in heroes3 complete though, especially if you add WoG (http://wakeofthegods.strategyplanet.gamespy.com/) which adds even more to the game, but if you want your heroes game to look pretty, Heroes 5 is a pretty good purchase.

Maximilian

Some of the English translation is quite funny too. Still, enjoying the hell out of it.

I did notice some of those issues mentioned. Hopefully they'll be addressed in a patch.

Incidently, hold shift and drag to split stacks.