Those Pesky Demons Are At It Again... (Heroes of Might and Magic 5 (PC))

Member Name: CaptainD

Product:	Heroes of Might and Magic 5 (PC)
Date:	31/01/08 (68 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Superb graphics, atmospheric sound, balanced game play, tons of creatures and depth...

Disadvantages: ...requires an enormous time commitment, cut scenes leave a lot to be desired...

Heroes of Might and Magic V is a massive game which keeps the spirit of earlier games in the series and a virtually identical interface, but it's presented with more style and much more impressive graphics. It stars off with the marriage of Emperor Nicolai and Lady Isabel - but those pesky demons in the land can always be relied on to try and ruin things, and sure enough along comes an evil beast to break up the happy couple. With Nicolai taking the battle to the demons far away, Isabel is much too feisty to just sit around and wait for him to return, and sets off on a journey to gather an army and rush to his side.

In the Single Player mode - I fear never emerging back into real life if I venture into the multiplayer mode, and therefore refuse to try it - you start the first of 5 scenarios, each spilt into 5 missions, as Isabel at the start of her quest. If you think that 25 missions in total doesn't sound like there's much longevity to the game, you'd be very wrong - each scenario is likely to take you several hours to complete, and while I'm perhaps a rather cautious player (preferring to build up an invincible army before venturing into very dangerous territory) you would need to be either uncannily blessed or a tactical genius (or, perhaps, a hacker!) to complete the whole game in less than 100 hours.

The game is mainly turn-based strategy, though on occasion there are elements that run in real-time. Basically though it's a game you can leave for hours and come back to without having to pause it, as it won't do anything until you've finished your turn. You start off with one hero, Isabel, and later in the game you will come to control more or can hire extra heroes in taverns. You capture towns and develop them by building extra structures, each of which can benefit you in different ways. As you battle or visit particular areas you can gain experience and level up, with your hero learning new abilities and improving stats. On the main game map there are various places to visit both above and below ground. There are also a lot of helpful things to find including spells to learn, treasures, resources that can be used in trading or building, artefacts (and artefact dealers) - these can give you permanent stat-boosts or other benefits, though you don't carry them from one scenario / mission to the next. In fact I would have preferred it if you didn't start every mission from a preset point - it would have been nice to carry over some of the success / troops amassed from one to the next as a kind of reward for your genius and / or persistence in the previous mission. However I think the designers felt that this would have made the game too easy, which is probably a fair enough point. There are three difficulty levels, and while on some levels the game is easy (with patience!), on others even the lowest (normal) difficulty level is a good challenge.

Each mission starts with one or more objectives, and as you reach some of the objectives, you are given more. When you have completed all of them, the mission ends. When you have infinite time and no specific enemies apart from those stationed on the map to contend with, there really isn't much challenge, but when you have to complete something in a set time period or have a competing hero vying with you, the stakes increase significantly. When you have both, things get much more interesting - and challenging. You can save the game at any point as long as a turn is not in process.

The turns seem quite short at first as your character isn't able to do very much in terms of travelling or abilities, but before long the turns seem quite long as you are put in a position where several tactical decisions have to be made every turn. I must mention that this is a game for those who like thoughtful strategy rather than action-packed games. During battle the game switches to another view where you can see the battlefield and your units. Before each battle you can select the starting positions of each unit, then onto the battle itself and you can see where the enemy is positioned. The units taking a turn rotate, some coming back into the rotation quicker than others depending on creature type, abilities and status. The opposing commanders also are in the rotation, and they can use special abilities or spells that you have gained along the way, which can affect friendly or enemy units in different ways. The battles are pretty well balanced, and you don't normally lose a battle you'd expect to win unless you do something really stupid. If everything's suddenly gone against you then fleeing or surrendering may be an option, but depending on the hero controlled at the time and the scenario, this may actually result in losing the game because you've me a lose condition - so be careful and save if an opposing army is on the horizon and looks tricky to defeat! There is also an auto combat mode if you're feeling lazy, which isn't too shoddy though at times it makes odd decisions. In general if you want to use the automatic mode for your battles, be sure to have a good army with plenty of ranged firepower as well as strong melee units! Actually you need that even if you control the battle yourself...

The units can be made up of a myriad different creatures, from gremlins and gargoyles to archers and cavaliers. Every unit has their own base stats, to which are added modifiers depending on the commander's stats. The units don't garner experience in themselves, but this is just as well since the game is detailed enough already! Some units have the ability to cast spells, heal other units, or perform special attack moves. The base unit types can by upgraded as well - for instance archers can become marksmen, griffins can become imperial griffins,. angels can turn into archangels, and so on. Compared to the 3rd game in the HOMM series (the only other one I've played), the battles seem much more balanced - the outcomes depend more on the strengths and weakness of the units as a whole rather than seeming to be more a case of finding out what type of creature is most effective against a particular creature. The battles can be quite epic in themselves, and with the auto combat and the fact that you can gain experience points from letter much weaker opposing armies flee from your mighty forces instead of having a pointless one-sided contest, they don't really get boring even after a long playing session.

Though the long playing time of the game is a plus point, the necessity of very long playing sessions in order to feel that you've actually got somewhere in the game is a bit of a minus point. Most of us, even if we're avid games players, have too much going on in our lives to spend many hours at a time playing a game. The storyline is quite good and you makes you want to complete missions not just for the satisfaction of completing it, but to find out what happens next (unfortunately the cut scenes are not particularly good - see below). Because each mission takes a long time to complete, you get a real sense of accomplishment when you finally have beaten it.

About those cut scenes... It is very odd that in a game that has such impressive graphics, the cut scenes are weak, but they definitely are. They mainly consist of one character talking then another, with the camera switching between them. Considering how much cinematic effects are used in the game itself, there are precious few in the cut scenes. The character's gestures and movements often look unrealistic, but the worst of it is the lips - they don't move. It has good (if very cheesy!) voice-acting and some decent action scenes but often the characters' lips don't move at all, and when they do there is little synchronisation between them and the words.

However other than that the graphics are extremely impressive. The landscape (which you can zoom in and out of as well as change perspective) looks fantastic and is rich in detail. The various creatures look brilliant and some of the effects are quite spectacular. A lot of the creatures are also quite amusing - the imps and gremlins are my favourites in that regard, they always make me laugh. The sound too is very good with high quality effects and atmospheric music.

Apart from the already mentioned single-player campaign and multiplayer mode, there is also a custom map mode if you want even more adventures.

Overall this game has just about everything you could ever want from a turn-based strategy game. Several overall game strategies are possible and, if implemented wisely, each one can be successful. The cut scenes are definitely a let down and the huge amount of time involved in a decent game on this makes it unwieldy for a lot of player, so I don't quite think it deserves 5 stars. If you're a fan of the series I'm pretty sure you'll be impressed by this latest version (which has a different developer, thus a slightly different feel to the earlier games.)

Minimum System Requirements

CPU: 1GHz (2GHz recommended)
OS: 2000/XP/Vista
RAM: 512Mb
Graphics card:64Mb (128Mb recommended)
Supported cards

NVidia GeForce 3/4/FX/6 (apart from 4MC) - the packaging doesn't mention the 7 series but it worked fine on mine.
ATI Radeon 8500/9000/X families
Any later model cards, such as the nVidia 8 series, should be fine.

Laptop cards are not supported.

DirectX: 9.0C
DVD-ROM Drive: 4x speed
Free HDD space: 2GHz
Internet connection needed for multiplayer (and it goes without saying that a high-speed connection is recommended)

Tested on system with Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 processor, 1Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce 7500LE graphics card)
The PEGI rating is 12+ probably mostly for the warfare element. There's not much gore (though there is a little). Another thing might be that the female characters / creatures tend to be dressed as females usually are in fantasy artwork.

I got mine as one of two games for fifteen quid at Game in the Bullring Shopping Centre, Birmingham. This compares very favourably with the online prices - Amazon have it for £8.48 and Play.com sell it for a penny more. I noticed that they also had the Gold Edition, which includes the Hammers of Fate and Tribes of the East expansion packs, along with some other extras like Developers Diaries and Monster Test Videos. If you're a fan of the genre / series, that might be an even better buy.

Summary: This game is a must for turn-based strategy fans.