A great legacy's first mistake. (Heroes of Might & Magic V (PC))

Member Name: MaestroRage

Product:	Heroes of Might & Magic V (PC)
Date:	02/08/08 (5 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great music, powerful city views

Disadvantages: 3D take on many graphics didn't fit, bad story

The Heroes of Might and Magic series has always been something of great joy for me. A die hard fan all the way! With that said Ubisoft which has a rather good reputation to bringing out good games, has somewhat let down this round.

In order to understand why this one was somewhat lacking, one must understand where the others were excelling.

The fourth and third HoMM held luscious 2D sprite work which in an age of ruthless 3d modelling was a remarkable relief. UbiSoft decided to drop all that and go with models, but sadly the models were... rather poor in quality. Dumbed down and awkward moving.

Storyline wise... oh dear god how I wish HoMM5 had followed the route of HoMM4 story line depiction wise. Giving the player 6 campaigns to play through with a riveting storyline which comes in the form of event triggered text.

Call me old fashioned and out of date, but sitting there reading these wonderful tales gave more character, more depth then the cinematic clips in HoMM5. The story writing was breathtaking and I found myself playing just to read more. Each and everyone had my heart racing at the end.

With the cinematic clips few and far from each other, it felt more... linear, the characters somewhat void of personality and the death of some heroes in the storyline happen so quickly that you can't get attached to them, and die without cause or reason.

The only thing that HoMM5 did just as well as any other HoMM game is the music. Paul Anthony Romero, the composer for both HoMM 4 and 5 does an excellent job with the music. Vibrant, powerful, and provocative. Not every track is golden but there's a great selection in there. I would often install HoMM4 just to listen to the music in it at the beginning as no OST was readily available.

Summary: A decent game, but fails to stand out like the others did from the crowd.