Heroes of Might & Magic V Review

By Barry Allen

The path is clear. The enemy’s town lies in the distance. Wait! A path appears to the left. It leads to an underground tunnel. Which way should I go? A pit devil appears to the right and yells, “The Wait Is Over.” I raise my sword to surgically remove his medulla oblongata. The doorbell rings and wakes me from my slumber. The common carrier has arrived and in his hand, Might and Magic V. I cast a Slow spell on him and then realize that someone beat me to it.

If you are a veteran HOMM player or someone new to the series, I think that there is a lot to like about this game and worth considering it. There have been many changes since Ubisoft purchased the Might and Magic rights from 3DO. First and foremost, it is a visually stunning game. You really feel that you are part of a three-dimensional world. The detail, the colors, the animation and the entire world are light years ahead of anything that we have been used to in the previous Heroes series.

For those of you new to the series, HOMM V is a turn-based, role playing game that is filled with, well, might and magic. You are better off to be proficient at both. You begin the game with a hero and a few monsters for support. You try and find a city, beat up on the monsters there, and claim it for your own. You spend the next several turns building up your city. As you build more buildings you gain the ability to create new and more powerful monsters. Your hero learns spells which come in handy as you explore the land. City development is very important and requires your attention early on. By the way, the manual is not very informative when it comes to skills explanations and the details of building up your town. These issues were covered much better in previous editions. However, after a game or two, you will probably get the hang of it. It is not rocket science…and who reads the manual anyway?  (One important warning…Ubisoft has issued a patch update. Without it there are many bugs and problems, so make sure you download it before beginning your quest. It is here: www.ubi.com/US/Downloads/Info.aspx?dlId=1628)

At the same time, it is important to explore the land, gathering resources, fighting monsters, and gaining experience. With experience comes new skills and abilities. There are lots of neutral monsters ready to put up a fight, but at least in the first campaign, most of the battles are fairly easily won. There have been many complaints about this on the web, but it gave me the opportunity to enjoy the scenery and animation when monsters kill each other. It is very well done.

If you want a real challenge, in the last part of the first scenario, try going through both garrisons at the end. So you want a challenge? Good luck! Seriously, even though I was going to win most of the battles, some of them required a little bit of planning and ingenuity…just not as much as previous incarnations of the game.

Before I leave the battle scenes, there have been many upgrades here, too. You have the ability to see exactly how far a monster moves to attack, which is helpful in planning your strategy. Also, at the bottom of the screen you are shown the order of which monster is the next to attack. Even your hero gets to attack, no matter where they are and how far away the opposing monster is. This makes no sense at all when attacking a town when the monsters are behind walls, but maybe the heroes all have special powers not found in the…manual!?! The one drawback is that sometimes it is difficult to tell which monsters are yours and which are your opponent's. Sometimes some of the monsters are even hidden by each other. Ah, such are the casualties of war.

Ubisoft kept many of the traditional elements in the game. In most maps there are two levels: above ground, and underground. There is the puzzle element, where you visit obelisks and eventually a map shows you where the special treasure is buried. By keeping true to the history of the game, I feel as though I am putting on an old piece of armor (some might say shoe), and it is fun to see it in such vivid colors and scenery.

There are lots of cutaway scenes which seem to be new for the series. In HOMM IV, most of the cutaway scenes were all text. Here they are vividly rendered with great animation, even if the characters’ mouths never move, and even if the scenes are right from a bad B movie. Still, it sucks you into the game and the storyline. In HOMM IV, who wanted to read page after page of text? Okay, yes, in one scene during the first campaign, their mouths did move. I guess the ventriloquist convention had ended.

There are some drawbacks to the game that should be noted. Sometimes the game is just a little clunky. For example, try moving monsters from a city garrison into your hero’s army. I just can’t get the drag and drop to work on a consistent basis. In previous HOMM’s when you got close to something interesting, your horse would rear up on its back legs right over the artifact or resource. In HOMM V, if you are “zoomed out,” your horse needs to be below the artifact. Sometimes, the artifact or resource is not out in the open, so it takes a little getting used to, especially if you are a veteran of the game. Also, there are a lot of creatures waiting to battle you to the death, but many are stationary, and in most cases, easily avoidable. Yes, some of them are guarding special places, so get ready to fight your way through, but most of the time you can walk right past them. I usually thumbed my nose at them as I rode by.

I know that it has been said many times and many ways, but it is really important to save your game constantly. One bad battle and you have to go back to where you were when you last saved your game. If you are like me, that could be several hours ago! In HOMM IV, there were automatic saves for the last two rounds, but they are missing in this edition. There is an AutoSave option, but it saves every turn in a new file. If you use this option, your hard drive will need extra space to store each saved game.

The AI is a little quirky. In the first campaign, it seemed that the opposing heroes are scared off too easily. At the end of the first campaign, the opposition has thousands, and I mean thousands, of monsters ready to do you in, but they send out a new hero with only a few. I guess they didn’t want to leave the party.

In closing, I think that Ubisoft has a great first try in keeping the Might and Magic series alive. Many of us have waited for years and years, and I think that there is a lot to keep you happy. I do believe, however, that after hearing comments from loyal fans, HOMM VI should have many upgrades and improvements. Until them, I will sit in my favorite old chair, with an old friend who I haven’t seen in a while. It isn’t perfect, but it’s nice to reminisce, catch up on new events, and rekindle that camaraderie that you have missed since you last saw each other.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 78%. If you are looking for a fun, relaxing game, with great visuals, you have found it; if you are looking for a challenge, well, take a calculus class, or maybe intermediate accounting.