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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
| HoMM 5: Demo @ Worthplaying |
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Thaks to Worthplaying for dropping us a line to say the Heroes of Might & Magic V <a href="http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?sid=33388" target="_blank">demo</a> is now out, weighing in at 680Mb:<blockquote><em>Heroes of Might & Magic V will offer a wealth of innovations such as a highly immersive scenario, a variety of appealing factions, modern 3D graphics, a revolutionary tactical combat system, and a story-based campaign mode. Ubisoft has released a singleplayer demo with 3 playable missions (2 campaign missions, 1 custom game), 2 playable races, and 6 presets for Duel game (play on Ubi.com).</em></blockquote> |
Fri Apr 14, 2006 4:27 pm |
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xSamhainx
Paws of Doom
Joined: 11 Sep 2002
Posts: 2192
Location: San Diego |
Played it, liked it, looking forward to the full version!
Even better, the HOMM die-hards seem to be impressed as well and have deemed it worthy from everything I've read thus far, so it looks like we wont have to put up with endless, frothing gamer angst regarding the game. But then again it is just a demo, it 'aint over til the fat lady NPC sings.
My issues with it so far are mostly ancillary little complaints, such as the scrolling controls in certain portions of the game. The archaic arrow keys are how you scroll the view during the battles, while in the overhead map view, you are able to mouse-the-edge of the screen to move the camera. C'mon fellas, arrow keys are sooo nineties! I should never have to take my right hand off the mouse during a strategy game, period.
Another complaint, from my perspective, is the fact that your titular "hero" unit just sorta sits off to the side the entire battle like some sort of referee, the hero does not get attacked personally during the battle from what I'm seeing. Then, he or she seems to coast by and take what appears to me to be a "cheap shot" once a turn. I dont know if this is faithful to the series since I am admittedly a newbie to it, but it just doesnt seem right to me. I am deeply entrenched in Disciples II, which supposedly borrows heavily from HOMM, and your heavy-hitter heros fight right alongside the rank-and-file, often literally right on the front line slugging it out directly with the enemy.
Thinking about getting the limited edition on this one, just so's I can have see the prior versions, and have it all under one roof.
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“Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving.”-Mark Twain |
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Fri Apr 14, 2006 4:29 pm |
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Guest
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The Hero thing is sort of a mix between heroes 1-3 where the heroes never attacked (but could cast spells) and heroes 4 where the hero was a seperate unit on the battlefield and could attack or be attacked (and often had a very short lifespan).
More people disliked the hero on the battlefield thing in H4 then liked it, and more importantly it was extremlely hard to properly balance. It worked well in Disciples, but they had a vastly simplified battlefield and combat mechanics.
Overall I'm happy with how it works, though I'll have to wait and see the final version. |
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Fri Apr 14, 2006 10:45 pm |
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Antiga
Village Dweller
Joined: 18 Apr 2006
Posts: 5
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Being a fan of the HoMM Series ever since HoMM 2, I can say that HoMM V is one of the best in the series. HoMM 3 used to be my favourite, simply because of the pretty simple gameplay, good features, etc. HoMM 4 seemed as if it was created by entirely different people. Everything was messed up, hero plays in battle, town building was rather annoying, you had to choose which building to build. Wanted ballistae? Fine, but no griffins for you. This caused you unable to mix certain units which you loved so much in HoMM 3. Even features in HoMM 4 were messed up. Vampire's were not half as usefull anymore, and sometimes certain missions did not make sense, or you would for some reason recieve an item or number of units(as a pre-scripted event) which had nothing to do with the actual scenario/mission.
HoMM V has everything HoMM 3 had, but more, and many things better. I played the beta at first, and was pretty dissapointed, but the demo restored my faith in the game, and got me addicted instantly.
Town building is done the way you want it. No more choosing from which unit your gonna be growing in that town, only thing keeping you from getting the units you want is resources. Talking about resources, I must admit the demo does show some inbalance when looking at potential resource income(number of mines, and types, seems hard to get a mine of each resource type) and the cost of buildings, using the marketplace to trade resources is one solution, but the prices are insane, even though gold doesn't seem to be as hard to get anymore. Artifact merchants will gladly sell you items such as the well known purse of gold or whatever. These items will cost you, but will earn back what you spend, in tenfold. Towns can generate more income than before, and even gold mines/abandoned mines seem to be in greater ambudance.
Different types of heroes, hero leveling, skills, etc mostly remain the same, though leveling up the spellcasting potential of a hero is very different. Instead of just leveling up your skill in magic, you can now also master certain spells, which will give them Mass effect, or Area of Effect, also alot of skills have been added or changed giving very interesting combat play, in which a hero can make a huge difference, solely depending on the choises the player made.
Graphics are pretty nice, awesome combat effects, though most of us are probably used to such graphics. When you enter the game for the first time, your most likely to see some 3d-ish graphics with a hero in the center of your screen. Even though this looks a lot better than any other HoMM, it could have been of higher quality for todays games. That's what you think, untill you enter a town, some towns can looks absolutely amazing, and this is not even entirely because of nice graphics, but simply the way in which the town is build. Devs have made things look like much more than it actually is. You will see large towns with seemingly many buildings, while in reality all you can do is get some imps and horned demons to join your cause, after which you'll have to continue building.
Each building you build, add's 1 point to the town level. (Almost?)All buildings have a town level requirement, some need other buildings to be build first. This causes for an even greater level of strategy in town building, than before. Will you get your town to lvl 15 just to build a citadel to boost creature growth, this week? Or instead try to build those other 2 creature spawners, causing in greater divesity of current creatures, but less will be spawned. Another nice feature is that all creature spawning buildings can be upgraded, to give access to better creatures. Even though we know this feature, from HoMM 3, we missed it in HoMM 4, and im very glad to have it back.
Last but not least, Multiplayer capabilities. Ubi.com has online servers build in the game, so no more need of gamespy or manually connecting using IP adress and what else. The demo only allows online duels. A duel is simply 1 battle beteween 2 armies. In the demo you can choose from 6 pre-made mid-lvl hero's each with their own pre-made mid-strength army. By playing those duels online, you can't only learn alot of tactics which you would otherwise have never known about, but also learn unit types, and what is good against what. Things you would otherwise learn though hard gameplay experience, and if your a hardcore gamer like me, you'll play at higher difficulty levels causing you to have to load games and restart scenario's more often than you'd like. Online feature rocks.
I'd continue and tell you about how each unit is worked out way better, to be even more unique than before, or how many (good) things are still the same as before, but you people must have something better to do, I know I do. 
-- Ant
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To be or not to be. I am. |
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Tue Apr 18, 2006 6:31 pm |
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