Heroes of Might and Magic 5

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by child of Thor
I'd heard that HoMM3 was the best of the lot?

Yeah but HoMM1 has teh bestest graphix evar!

[Grumbold]

I'd put the case that HoMM2 was the best for single player. It had more depth than HoMM1 but there weren't 1001 assorted places for heroes to visit, so the opponent AI was actually marginally capable. Once it had a big army, it wanted to come and take one of your towns, not continue cycling between mill, guardhouse, town, stable, temple and anything else in the neighbourhood.

In HoMM 3 & 4 I never again had that feeling. Instead the map was largely yours to explore and all the avenues were regulated so you didn't have much freedom of choice. The enemy had to be given warp points to take them near your towns to present a threat. Once you wiped their original tough army, warps would often be blundered through by weak new heroes, showing the AI had no appreciation of why it had gone through the warp or what it could achieve on the other side.

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Yeah but HoMM1 has teh bestest graphix evar!

i dont know, MoMM2 looks the best imho

And for Grumbolds comments it does sound like what i'm finding out in HoMM3, although i have been beaten twice by the AI so far; it does seem that once i get over my reluctance to 'RTS' it(build a huge army in the quickest time) then i could steamroller the AI quite comfortably.

[Sandman]

So, who else has played the demo?

[SirOsis]

I'll try it in 2 more days. Gotta love a 600Mb download over a modem.

Patience...

[Sandman]

My impressions:

Lovely graphics. Slightly whiffy interface. Decent battle system.

The dialogue and voice acting is .

'...the wrath of Elrath!'

[muxec]

I played both beta and demo. Good, but v0.9 (demo) is still buggy and too imbalanced even if you look only on the part available in demo.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by SirOsis
I'll try it in 2 more days. Gotta love a 600Mb download over a modem.

Patience...

Maybe you should upgrade to broadband.

[RGBVideo]

IMHO: Like the graphics. Like the music. It looks like the real thing, but feels like the beta version, not a demo.

What are the system requirements? I can't find them from the official site, and mobygames fact sheet isn't up yet. The demo feels slow on my Sempron 1,6Ghz (½gb RAM, 128Mb graphcard).

[Sandman]

The skill system is nice.

There are two categories - skills and abilities. Skills have three levels, a la heroes 3. Abilities have one level, and are tied to a particular skill. Each skill has three abilities associated with it.

For example, leadership gives you access to estates, recruitment and diplomacy.

There's also class-specific skills, counterstrike for the Knight and gating for the Demon Lord. These seem to have more than three abilities associated with them.

Finally, each hero has a unique specialty.

[Cort Haus]

Joining the debate a year late, I thought that both the graphics and soundtrack were more appealing in HOMM2 than HOMM3. I haven't tried 4 - it got some negative feedback early on. The HOMM2 graphics gleamed and glistened.

[Sandman]

Complete Skill Sheet (mildly spoilerish)

[Ljube]

I tried the demo. Camera is a bit confusing. Right click info isn't detailed enough and disappears quickly. I still haven't figured out everything about the combat, but it's the return of the old HOMM2/HOMM3 combat (retaliation after taking casualties). Heroes participate in the battle only marginally.

The list of skills/spells/abilities is immense...

[Snotty]

I kept having bloody elf archers in duels being hidden behind tree ents, until I right clicked to change the camera

[Standup]

Finally downloaded the demo. According to Amazon the whole game is out sometime this month.

On the plus it's HOMM3 with 3D graphics
On the downside it's HOMM3 with 3D graphics.

I'm not judging too much as it's only a demo but it seems to be essentially the same game but with very demanding graphics. A few more creatures, extra attacks, more abilities for heroes and a nice new Initiative 'strip' for combat. The lack of big change not in itself a bad thing.

The graphics i'm not so sold on. I don't see what the switch to 3D actually adds (other than maybe trying to hide it's turn based origins perhaps?). On my main PC a P4 3.4GHZ, 1GB ram and an X600 I can run the graphics at about '60%'. Now i know the X600 isn't a highend card but then I don't expect to have to add a 7800 just to get the best from a TBS game. They're very pretty but i often lose things behind other obejcts and I rapidly got bored using the camera just so i could try and find other stacks, objects mines etc. I actually play with the zoom quite far out. It would be a shame if the effort on the gfx has distracted from the AI or gameplay.