OT: HOMM V

[HotNifeThruButr]

Maybe it's just that I haven't played HOMMV online, but I found everything about the game good... except the actual gameplay... and I don't really know why. The systems of the heroes, cities, and the creature variety all seem to have integrity and potential.

My personal feeling on HoMM's failing, either looking only at V or at the whole series, is that the game has an enormous slippery slope problem. The nature of the game is such that one army, one hero, or one city is always so meaningful that to lose just one battle or have one of your cities taken over basically means you've lost the game. Conversely, you can tell how a game will end long before it's actually ended by looking at which side won the first battle. This is because as stacks grow, they become more powerful faster, not slower. Shooters/casters can annihilate almost any neutral army without suffering casualties as long as they have a critical mass, and melee stacks can wipe out any enemy stack without fear of retaliation as long as they have a critical mass.

So basically, and I'm pretty sure I'm making not too bold an assertion here, the only place in HOMM games where a player's skill can determine whether he will win is in his judgment of which neutrals he is powerful enough to attack. If a player gets his army wiped out by neutrals, then he's basically lost the game but if a player can fight the toughest neutrals he can take on, he'll have more gold, items, and experience to fight others with.

HOMMV is boring. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

My 2 cents.

[Loren]

I've had no crash problems with it. I've had to restart a couple of times due to scripting errors making victory impossible, though.

There's one thing I really don't like about it, though--there's always a final battle involving prior heroes and you don't get to build your forces or anything, you just get what it gives you and you lose all equipment that's not part of a set. These final battles can be insane, especially if you didn't manage to get some key spell you need for victory.

[Omnirizon]

I input your subject line to stearnest and it output this:

TOME VR OHM

obviously it is trying as best it can to tell us that we should be playing T.O.M.E, as if it were our virtual reality and daily meditation.

So don't waste money on HOMM, play T.O.M.E. its free and its better; and its what the cool kids do.

[Randvek]

HotNifeThruButr said:
Maybe it's just that I haven't played HOMMV online, but I found everything about the game good... except the actual gameplay... and I don't really know why. The systems of the heroes, cities, and the creature variety all seem to have integrity and potential.

I think the same thing, but I think I do know what HOMMV is lacking: map design. Think about it. Which maps really stand out to you as interesting and well-designed, either as a custom game map or as a campaign map? Probably none of them. I think maps make a huge difference in games like this.

[Zeldor]

Randvek:

Probably because map editor is just a joke They should have made 2d editor with 3d preview.


Overally HOMM5 is huge disappointment. Created by crappy Russian studio with some lame requirements from Ubisoft. They really wasted great chance. But well, series were pretty much destroyed by HOMM4 already.

[Agrajag]

Here are my musings on HoMMV, I'm somewhat if an HoMM fanboy, so I'm biased, but also should have enough experience to talk with some authority

Starting with random things people wrote:
1) Game is too random.
Ha!
a) Risk management.
b) It's about as random as Dom3. Maybe even less, since no slinger could ever kill that SC with an uber lucky oe roll.
2) The game is made by damn russians (:P)
Have you played HoMMIII? Did you install WoG? WoG was made by russian fans
For people that don't know what I'm talking about, in the Wake of Gods is a fanmade expansion pack for HoMMIII (complete) that adds a lot of content and makes the game a whole lot more fun to play. It is what really makes HoMMIII in my opinion. It is also the reason I still enjoy playing HoMMIII from time to time.
3) Skillz.
I'm not really that great of an HoMM player, because I enjoy playing for fun more than to win, but let me tell you this, the really awesome players play nothing like "we" do, it's definitely not about one hero or one city for them.
At least that applies for HoMMIII where I was somewhat interested in MP, I'm not that familiar with HoMMV MP, but since it was made to be quite similar I can only guess that the same thing applies to HoMMV.
4) Critical Mass.
Applies only to neutrals, and isn't always the best strategy.
And even with critical mass, there will be hard fights (against neutrals), and there will be battles that you just can't win without losses.

So here are my disorganized thoughts on HoMMV:
* I haven't bothered with MP, since when the game came out MP was completely unplayable. Some responses here seem to indicate that MP is still broken. I would certainly be surprised if I found it wasn't broken, because when I played it was horribly broken.
* Luckily, the best kind of MP, the Hot-Seat definitely works great
* If you buy the game, get the gold edition with both expansions. The Tribes of the East expansion really adds lots of cool stuff.
* The game is really fun in Hot-Seat, just yesterday me and my friend played ~8 hours of almost none-stop Hot-Seat.
* It seems as if Tribes of the East has increased system requirements It definitely works worse than the original version on the same hardware.
* One of the reasons people seem to think that HoMMV sucks without knowing why, is that it runs slowly (both graphically and AI-thinking-ly). I remember not having much fun with HoMMIII when it came out, but changing my mind once I could run it quickly.
Of course, this means that slowness might impair your enjoyment of the game. Do you have a weak PC?
* There's definite tactical thinking involved in this game. Sometimes it's hard to see, but sometimes you'll come up with some brilliant that will put an ear-to-ear smile on your face. (Even if all it "does" is reduce your casualties from "few" to "none" when fighting against neutrals.)
* A lot of people talk about the game building up to one epic battle to decide the game. Like I said previously this isn't all that true for the really great players, but even for "you", those epic battles are seriously awesomely fun, especially when fought against the AI.
* I still say that HoMMII was the awesomest of the bunch I really liked how it sacrificed balance for making factions more thematic.
* HoMMIV was nice, but too many things were ruined in it
* HoMMV was designed to recreate the success of HoMMIII, so if you liked III there's a nice chance you'll enjoy V.
* Let me say it again, I really like the Hot-Seat mode (as I did in previous HoMMs)


I think the best way to get a good impression of the game is to hop on over to a friend who has the game (preferably with both expansion packs and fully patched) and play some co-op Hot-Seat, if you won't enjoy that then you probably won't enjoy the game. If you do enjoy it, then you probably will enjoy the game

[B0rsuk]

I like Age of Wonders 2: Shadow Magic much more than Homm5 .

Homm1 was revolution.
Homm2 was revolution.
Homm3 was evolution. It was good, but not spectacular for me. Homm2 added and improved much more than Homm3.
Homm4 I have a lot of sympathy for. It has many very interesting features and changes, but it's clearly rushed and unfinished. 3DO was going bankrupt at the time H4 was being made, and it shows. At the release there were UGLY memory leaks and performance issues. Prior to Heroes4, there was a saying that you don't need a strong machine to run a Homm game. H4 broke that rule and H5 continues it. I value H4 a lot because it tried many new things, and many of them were, in my opinion, Good (like changes to combat system, simultaneous retaliation, reliable and consistent magic although it was MTG clone, castle walls, obstacles, unit choices, units that aren't piles of stats...)

I would love H5 if it wa H4 done right - with proper resources and polish. Instead, it's a bland clone of H3 with Warcraft graphics. I considered H3 good, but somewhat uninspired. In some ways, H5 is a regression compared to H3 - for instance stats and hero system, map size, editor, magic, number of spells.

I've found my H4 done right. It's AoW2: SM. Age of Wonders2: Shadow Magic plays like a cross of Homm and Master of Magic. Strong Master of Magic influences include: magic domains, global spells, summonable units with upkeep, castle sieges, and more.
Too bad AoW2: SM is aging and few people play it anymore.

[DonCorazon]

Thanks for the feedback. For me, most old games seem like they were much more fun than newer games. I don't know if that is because older games were truly better, or just newer/innovative at the time, or if I have just become jaded and cranky with 30+ years of age.

But if you go to a website like Gamespot and look at Game rankings, most of the highest ranked games are from the late 90s. I remember playing the first Might and Magic and having a blast, and not that long ago I got one of the Might and Magic RPGs I had missed (I think 7 or 8) and thought it was a lot more enjoyable than Neverwinter Nights, despite the polish and graphics. The older HOMMs seemed better too than my experience with the HOMM5 demo anyway.

I often judge a game by the amount of fan-based activity and content, which was what eventually led me to Dom3 - when I saw the Wiki. Some games just come out and die almost immediately - not even an FAQ on the web to herald their passing. While I had some fun with AoW2:SM, I don't see much of a community around that game, maybe I am just not looking in the right spot.

Also, though not much of a real-time strategy game player (too much stress in real-life; no need to supplement it with frantic clicking and scrolling around) - I did find Warlords Battlecry 2 to be a game that stayed on my hard drive for a long time. It had that touch of old school humor often missing in newer games (the voices for the quasits come to mind)...

[Agrajag]

Maybe you'd enjoy Warlords: Battlecry 3 then
I had a lot of fun with both 2 and 3, but ultimately I'm just not an RTS guy, so I stopped having fun with them