8.2

Heroes of Might and Magic V is the Vth (that’s Roman for 5th) episode in a successful series that has cultivated a devout following. Nival, the developer, did not drop the ball with this version (the previous versions were developed by other companies, Ubisoft handed development over to Nival for this version). Having never played the previous games in the series, we dove into Heroes of Might and Magic V with the sort of eager curiosity of a five year old with a grasshopper and a swiss army knife. And we were happy with the results! Check out the details below.

Graphics

Heroes V has the sort of fun, almost whimsical graphics. The sort that leap from the pages of a well-written fantasy novel. We were very pleased with the animation of the monsters during combat scenes. It was fun and entertaining to watch the ghastly ghouls creep towards our soldiers as archers rained arrows into their putrid ranks. The worlds that we explored and towns we built were rich and colorful. Heroes of Might and Magic V features a quality 3D engine that lets you pan around the cities you’ve built and look at the additions to your castle. While this doesn’t have a practical effect on the gameplay, it definitely adds some atmosphere and depth to the game. Overall the effects, atmosphere, animation and texturing were very well done.

Sound

From the clip-clop of horses hooves to the whip of a released arrow the sound in Heroes V was fitting and well done. The sound hit the balance of ambiance, information and entertainment and really set off the game. Another well done.

Gameplay

We had some trouble coming up with a genre for Heroes V. It’s one part RPG, one part strategy with a bit of city building and economic management piled into a turn-based masterpiece. As mentioned, we had no experience with previous versions and judged Heroes V purely on its own merits. The game begins with a beautiful animation sequence that sets the stage for the story. You are a young lady, determined to raise an army to fight back the demon hoards and rescue your betrothed prince. This is the default campaign, the game offers multiple other races that you can play. You control a hero, or heroes, that represent themselves and the armies they lead. Each turn represents a day in the Heroes world and you spend that day exploring, fighting, recruiting and upgrading. The world is filled with farms, windmills, towns and other landmarks that can add troops, abilities, modifiers and upgrades to your army. The world also features monsters, represented by a single monster creature on the map.

If you attack one of these monsters you are placed on a grid-based battlefield with the opportunity to place your hero’s troops strategically. Battlefields are fairly plain. They reflect the sort of area you were in when you challenged the opposing army but beyond that they are a flat field with a few logs or boulders as obstacles. A battle plays out in turns, each unit getting a turn to move or attack another unit. Heroes are behind your troop lines, they can attack and use special abilities but they are not easily attacked. We felt that the ability to attack heroes might increase the amount of thought you have to put into a battle. There is a bar along the bottom that shows the attack order. This helps you plan your strategy, based on who will have the opportunity to attack you first. The enemy AI will vie for battlefield placement and seems more likely to attack your strong troops first. Damage is dealt based on special abilities and troop strength. For instance, you can lump all of your archers together to form a single, high-damage squad. Or, you can split them out to do several, smaller damage attacks. You must make decisions on how to split and place your troops before the battle begins based on who you’re facing. Special abilities and modifiers such as luck and morale can change damage dealt and attack order at any time! We were able to spot a few key strategies early in the game that caused pretty heavy damage against enemy AI consistently. Numbers play a pretty important role but your troop selection, special abilities and battlefield maneuvers also can heavily affect combat.

Once you take a city you can upgrade and build many different structures. These allow you to recruit more heroes, troops and provide more gold to support your armies. City defense and economy become important factors in your overall gameplay. Cities and other buildings produce resources and products on a weekly basis (except for gold, which is daily). Weeks rotate through a yearly cycle and some parts of the year influence the speed and cost of resources. Getting your hero to the appropriate places to recruit troops once they’ve been produced, and having enough gold for the job, are all parts of the strategy you must develop.

Longevity

The various buildings, cities and resources give the game a very real and deep feel. We quickly got into the game and enjoyed the variety of factors that make up the gameplay. If we had one gripe, it would be the static, predictable battlefields. Despite this small gripe, we felt that Heroes V could provide amusement for months to come. The sheer variety of economic, movement and recruitment options make for some innovative strategies before your hero ever takes the battlefield. Add to that the array of traits and abilities your hero can gain as you increase their experience and you have a very deep game.

Technical

We ran Heroes V on a Sony Vaio laptop with a Pentium M processor, nVidia GeForce Go graphics card and 1GB of RAM. The game ran fine at reasonable resolutions. It also ran fine on our variety of other, more-powerful resolutions. The graphics are beautiful, even at lower resolutions.

Installation was easy, we never patched the game and didn’t notice any bugs or errors. The graphics engine ran things smoothly and efficiently. No complaints!

Heroes of Might and Magic V seems to be a very solid package. We definitely recommend this game to fans of the series and would also advise RPG, RTS and Turn based strategy enthusiasts to give it a try. It’s a slower, more methodical game than many strategy or even RPG titles but the game concepts are well executed and unique.