Before i start i´d like to mention that i will gear this review torwards those who have been playing heroes of might and magic since the release of 2 or 3. So i wont go through explaning the basiscs of the gameplay but rather discuss weather or not it is an improvement or an disapointment.
Now the very first thing i thought of before playing it was.."i hope its not like heroes 4" and thankfully it is not..why did i hate heroes 4 you might ask..well frankly the story was not good at all..the extra rpg element that was added to the heroes was intresting at first but proved to be more of an annoyance later on..and you could send out units without a hero wich was a nice addition but not one that really fit in. In heroes V all of that was scrapped..yes it´s back to the basics we´ve become familiar with but this time it´s all in 3d.
Now how does it hold up compared to heroes 2 and 3. The story while not bad has been simplified. Demons have come to ruin everything so it´s up to the good guys to fight them. Simple good vs evil thing going on here althought there are more cutscenes and some nice videos it basically can´t hide it´s simplicity.
On to the gameplay..exploring the landscape gathering resources and killing monsters is still here..you got your hero and some units and it´s off to adventuring..but what i found to be a disapointment it´s been made to easy..there are way too many unit dwellings around..so what you will end up with is a huge army of level 1 units and a few higher level ones..so any battle that looks challenging will be ruined while you might lose some units you can be sure that the 1000 or so level 1 units will finish of the battle in one hit. But they move slowly but that only causes a minor delay in winning the battle.
I don´t like to win battles based only on amount of units i want to be able to outhink the enemy with tactics..wich is what heroes has always been about. But no thats not here anymore none of the challenge is left. What annoyed me most about heroes V is that the game expects you to be a newcomer to the game so there are always some useless tips popping up to teach you how to play..i don´t need any tips i am not new to heroes give me a f***ing challenge.
Sounds harsh yes but thats just the tip of the iceberg.
Moving on to another important aspect of heroes. The castles thankfully again they did not use the system from heroes 4 where you had to choose beetween what kind of units you wanted. So it´s back to something similar to heroes 2/3 you can can get all units and again it´s possible to upgrade the unit houses. But something got messed up here now for some buildings the castle has to be of a certain level..wich sounds simple but somehow isnt very useful at all..in fact i felt it was overcomplicating something that was simple and useful in heroes 2/3..and thanks to the 3d wich looks impressive it now takes longer just to load the the screen..wich you spend at most few minutes in buying some units or making a new building. Add that to a long campaign and these slowdowns start to be annoying.
So to finish this i´d like to say..they should not have added 3d to the game..why ? well it does not serve the game in any way aside from looking good at times. I don´t need to be able to rotate or zoom in when in battle or just exploring the landscape..it takes something that worked perfectly in heroes 2/3 and makes a mess out of it.
So how does it compare it´s worse than heroes 2 and 3 but better that heroes 4..