Heroes of Might & Magic V: Tribes of the East (PC)

[GamerDad]

Michael Anderson's Heroes of Might & Magic V: Tribes of the East (PC) article - http://www.gamerdad.com/detail.cfm?itemID=4032

[Greg1038]

I didn't think you guys were into HOMM series. I have this and it's pretty good. I would warn parents that the some of the female troops (in the dark elf race and orc shamans, especially), particularly in the animated cut scenes, are scantily clad in fetishwear that parents might find objectionable.

P.S. hi people. Haven't been around for awhile, hope you are all well.

[txa1265]

Hi Greg! Great to see you back. I do like the HoMM stuff, but came late to the party ... and even later to getting through all of #5 to do my reviews

[GamerDad]

HOMM 2 was a transcendent experience and for that I'll always love Steinmeyer. HOMM 3 was as good, only bigger.

I still have a bad taste in my mouth from HOMM4.

Tell me, is HOMM5 a return to form?

[Greg1038]

HOMM 2 was a transcendent experience and for that I'll always love Steinmeyer. HOMM 3 was as good, only bigger.

I still have a bad taste in my mouth from HOMM4.

Tell me, is HOMM5 a return to form?

HOMM5 is a return to the HOMM3 game and makes a number of improvements to HOMM3 (more varied and interesting skill trees; more logical and fair spell system; the hero can fight on the field with the troops; fun and unique racial specialties; improved initiative system; interesting artifacts; alternative upgrades to troops; etc.). All props to the developer (Nival) for some thoughful improvements but also for keeping the basic outlines of a game (HOMM3) that was a winner.

But I have several reasons why I like HOMM3 over 5, including:

Graphics = slow: HOMM5's main difference with it's predecessors is it is in 3D and crowded with high-end graphics, and that slows the game way down. Any TBS game can plod along slowly because there is no time pressure and the good ones require thoughtful choices rather than button mashing. But with HOMM5, the computer takes forever to finish its turn even on a good computer. Also, I think HOMM5's world looks kind of dark and ugly.

Stupid AI: The AI in HOMM5 is pretty stupid compared to HOMM3. The main challenge comes from the fact that the "computer player" just cheats (gives itself lots of troops or powerful heroes without building them up, and this is a building game). It was much improved with the Tribes of the East expansion, but there is no excuse for the latest version to have inferior AI to the 1998 version.

Scant options for hotseat mulitplayer: HOMM3 has a ton of multiplayer maps, and you can choose to play cooperatively or against each other. HOMM5 has few multiplayer options, and they are almost always against each other. That's one reason I posted in another thread that HOMM3 is a great co-op game for a nine year old, and HOMM5 is not.

Campaign storyline: The campaigns are not that interesting and occasionally veer into the nonsensical or fail to tie up loose ends.

Silly-looking cutscenes and heroes: The hero portraits are 70% steroid freaks and fetishists, with voices and dialogue to match, like something from a 13-year-old's fever dream. Tribes has at least one thinly veiled dick joke and one thinly veiled gay joke.

[GamerDad]

Augh! Sounds like I'd hate it. All of those are pet peeves of mine! They still don't get it, huh? Heroes of Might & Magic is a clever and semi-abstract tabletop wargame. It should look like a well-made table top wargame! It needs NO 3D. It needs no special effects. All it needs is what they put into HOMM 2 and then 3.

It's like if Nintendo came out with then next Mario Party - and it used the look of Gears of War to render it.