HoMM5 Released, Europe Rejoices!

[Jason]

<strong>[ Update ]</strong>

<p>For all you Europeans out there, Heroes of Might & Magic 5 has been released. North Americans will have to wait until Tuesday. In the meantime, here's a press release:</p><blockquote><p>Nival Interactive announces that the highly-anticipated Heroes of Might and Magic V for the PC hits the stores today!

The long-awaited sequel to the all time favorite Heroes of Might and Magic series has already received critical acclaim from both gaming fans and world wide press alike. Spectacular 3D graphics makes the epic world of Heroes of Might and Magic come alive like never before! Innovations build on the series&rsquo; proven gameplay, while offering players new and deep tactical choices. New creatures, spells, and effects make the battles more exciting &ndash; and players all over the world are looking forward to battle online in different multiplayer modes, including the new Duel and Ghost modes. Even before its release, Heroes of Might and Magic V has already been highly acclaimed, and now everyone can enjoy the full version of one of the most awaited games of 2006!

The game has been released today in most of the European countries, Russia and CIS states. The North American release is scheduled for May 23rd. </p></blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><a href="http://www.tacticularcancer.com/gallery.php?dir=HoMM%20V&file=Battle1.jpg"><img src="http://www.tacticularcancer.com/screenshots/HoMM%20V/thumbs/Battle1_thumb.jpg" alt=" " width="200" height="150" /></a> <a href="http://www.tacticularcancer.com/gallery.php?dir=HoMM%20V&file=Battle3.jpg"><img src="http://www.tacticularcancer.com/screenshots/HoMM%20V/thumbs/Battle3_thumb.jpg" alt=" " width="200" height="150" /></a></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p> </p>

 

[Nicolai]

It has already been out for a few days over here.

 

[Jason]

Norway doesn't count.

 

[kingcomrade]

Ever.

 

[Nicolai]

Or perhaps it does. Ever thought of it like that before?

 

[Balor]

Well, it's one of rare game that does not only add fancy graphics, but also adds deep gameplay.
Interface could be better, though - for some reason it feels a bit awkwards.

Anyway, despite elemental chains reworked, I enjoy very much playing warlock, and Academy is very good too.

Necro is nice, but not much fun for me. Haven and Inferno, both are plain boring for me, for some reason.

And didn't play elves yet, I heard they are the uberest, though... well, in one on one match - betcha they'll be unstopable. I can imagine imbued multishot being extremely painful, and plus 40% to deal double damage for creatures...
And their ultimate is ungodly powerful - however ultimates are VERY, and I mean VERY hard to attain. I think going for them could be viable if you will play on 200+/200+ maps, and plan to play for a few real days on that... or campains where you'll have to kill legions of enemies. And unless you will exploit s/l, it still may not result in success.

 

[kingcomrade]

Strange, I've found Necromancers to be the most powerful civ. They get three things that really, really, really tip things in their favor. Free archers at the end of creep battles, vampires, and this spell, "Raise Dead." Raise Dead has got to be the most imbalanced thing in the game that I've found so far. I was fighting an AI Necro army with Haven, and we had fairly equal armies, but every time I would destroy one of his stacks he would just revive the entire fucking thing every time his hero got a turn. Kill 30 vampires? No problem, 6 mana later all 30 vampires are back. Kill that stack of 150+ archers? 6 mana and the Necro gets them all back. Jesus Christ. Not to mention that a stack of 30 Vampires is going to revive at least 4 of its dead members every time it attacks. And since Necromancer heroes get tons of mana, this can go on for far longer than my army can take.

Oh, and their healing tent can revive stuff. Yeah. Free ranged units, reviving very powerful unit (Vampire), the ability to completely revive a stack even if it is totally dead, and a healing tent that can revive units. You have to have like a 5 or 10 to 1 advantage to wear down a Necromancer army.

Oh, AND their healing tent gets the ability to HURT enemy stacks, and it does a LOT of damage, especially if you have higher level Siege Machines.

This isn't to mention that if the Necro is properly leveled (Luck, Frenzy, Vitality) it would be a match for most other armies without all of those incredible bonuses.

 

[Jason]

"Oh, AND their healing tent gets the ability to HURT enemy stacks"

Wow, that seems pretty ridiculous. How does that work? Do enemy units take damage if they're near it or what?

 

[kingcomrade]

No, you get an ability called Plague Tent. It works the same way if you have the Healing Tent perk (it's a prerequisite for Plague Tent). You basically just choose an enemy stack and it does lots of damage to it. So every time your tent comes up you can either heal and revive a significant portion of a stack (unless you have like 50 Devils, you'll only revive like 2 or 3), or do heavy damage to an enemy stack.

Seriously, your first game, pick Necromancer and the hero Kaspar in the skirmish screen and you'll see what I mean. He only needs 1 level to get Plague Tent, I think. You need summoning magic to get Raise Dead, I think. But if you use Kaspar, get plague tent and all of the siege engine upgrades (tent does more healing/damage every upgrade), all of the luck upgrades, the Raise Archer and summoning magic for Raise Dead, your army will be unstoppable.

edit-
Raise Dead is only a LEVEL 2 SPELL.

 

[Shagnak]

Dang. Yet another game for me to buy that I don't have time to play.

I wonder how long it will take to get to the butthole of the world?

Overall, how is the balance in the game?
I found that in the demo it seemed all too easy to traipse along, dealing with easy enemies one after another, and then find a fight that was impossible. Or I may just be crap. I played it for less than an hour so my impressions are worthless.

Edit: Necromancer sounds wicked!

 

[suleo]

Overall, how is the balance in the game?
I found that in the demo it seemed all too easy to traipse along, dealing with easy enemies one after another, and then find a fight that was impossible. Or I may just be crap. I played it for less than an hour so my impressions are worthless.

That's more or less how every HOMM game has been.

 

[kingcomrade]

Overall, how is the balance in the game?

It varies. As time goes on, it tends to get less balanced because of stack sizes.

I had just fought a major battle against an Inferno hero and this is what was left of my army (I was fighting some creeps here immediately afterwards). By the end of the game I had close to 2000 skeleton archers in just this army (I had another army which had a lesser-level Necro who only had about 1000 and a few other armies running around, mostly used to ferry units to the more experiences generals). I split them into 3 stacks and I could seriously kill half of an enemy army in one "round." And after all major battles against enemy generals, you'll see the +60 skeleton archers icon pop up as all non-undead non-mechanical (like gargoyle or golem) units are used for the revive skill after a battle. The base skill (at the most advanced level) is 15% of all enemies, but there are buildings that increase this by 10% per pop at Necromancer cities so after a big battle I can net anywhere from 60 to 150 skeleton archers.

Really, I never used the bigger units like the liches and wights because enemy generals can wipe them out and they're just too slow. The only really good elite unit out there (that I've used yet) is the cavalier (not the paladin, they're too expensive), and even they die pretty quickly to heavy hitters and enemy generals.

And seriously, every "round" in that game I could use my healing hut to revive 30 to 40 skeleton archers who bought it.

Especially for overkill, that necro was kitted out with level 3 Luck bonuses, and a bunch of +Luck equipment. Every other shot was doing critical damage. Unstoppable.

 

[Atrokkus]

That's more or less how every HOMM game has been.

in Homm3 campaign, the change was pretty gradual.

Anyways, Hot Seat is teh most fun way of playing this game. oR through internet (but i wouldn't bother with those gaming networks though).
Just get your friend over to your place and have a nice evening (or even an alnighter) playing homm3... oh wait, it's homm5 now.. oh well.

Okay, I'm still waiting till I get my hands on Homm5, cuz im in kazakhstan, and it takes some times till a game gets here from russia, so im not sure if my review wll be etremely fast ^_^

 

[Balor]

Well, computer is always easy to screw. In fact, that's the whole purpose of AI - otherwise playing would just not be fun, he-he-he.
Anyway, I can see necro getting lots and lots of archers. Yet, remember that they are brittle and not all too powerful... by the time you will train 1000 of them, dungeon hero, for instance, will be able to deal like 1000 damage with implosion, and with negation of resistance to boot. That's like -200 skeletons per cast.
Now count elemental chains (not chains anymore, though, but I hope it will be fixed), lucky spells, etc.

Then, haven will be able to train no less, and much more powerful archers from peasants - given enough gold, and on large maps it's not hard to come by.

Inferno... well, they still seem to be amoun the weakest races, but ability to almost double their army with right choice of perks is surely nothing to trifle with, not to mention their succubi are simply badass.

Elves... well, I've already said that if you really looking for imbalanced race, play elves. And if they will get ahold of teleport... let's put it this way - your poor skellies will spend the rest of their short undeadtime chopping down trees .
And, of course, they'll pick skeletons as a racial enemy, so extra chance to crit, really powerful attacks, etc. Their imbued, triple ballista, expecially combined with wildfire is also VERY powerful. No, that's an understatement. IT'S FUCKING OVERPOWERED! You will have to concentrate your efforts killing it first - and that's a waste of precious time.
BTW, imagine imbuing it with implosion. Your skeletons will not last a second.

Now what? Academy? You have no idea how powerful their 'miniartefacts' are. And have some pretty good heroes... say, one with windspeaker. She'll have faster iniative, so will always go first... and willl be able to cast something like mass deflect arrows, or something equally nasty to you.

And btw, about demo. It was the LAST mission in the first campain. Of course the change is gradual - only you missed the first graduations .

 

[Jason]

OK, this is a week late, but I just noticed it on the Celestial Heavens forum. In a long post responding to complaints about HOMM5, one of the producers of the game mentioned some upcoming changes.

In the couple of months following the release, we'll offer updates containing notably :
- 10 more multiplayer maps
- the map editor
Of course these updates will squeeze unforeseen bugs and improve the balance, but besides this and what i listed, we are planning more content, although i wont detail it now.

In the first addon, a lot of features will be added, notably a random map generator. I cant give more specifics on this addon yet, but the time to disclose more info is not far away.

 

[Atrokkus]

yay!

Take that, bloody russian Balor! I toldya it was doable, they were just too fukkin lazy to ship it with release. Kind of like the NWN2's DM-CLient fuck-up

 

[kingcomrade]

Balor you are quite wrong. It doesn't take any time at all to train 1000 of them and I'm a very aggressive player. And the skeleton archers were the least of my imbalancing issues for Necros. It mostly it has to do with Raise Dead, the First Aid tent being able to raise dead (at "advanced siege engines with first aid perk" they can revive quite a bit) and the vampires. They might be able to kill 200 skeleton archers every time their thing fires, but I can revive 300+ every time my hero and healing hut gets a turn. In the meantime while I'm healing my hordes skeleton archers, his army has to deal with a stack of vampires (as well as various other units) which not only do incredible damage and don't cause retaliation, but when they themselves retaliate if the stack is of any size they typically revive most of their dead fellows.

Your strategies for Sylvan might be overpowered but it seems to me that it requires significant fine-tuning and will only become viable late in the game.

 

[Atrokkus]

OK Mutherfuckers, I've got my dirty hands on this little 3d-homm bastard, and I've played enough hotseat (no time for campaign), and I'm ready to write the review, as per Baby Arm's request.

Dont expect it too soon, but do expect some surprises (well, I had a lot of em, mostly positive).

 

[Jason]

"but do expect some surprises (well, I had a lot of em, mostly positive)"

Just as I suspected: metallix is pregnant.

 

[RK47]

Yep. Long term army wise, it's necro's game.
I get bored with the build up with most of my skirmishes and just quit trying to finish it altogether.

I'm sure my die-hard Heroes fan friend will probably ask for hot seat games. Too bad they screwed his favourite Wizard faction lol. He'd probably go Nature.

 

[Balor]

Too bad they screwed his favourite Wizard faction lol. He'd probably go Nature.

HUH?!!
Screwed up?!
Artefact crafting is SUPERB, by far the most powerful trait of all castles. It can really tip the odds in your favor.
Also, Magic mirror and linking is not somethign to scoff upon either. And golems/gremlins/Razzak combo is really powerfu.
Also, they have only hero that can increase her initiative.
And their philosophy is the BESTEST EVAR!.. Well, at least the most sane and most appealing to me.
And they also look cool!.. Well, except for gargs, which do look somewhat goofy (if even modelled after authentic ones), but not that I ever used them in Heroes 3 anyway.
I have no idea why anyone would NOT like academy, unless they are not into spellcasting classes.

 

[Balor]

Oh, and when talking about 'long-term', it's where Haven really shines.
Traning is the second best town special ability, I'd wager. Given enough gold (and you do tend to accumulate a lot of it later on) you can upgrade your troops into higher-tier ones... thus ending up with a VERY powerful army.

 

[RK47]

unfortunately u still have logistics problem, unlike the necromancer's army who kept going forward and getting stronger after each engagement, hero-wise and army-wise.

the gargoyles are flying toilet bowls lol. I was laughing my ass off when I saw it the first time in beta. It's very unappealing early game to me. But maybe he changed his mind after beta.

 

[Balor]

unfortunately u still have logistics problem, unlike the necromancer's army who kept going forward and getting stronger after each engagement, hero-wise and army-wise.

Remember - you get to get "summon creatures" adventure spell pretty early (10th level).

 

[Atrokkus]

Just as I suspected: metallix is pregnant.

Yes, I'm quite positively am.