It’s a fun game (if old now). It’s an addictive game. I have been playing it almost non-stop since I got it, and still have one campaign left to go. The general plot is you’re in the midst of a burgeoning war between many factions, from a holy empire to a demonic legion, from a necromancer to a bunch of tree elves, from necromancers to dark elves. Each group has their own agenda, each fowarding the plot.
Heroes of Might and Magic V is a turn-based strategy game. You have your heroes, bases, etc. You go around collecting resources, building up said bases, and creating units once a week. You can also take control of strategic resource collection sites like mines, and also sites that increase your unit production. There are artifacts for your hero to use, and skills as you level up to customize the hero.
Combat is also turn-based. Based on a number of factors, your pieces get their initiative and you know the order of who will fight when. You have movement, magic, etc that you can do during the turns. The goal is obviously to beat all of the other units (you can’t attack the hero; rather the hero “abandons your cause” (read: dies) if all the other units on the field die). The hero can attack any unit on the field, or can cast a large variety of spells to help the team.
Attacking a city is very similar. Based on the defenses present, you usually have to break through a wall to reach their units, though sometimes the wall is guarded by a “moat” (type depends on the city, but in all cases if you touch said moat your unit will stop the turn and die a bit, which really is annoying when the cpu moves the piece in a manner so as to NOT avoid the moat). Once you beat the units, you win the combat and the town’s yours.
The Heroes of Might and Magic V game has a variety of objectives. Some are plain “conquer the map” ones, others are to get from point A to point B, and others are “obtain item” quests. These all have storyline functions, and are interesting.
The game DOES have some rather annoying downsides. First off: It’s slow (on my old PC it is anyway). The maps are rather large, and you don’t have many movement points per turn. Often you don’t even have a straight shot to get somewhere, but have to go through many portals to get to your final destination. When you’re following the one remaining enemy and he is all the way across the map, it can take a while to get to him.
Another downside in Heroes of Might and Magic V is the time it takes for the AI to make decisions. Often I found myself wanting to kill all of the enemies not just for the objective, but to make me have less downtime between turns due to AI! Especially when you’re in a chase, your city is all built up, and all you want to do is move, it can take a really long time.
Third, building up units is slow. Every week you can recruit units from a building/city, but there are only so many available. I often find myself leaving my heroes in the base, clicking the “end turn” button just to get to the end of the week for my unit purchasing bonanza. As you rather need overwhelming odds at times, this can get as tedious as a chase (and often once you’ve finally gotten troops it turns INTO said chase).
My last main issue with Heroes of Might and Magic V is with the way magic is implemented. Most spells that are area of effect or single target let you choose your target and give you predicted kills. That’s nice. But some that affect “everyone” will cast automatically if you click on them, even by accident, not letting you know the results until after the actual cast. Also, magic isn’t picky about its targets. If you cast chain lightning on an enemy who only has 3 stacks, congratulations, you’ll also hit one of your stacks of units! Or how about the Succubus Mistress’s attack, which will rebound and attack any of your units who aren’t demonic (such as hired guns)? You learn to adapt, but still, it’s the fact that they’re like that which gets on your nerves at times.
(A minor flaw with the game is that the dialog that you hear is not always what you read...also, it’s just weird to hear a character talk but not see their mouth move lol)
On the whole, Heroes of Might and Magic V is a fun game, and if you’re into strategy games I recommend you get it. The graphics are pretty, the gameplay overall is fun, and it’s entertaining, which is all that one can ask for from a game.