Buggier than its precursors, only the modders / scenario designers will mean the difference of life or death for HOMM V.
Its all there, from the resources and mines in the main map to the tactical options in battle and the progress of your heroes.
Even better, the translation to a 3D game did not hurt gameplay at all. While some previews stated that you needed to pan and zoom around the map to locate hidden goodies, it's actually so easy to get your bearings you'll be right at home within a couple of minutes.
More about 3D, graphics and sound effects are nothing short but astounding. While the game engine seems unoptimized with heavy stutter depending on camera viewpoint, there is nothing like lighting up a battle in the darkness of a cavern by fireballing it up a little.
More in depth, the skills your heroes will eventually gain gave been seperated into those skills and abilities supporting them. For example you get the "basic defense" skill allowing you to get the ability to shield your troops from another 10 or 20% of damage against enemy archers.
Sounds a bit difficult without playing the game, but in my opinion it's a great improvement over the previous games of HOMM.
But here we got it. Comparing #5 of the franchise to previous games leaves a lot to be desired i'm afraid.
"Just another sequel" i named it before, and here it is why:
- 5 Campaigns, 5 missions each. Add merely a handful of single player missions, subtract the first campaign as a tutorial experience only.
Way too short i would say, playing the end of campaign #4 just as we speak, took me about 20 hours.
- Bugs. So you upgraded your town to produce Arch Devils with the ability of summoning Pit Lords. Their main advantage against the highest enemy troops. But you can't make them to do so.
Or you pick up an artifact and get only the name out of it, not was it actually does. As in previous games, you'd know if it adds to your defence or whatever , but you just don't know if it's good for your necromancy skills.
All in all, HOMMV is well done. But this steak needs some spices to be tasteful, and only some of them will come in form of needed patches.
The rest will have to be delivered from the community regarding for example the lack of single player missions - did i mention there was no random combat option?
Time will tell. For me, i refuse to call a game a good one if the only thing that might make it superior to others is the enthusiasm of the modding community.