Although the game doesn't bring anything new to the table, it is still a solid entry in the heroes series.
Heroes is a pure turn based strategy game. The player starts the game with a hero of a certain class - knight, ranger, warlock, wizard, demonlord, or necromancer. This hero represents the army of the player and it can contain up to seven different types of creatures. The player uses this unit to explore the game map. Each turn, the character can travel a certain amount of distance. Once covered, the turn is over and the player must wait for his or her opponents to then move.
Much of the gameplay involves exploration, capturing towns and resources, and building your army. Towns provide the main avenue for army development. Each turn, the player has an option (depending on resources available) to build a new building in each town owned. The buildings range from money or resource producing structures, creature dwellings, and magic guilds. Creatures can then be recruited to your army once per week provided your character has enough gold for them.
Character development plays a large role in this game. As your hero's army defeats enemies, he or she gains experience. Gain enough experience and your hero goes up a level. What happens next, depends a lot on the class of hero you have. There are four main attributes in the game - attack, defense, spell pwer, and knowledge. Each time your character levels up, one of these abilities goes up depending on your class (e.g. knights are more likely to go up in attack or defense while wizards are more likely to have spellpower). Attack and defense augment the strength of your army's creatures. Heroes with higher attack have their creatures do more damage. Those with higher defense have their creatures withstand more damage. Spellpower and knowledge affect your characters magic abilites - those with more spell power see their spells have more effect. Knowledge corresponds to how many magic points your character will have available.
The second tier of character development centers around abilities. Your character can have up to 6 primary abilites. These abilities provide certain advantages in combat, improved movement on the map, or access to more powerful spells. As your character levels up, he or she can choose to improve an existing ability or chose another one (up to six).
Combat is also turn based. Unlike heroes IV, your hero does not participate directly in combat as a unit, but rather stays back behind the sidelines. They can cast spells or use special abilities to augment your army's creatures. Each creature takes a turn in combat depending on its initiative, speed, and other modifiers. Combat is over when the opposing forces have been wiped out, retreat, or you have been defeated.
The single player game consists of 6 separate campaigns that must be played in order. Each campaign lets you play as one of the 6 available classes. There is an underlying story throughout the campaing, but it is not that well developed and seems to have a few holes in it. Nonetheless, it is interesting enough to capture your attention the first time through.
As a side note, the game manual is very lacking. Fortunately for me, I'm a veteran of the series and knew how to play. However, new comers to the series may have a hard time picking up on all the smaller nuances of the game as they are not explained anywhere in the manual.
Multiplayer is just plain awful at this point. Those wanting to play online, must play through ubisoft's site. Unfortunately, it seems to be a work in progress. The matchmaking system is atrocious. It's taken me up to 35 mintues to even find an open game. Currently, you can play either a normal versus game or opt for a one on one combat duel. The normal game proceeds tremendously slow for some reason during a player's turn. The duels play out better but seem to lack balance. There are certain armies and classes that are just too powerful compared to others.
For those veterans of this series, this game is basically a prettier version of heroes III. The gameplay is extremely similar with very few new additions. The same creatures are present in this version, with virtually the same abilities. That's not neccesarily a bad thing, as Heroes III was the best game in the series and probably, im my opinion, one of the best turn based strategy games made. This game is worthwhile, just not amazing.