Best expantion to date!
Before starting the review I want to show my grading scale of sorts
(Its not eqaull to gamespots review scale)
10: No game is so good it deserves a 10 not even a game made in heaven
9: Not perfect but is very rare to find a 9 game
8: Any game that goes above and beyond any normal game seen in years deserves and 8
7: An execptional game but not that hard to find
6: Average game
5: Not that good of a game
4: Shouldnt bother
3 and below: Worst games ever, titles with a 3 or worse enter my wall of shame.
This game (Tribes of the east or for times sake Tote) introduces quite a few new things to the already amazing franchise of turn based strategy games labled "Heroes: # [subtitle]" or "Heroes" for short.
These games are a fun type of strategy game and are very satisfying to play.
How the game works:
In the game world you start out most of your non story missions with a castle. Your castle is your base of operations where you recruit troops research new spells or fight epic battles. Your castle shows up on a map in the game world (once found, ofcourse) and once you double click it you get a pretty little zoomed in view of the castle and all of your options of what you want to do with this. Your options of what to build and what spells you get vary from the diferent castle types. Once you leave your castle you have your game world where you fight battles capture dwellings (which you can use to recruit troops aswell) and capture resource buildings. Your general of your army (or hero) commands all of your troops and is the only person who can do what I just mentioned. Your hero can only move a certain amount of spaces per turn and you can only build one thing in your castle per turn. Once your hero and an enemy hero (or random monster) intersect on this map you enter combat. How combat works is theres a gigantic grid where your troops do battle, some troops take up one grid box like your normal peasant or swordsman. Whereas others take take up four grid box's to make a bigger sqaure, some of these creatures are your normal dragon or centaur.
At the bottom of the screen there is a action bar that streches from left to right. The farthest left being the creature under current controll and the far right a creature that will be used some time down the line. When it is your creatures turn they move a certain amount of grid box's. Some creatures such as a crossbow man do not move. Instead they attack from afar and anywhere on the map. Each creature has a set amount of units attached to them even though only one unit is shown. So lets say you have 20 peasants well the game wont show you 20 peasants on the grid it will show you one peasant with a 20 next to it. Each and every of those 20 peasants have their own individaul life. How this works his you'll have 20 peasant with 2 lives per each allowing them to take arround 40 damage before dying depending on their armor and the enemies attack, give or take. When they are hit and loose two peasants the number next to the one peasant goes down to an 18. This may seem very intricate and overly complicated but when you hover your mouse over a foe in reach it will show you the estimated damage caused by your units. This game is REALLY simple when it comes down to it im just trying to make it seem long so I can explain everything.
Graphics:
The graphics are fine and are the same as in the orriginal Heroes 5. Which isnt something really ground breaking but it wouldnt want to make you vomit so its pretty much average not anything to stare at.
Story:
(May contain spoilers)
You go through the story from multiple perspectives of diferent Heroes and what not, (undead necromancer, orc commander, and a mage leader). This games story may be a bit familiar if you played its cousin dark messiah might and magic. The story goes you play as a necromancer named arantir. Now already you may think of him as evil already but heres a twist he's actaully pretty good. It turns out that the mages and demons are working together and you have to stop them. As you work your way through the story you find out that the demons have controlled parts of the humans empire and all of the sudden the humans enter civil war. The story for the orc commander is you play as gotai the most recent cheif of the tribes your goals are to unite the orcs and exact your revenge on the humans that had so rudely treated you as slaves. Now I wont tell you about the mages campaign (mostly because of a hard drive wipe =((( ), but officially it is because you have to find it out your self and by now you must be pretty interested about the game enough to read through my boring review.
New Features:
Ubisoft has added quite alot of new things to this game, most notably the ability to choose an upgrade for a creature to become. In all previous Heroes games you could only upgrade a creature to only one kind of creature and thats the end of story. Well in the latest installment you can choose between two upgrades for the same creature. While this may not seem like much it pretty much doubles the creature counts for this game and adds alot of variety to the game. Now some upgrades may feel unbalanced but they sure are fun and forced you to change your tactics. The new addition is the orc race. This race is all about melee combat, now you will still have ranged units such as the centaur there is some added incentive to melee combat for the orcs. Nearly every orc unit has a rage meter and whenever they do damage or kill something it goes up. Whenever a unit takes damage or stands idly doing nothing it goes down. This rage meter can go over 3 times and is very helpfull in combat giving the orcs the edge in melee. The orc heroes are interesting aswell. Instead of using magic they use a shout to raise moral, blood rage, attack, that sort of thing. And when they level up instead of investing in a school of magic they can invest in a resist [instert school of magic] which allows their units to take less damage.
All in all:
All in all this game is great and what makes it even greater is the fact that it is stand alone product and wont need any previous Heroes games to play.
The Verdict:
I give it an 8 for being an awesome expantion
On a side note:
This game is one of the hardest i've ever played. Theres a reason why I baked 100+ hours of my life into this game. This isnt easy at all and shouldnt be your first Heroes game if new to the series try playing Heroes 3 or 5 (If you have to pick always get heroes 3 instead of 5 when you start playing you'll see why).