If there ever was a game that truly grows on you, it must be Heroes of Newerth. But it can be a painful process.
That's where the excitement ended however. First thing I discovered about the game was that the tutorial was broken and would not allow me to continue after a certain point, thus I could not learn much from it. Luckily the game has No Stats games, which do not increase/decrease your PSR (public skill rating) depending on how well you did. For the first months, I only played No Stats games with "NOOBS" in the title. I found it very funny when I was being called a n00b in a newbie game, I thought it was to be expected.
When you first see the hero pick screen, you get overwhelmed. You do not have enough time to read through all the descriptions and you pretty much randomly choose one which you find visually appealing. The next time you get overwhelmed is when you open up the in-game store where you buy equipment, there is just so much to choose from. And just wait 'till you get to the actual combat, that is where all your skills will be put to the test.
If you have heard that the game has a steep learning curve, you have heard correctly. It is extremely punishing for new players and learning even the basics requires a lot of patience and endurance. You will have to install mods to your HoN and read through walls of text in the HoN forums to become better. You will be called with names you have never even heard of, even your mother will get insulted in the process. This is where Heroes of Newerth is the weakest. It's community is one which doesn't like newcomers and most of the players in "Newbie" games are angry boys in their early teens. Well, not most, but it certainly feels like it sometimes.
But once you have played with every hero (which takes a ridiculous amount of time) and picked out the few you like to play, the game starts to shine. When you start to get killstreaks and piss off the enemy team by always fleeing before they manage to gang up on you; you actually start to enjoy the game a bit more. Soon you will experiment on different item combinations, find out how to counter other heroes and how to quickly dispose of them. Trust me, there is no better feeling than when you lure a few lonely heroes to your trap and humiliate them.
Aside from the gameplay, the game has a solid UI, which tells you all the things you need to know. But if that is not enough for you, the game is moddable and there are plenty of UI mods out there. The game menus are easy to navigate and there are plenty of features on how to setup your game. For example, you can make a game you're hosting a No Leavers game. HoN keeps a track of how many times people have left ranked games while mid-game, and people with too high % of quits, cannot join No Leavers games, which is an awesome feature.
The graphics are not revolutionary, but they do get the job done. And from what I've seen, they do beat the graphics of DotA for example. Even with a moderately good PC, be prepared to lower some of the settings though, when there is a lot of spells going on in a small area, frame rates might take a sudden drop for a moment.
The game is still regularly updated and overall it is well balanced, apart from some of the new heroes that the developers are introducing in the game. Trying out different combinations of heroes in a team and managing the equipment is a fun challenge, but only if you have the patience to master it. When you no longer feel physical and mental pain when you play Heroes of Newerth, you only see a game that has huge amounts of longevity - at least until Valve releases DotA 2. The amount of heroes guarantee that everyone will find a hero that they are comfortable with and the amount of choices you can make during a single round is staggering.
I would like to recommend this game to all the people who love strategy games, but unless you have played Lol or DotA prior to this one, think carefully whether or not you have the patience to learn this game. The learning curve...it is steep alright. But in the end, I enjoy the battles so much that I cannot bring the score down any lower than to 8,5 even with all the newbie hate and learning.