"Alot of potential that fails to deliver"

Story (3/10): Unfortunately, one thing that hinders HoMMV significantly is how absolutely derivative it is of Warcraft III. Right down to the menu interface, everything simply evokes "WARCRAFT III." The method of storytelling, the cutscenes, and the plot line of "AN IMPENDING EVIL TOGETHER WE MUST FIGHT" along with a sub plot of "NOBLE KING BECOMES EVIL LORD" are trite. Admittedly this is fantasy staple, but that's exactly the problem. The story doesn't try to innovate or break type, and in terms of fantasy staples, Warcraft III presented the story with much more nuance and immersion.

One of the problems is the lack of understandable characters. All of them seem to be caricatures of fantasy types. Queen Isabel is the worst, taking rather arbitrary actions, the sole justification of which being that she's a shrill, fanatical woman fantasy type character. Of course there's the secretive necromancer, and the stoic and reserved (and foreign-language spouting) Sylvan (aka Elf) leader.

Sound (8/10): Sound is quite well done, from the sly, seductive laughter of the succubuses, to the roaring and deep bass of various spells.

The music ranges from amazing (opening menu music) to painful on the ears (some of the battle music is overly repetitous). General fantasy motifs are present, and while I'm personally getting a bit tired of teh overkill on Latin lyrics and chanting, it is well implemented, both evoking in the melodic simplicity the Gregorian chants of yore, but at the same time being singular enough to give it its own, haunting context. Some of the races (Haven, Dungeon) stood out to me as being quite immersive, while others (Sylvan especially) retreads typical fantasy veins, but none of it is ever offensive. High-quality production stuff, here.

Replayability (6/10): Here's a puzzle. There's inherent replayability in the custom games and multiplayer mode built-in but... what happened to the world editor? This is almost a staple in any tactical/strategic game, and its absence is truly shocking. While it may come out in a patch, I'm reviewing this game based on what I spent my money on, not what I have to eventually download. That being said, the game meets a minimum level of tactical complexity that promotes a healthy level of replay. Furthermore, for better or for worse, alot of games boil down to randomness (gaining a stat here versus a stat there upon a level) which certainly forces different situations into formerly identical game setups.

Gameplay (4/10): Ah. I was a fan of the HoMM series in general, but I've always been a bit of the critic of the approach to the tactics of the game. The tactics have been broadened in this generation, complete with some retweakings of a major imbalance in HoMMIV (heroes), though they did drop some curiously needed features (hero-less armies, for example). Unfortunately for a tactical game, alot of it boils down to luck (getting a Luck shot here, getting a Good Morale boost there, get this skill here, get this stat there), and it's sometimes frustrating to be playing a perfectly good game but, for example, never get that +1 bonus to Knowledge your hero direly needs. On the one hand, this forces adaptation, on the other, it feels artificial.

In addition, alot of information hiding is present, which is the early death of any tactical system. How am I supposed to make value judgements on the relative strengths of various units if I have no idea what the marginal differences between certain numbers are? For that matter, there are many spells (Haste and Slow, for example) which seem to have negligible effect (especially some of the curses and blessings). While some may not need this level of information disposal, after growing up on the Fallout series, the Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale series, and Final Fantasy Tactics, the lack of information I have on my capabilities is absolutely staggering.

What ultimately damages the game, however, is the campaign. I honestly don't know how other reviewers have managed to get through it without cheating. I'm certain that I'm not that bad of a player (I've pvp-ed to the tops of World of Warcraft charts, I've played a full PSI character in System Shock 2, I've done some of the crazy challenges for Final Fantasy Tactics), and even moreso, my friends aren't bad players either. Yet, we've all had the same problem after the first campaign. Missions become arbitrarily INSANELY hard or ridiculously easy, though most are just INSANELY hard. I've spent hours going over a given mission over and over, going back each quicksave and doing things *just right*, even consulting and testing out things with fellow players. Yet, the results are the same. I either spend hours upon hours of reloading and reloading (it doesn't help that I can't exit a battle that I know that I've lost but will still continue for the next 10 minutes - short of CTRL-ALT-DELing and screwing up system resources), spend alot of time hunting down specific mission tricks, or just cheat. And after hours upon hours of that, I enter another mission that I blaze through so easily in 30 minutes. Most of this is compounded by (or a direct result of) very ambiguous mission objectives. You'll be told to do one thing, so you go around exploring, pushing yourself to the limits, then ALL OF A SUDDEN A DEMON ARMY APPEARS AND RAMPAGES TOWARDS YOUR BASE and all you get is a polite "New Objective" notice. Too bad that it gives you about 3 turns worth of time to respond, without warning, and generally when your main hero is far away from base with a severely weakened army (from hunting down treasure and killing critters). And unless your judicious about saving (or use the tedious autosave feature), this generally means having to restart several hours worth of mission-accomplishments. Either the designers of HoMMV are the best-freaking-players of all time (this is all on Normal difficulty, mind you) or they did not adequately test the missions for balance (I suspect they simply ran through them on debug mode to check for bugs).

Final Assessment (5/10): There's alot of potential. A well-entrenched tactical system and a well built campaign structure. Too bad that it's been poorly executed. Most of my time now playing this game is spent in general frustration than in enjoyment.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 06/30/06