HOMM5

[NomAnor15]

Super long link

I want this game so much right now. Unfortunately, my computer is too slow by about half (747 MHz, requires 1.5 GHz) and lacks the RAM by about half (256 MB [pathetic, no?], requires 512 MB). Gargh. I'll just have to upgrade my computer at some point.

[Stark]

It's really jsut HoMM3 with better skills and better graphics. It's also pretty damn old: did you just notice it?

[NomAnor15]

It's really just HoMM3 with better skills and better graphics. It's also pretty damn old: did you just notice it?

Yeah, that's what I've heard. But Heroes 3 was basically my favorite game of all time (maybe, I'm not 100% sure about that), so I figure an upgraded version can only be better. And no, I've known about it for a while. I just never looked at the website in detail before, or had a place to talk about it with a bunch of different people.

[fgalkin]

It's really jsut HoMM3 with better skills and better graphics. It's also pretty damn old: did you just notice it?

They re-did the skills, and added things like caravans (one of HoMM4's better ideas) in the expansion. But otherwise, yeah. Which only makes it awesome, because HOMM3 is the best Heroes game of all time.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Stark]

I think 'better skills' covers redoing the skills. But yeah, I can't imagine how stupid the game would have been without caravans. Nobody is capable of moving without a hero! Force the player into the relay sploit!

[Vympel]

Sorry, HOMM5 sucks. It's stupid hard.

[haard]

Sorry, HOMM5 sucks. It's stupid hard.

Ah. Not just me then. That makes me feel a little better about myself.

[Stark]

Sorry, HOMM5 sucks. It's stupid hard.

When the basic game model (unchanged through all the iterations) contains so many mechanical flaws and obvious sploits, it's hard to say anything else.

It's not really that hard once you get into the 'HoMM-ness', which basically involves treating it like the spreadsheet that it is. It's as simple as 'if you have better growth you win', it's almost impossible to recover once your primary army (or even your highend guys) get wiped.

[Covenant]

After asking about this game before and having Stark give me the extra-special fan-and-pro ultramanual (the one they should have actually given you) I found the game pretty stupidly easy. While the computer is an absolute whiny bitch when it comes to automatically knowing when your hero is one turn farther away than he is to your town, there's no magic to building a larger army and grinding your foe into dust. Once you get into one of those decisive battles between you and the enemy's force, basically the rest of the game becomes a mop-up. If you're having a lot of trouble, you're probably not spending enough time wanking our your hero with as much experience and equipment as you can find, or wasting too many troops fighting normal hordes of dudes guarding stuff.

[Stark]

Yeah, it's pretty sad that the first two weeks is basically 'get primary hero all the XP you can while build the town in the most efficient way you can', and then it's simply 'find enemy primary army, destroy it, you win, spend two hours mopping up'.

Oh and don't forget levelling the skills using the secret skill wheel knowledge to max out the build for whatever you're doing. The AI is really bad at levelling it's heroes, and the new skill system actually lets you do some interesting things. The whole 'growth per week' thing just means it's all meaningless once you fall behind the 'monster curve'.

[Covenant]

Yeah, the Sekret Skill Wheele is of dire importance for maximum minmaxing. It's not always key to victory, but the bizzare way in which skills present themselves makes it important to choose the right hero (none of this random hero bullshit) and then level them up in a way that presents you with the best options. If you level them up haphazardly, well okay, you can probably still do fine. But for heros that actually matter--like strong Casters, or ones with exploitable special powers--being able to multiply their usefulness via a wanky set of power is great. I like the Dwarfs for that, since they have heroes that can make their bottom-tier units absolutely ridiculous, and you can level the heroes up in such a way that they start doing ridiculous things--like starting off with perfect luck, fucking your luck, running across the ENTIRE SCREEN to your biggest pile of useful things, and murdering it with a doublestrike. So much for Tier 1's being shit--but only with abusive skills.

[Vympel]

Ah. Not just me then. That makes me feel a little better about myself.

And it's not just stupid hard - it's also quite broken in some levels. Exhibit A being Mission 3 of the Demon campaign, which in order to reliably beat it, you have to play it in a completely counter-intuitive way so as to take advantage of AI / scripting foibles, and pray to god you have just the right spell to defeat some Earth Elementals on the map which stop you from doing so.

[Edi]

Or just get really fucking lucky, like I did. I triggered the spawning script in the Demon mission and basically escaped by running up the backtrail of the enemy, got his unguarded capital and managed to build up just enough troops to wipe out his second main army. After that, it was still a pain in the arse to finish when you had legions of sprites at a time spawning everywhere.

What really pisses me off is the Warlock campaign third scenario, I got so disgusted with that one I'm taken a break from HoMM5. But I do like the game.

For new players, just get the Tribes of the East expansion, it's standalone and has none of the bugs the plain HoMM5 and Hammers of Fate do and the heroes have more options.