If you are a fan of the Heroes of Might and Magic line and were put off by the recent changes in HOMM IV, you'll love HOMM V.
This game gets back to the roots of the HOMM series. While keeping to the original gameplay, the graphics, etc are excellent and the various armies seem well balanced.
I played a "hot seat" (same computer) game with a friend this weekend. We kept the settings random for army selection and set the map size to normal and kept two NPC armies. The game took about 10 hours to play. Granted, that was the first game and we took time to figure out all the options along the way. Playing a game against the computer after learning the game would probably take 3-4 hours.
I forget the exact names, but my nature, elven based army ended up taking down my friend's hellion based army. I had to take my army up out of the caves (doesn't matter what type of army you have, the starting location is random so my nature elves were underground) and across a desert to begin the siege of the hellion city. I hade Treants, Unicorns, Elder Druids, archers going up against three headed dogs, succumbus, etc.
I worked my main hero up to level 14 and had 4th level spells by the end of the game. The game balancing seems pretty good but I really like the "nature" army after playing it.
If you're a fan of the old HOMM games and want to to play the best possible HOMM yet, get HOMM V. If you've never liked HOMM, HOMM-V won't change your mind.
Pros:
-balanced gameplay
-plenty of strategy involved
-good graphics and UI.
-best game in the series so far (gets back to the game's roots)
Cons:
-I wish there was a midrange camera view. The difference between the mini map and max that you can use the mousewheel to zoom out is too great. I'd be nice to get a better view of the visible map.
-you can't split units after combining them. There are times when it'd be nice to split a group of 50 archers into two 25 units.
Some Caps:
