5/24/06 - Heroes of Might and Magic V (PC)

[Sky]

I don't really play online games. I'm thinking of dropping my cable modem, in fact. Haven't played online since I ran around with EQ2 earlier this year. I was going to jump into BF2 last week but got distracted playing guitar while I downloaded the fairly massive patch.

[sinij]

add_army 5 1

I'm enjoying the game but you just have to play it too perfectly for a game that takes hours to beat a single mission. I guess I just suck at this game.

Its mostly about your hero, if you can't ressurect you cannon fodder in some form you are going to get eaten alive. You *have to* pick up ether expert warm machines/tents or light magic and illusion/raise dead to boot.

[Sky]

No kidding. In the final haven scenario where I'm getting the constant barrage of devils, having my angels just sit back and res my paladins is golden.

[Strazos]

I beat that shit with a bunch of marksmen and priests. No Joke.

I hope you know that you don't have to actually Fight those hordes of Devils. Sure, you gotta fight the enemy heroes who venture up around your area of the map, but it's easy enough to 1-shot each of their piles.

I had something like 300-450 marksmen and 160 priests at the end. They did pretty much all of the work.

[Sky]

Bah. I got teleport (whatever they call it now, it's much gimpier) and circumvented the massive guard tower blocking the devil town. Drew out the devil heroes with my gimpy taxi hero and teleported in with my scenario hero and took the town without a fight :) That map has taken me quite a while, I've been playing it for days. Just the way I like it!

I did let the devil heroes stream out until my secondary scenario hero (the guy, I forget his name) hit the level cap, just for the hell of it. I like to 100% the map, though I bet I could just teleport past the second guard tower and finish the scenario... There also seems to be a limit to the devils that come out of the one-way portals, haven't seen one in a couple months.

[Strazos]

Only 3 or 4 heroes come up towards you. I used my main hero to sap them around, then escorted Godric down to the area past the southern barricade.

Then I ran into a slight problem, because the main Inferno hero comes out after Godric gets to where he needs to be, and my main hero was VERY close to where he comes out. I can't do shit about a 150 stack of devils, or 2k hell hounds. Eventually, I was able to maneuver far enough away in 1 turn that the guy wouldn't come attack me, then I teleported back past him and ran over to Nicolai, so that the cutscene fires when he attacks Inferno hero.

[Sky]

Well...that was anticlimactic. I should've had the Queen down to try and smack that hero. Turns out the guard tower Godric needed to pass only had a handful of critters in it. Ah well, only wasted maybe a half-hour building up to it, and I had good beer.

[MrHat]

Does it play widescreen sky?

[ahoythematey]

Sky, have you tried Civ4 online? It actually is paced really well.

I agree.  I was surprised Civ4 could pull me in like Civ2 did.  Too bad the damn thing crashes every game because of my vid card.

[Sky]

Does it play widescreen sky?

Natively, and nicely.

[Anger]

So far I'm loving this game.  I haven't played any of the others but briefly.  My whole weekend was devoted to it, and I've just now started the Inferno campaign.  I'm still learning.  I haven't used much of the spellcasting from my heroes, perhaps because the spells I have don't really seem to help much.  Haven't had any trouble beating the missions, most frustrating part was the mission where I had to dig up the Tears of Asha, and didn't know that I couldn't dig on a turn that I had moved.  Spent waaaay too long trying to figure out why the dig button was always greyed out.

One oddity is that the box comes with four disks, but I only used three for the install.  Everything seems to work fine, but after disk one it prompted me for disk three.  I haven't seen mention of this anywhere else.  (Not that I've looked.)

Anyway, the game is fun.  It's held my interest longer than anything I've purchased since Civ 4.

[Sky]

I have to get back to this game, I was enjoying it. I got stuck on the first Inferno mission, where you have one hero that can get tromped by the two Knights on the map. I got squished a couple times and went back to Oblivion for a while.

[Strazos]

The prevailing theory is that the unused disc had StarFarce on it, which was dropped shortly before release.

Also, I too need to get back into this one....they just had a new patch out.


BUT STILL NO SKIRMISH RANDOM MAP MODE! 

[Sky]

I'd settle for a slew of scenario maps like the old ones had.

[Strazos]

I think I really want Skirmish mode just so I can experiment with all the different factions in a quick manner.

[sinij]

Expansion went out, they promise random map generator and new faction. Anyone played? Is it worth picking up?

[Sky]

I still haven't started playing since I got stuck on the first or second demon scenario...and HoMaM has always been one of my favoritist franchises. I hate to drop money on a game I didn't play much, but might be worth it for the random maps. Then again, scenario maps > random maps, because at least you get some story elements.

[Strazos]

I favored random maps, as I found it easier to freely experiment with each faction.

[Azazel]

So I picked this up today. Australian version. On the back, amongst the system requirements, it reads:

NOTICE: This game contains technology intended to prevent copying that may conflict with some DVD-RW and virtual drives

Anyone else got this on their packaging? What the fuck does it mean, if not Starforce?


yes, necropost, yadda yadda.

[Strazos]

I have the original release + expansion. Not Starforced AFAIK. Doesn't show up on the Boycott site list. I haven't had any sort of problems with my PC, so you should be alright.

[Azazel]

Yeah, it's more-recent Ubi, so it shoudl be ok, but when I saw that I decided to check the boycott site again (though I'd have noticed that before anyway, cant hurt to check). When it was nada, I decided to best ask here.