Heroes of Might and Magic V goes open beta.

Kobra · Post by **Kobra** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 6:20 pm

http://www.fileplanet.com/

Only for Fileplanet members though. Posting thoughts soon..

Fishbelly · Post by **Fishbelly** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 7:08 pm

Sigh. In line at Fileplanet to download this sucker. I only have to wait 53 more minutes . . . to see how long the wait will be once my download begins. 'Course then I have to wait for it to install, and maybe autopatch. I wanna play now! Gimme my Heroes goodness, puh-leeze.

Kobra · Post by **Kobra** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 8:59 pm

Fair warning, this uses the new Star-Force Frontline. Which is Starforce, but with a "Dial Home" element that tracks how many times you've installed a game.

Anyway, this game is GORGEOUS.. I tried the duel mode, and it rocks. Just tried a bit of the RPG mode, and it seems good.

May be a purchase, i'd have to try more, but so far it looks and plays quite lovely!

Fishbelly · Post by **Fishbelly** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 9:18 pm

Starforce has never bothered me in the slightest (I know, I'm lucky). Glad to hear you are liking it Kobra. At least the download speeds are good. I hope to be trying it myself within 15 minutes or so . . .

Kobra · Post by **Kobra** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 9:45 pm

Well Starforce never bugged me either, but I figured a public service announcement was in order.. I think theres a few anti-starforce guys around these parts still. <looks nervously around>

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Fri Jan 27, 2006 9:23 am

I haven't purchase a game with Starforce on it so I don't know if it bothers me or not. I am told there is no computer AI in the beta they have released and that is the main thing I would want to test after the last game.

Fishbelly · Post by **Fishbelly** » Fri Jan 27, 2006 10:25 am

Well, I gave the game some time last night. I have to admit I was a bit frustrated with being forced to playing online against human opponents. It's not that I don't like playing multiplayer, but it's not terribly exciting to try and learn a new game--or figure out all the changes they've made to Heroes--when you have to sit and wait for your fellow players to take their turns. I like to take my time and figure things out, but that just annoys your fellow players as they sit and twiddle their thumbs. Luckily my opponent was like me, and we agreed to take our time and not fret over game results.

Once everyone knows how to play the game, a multiplayer session isn't that bad. But when everyone is moving slow trying to figure out what the heck is going on, well . . . bring a book is all I can say.

All in all, I enjoyed the time I had with the game. The camera drove me a little batty, but most 3-D games do that to me. I was often trying to swing the camera around to get a better look at the game world. Often items on the map are hidden from view unless you change the viewing angle. I hope Nival doesn't hide items on the map that I'll never find unless I spin the camera all around, looking into every hidden corner.

I'm not sure I like the combat portion of the game yet, but I only fought about 3 battles. The battle map is quite small, and didn't have the same "feel" as Heroes 3. I dunno--maybe it's just the fact the map was divided into squares instead of hexes. I like hexes on my maps. Reminds me of my old days playing Avalon Hill boardgames as a kid. Some of the animations are fun during combat and are very reminiscent of Nival's Etherlords games, which was just fine with me as combat was the best part of those games.

Things moved so slowly that it took an hour to play the first week of the game with my one opponent. I never had any crashes or problems, other than a know sound issue where some sound effect would rumble and then sound like "scratchy" white noise. I connected to the server just fine and beginning the game was quick and easy. Starforce caused no problems for me. (yay!) My rig is far from cutting edge and the game ran smoothly with an XP 1800+, Geforce 5900, and 1 gig of ram. I was worried my computer wouldn't be able to hack it, but there were no issues to speak of with the game graphics set to a "middle" level.

Is it as good as Heroes III? For me, no. But I never played Heroes III online. I like to play against the computer. If the AI is good, the game may turn out to something I'll keep on my hard drive. At this point I'm not disappointed--just eager to see the finished product.

JayG · Post by **JayG** » Fri Jan 27, 2006 11:24 am

Big question for me is, how's the music? Loved the music in 2 and 4, 3 was a little disappointing with the lack of opera.

Kobra · Post by **Kobra** » Fri Jan 27, 2006 12:20 pm

Well as a previous poster mentioned, i'm more interested in the single player aspects.

But I did find the duel mode interesting.

Fishbelly · Post by **Fishbelly** » Fri Jan 27, 2006 12:55 pm

Big question for me is, how's the music? Loved the music in 2 and 4, 3 was a little disappointing with the lack of opera.

I don't recall any music at all. The only sounds I heard were environmental sounds--birds, combat sounds, etc. The game still feels fairly unfinished and doesn't appear to have had the music inserted yet. I do remember music during the opening menu, but not in the game itself.

It is possible that music is in the game, but is not playing on my system. Perhaps that's what the occasional scratchy white noise is supposed to be. But it seemed more like an reoccuring sound effect that was messing up, and not a music track.

knob · Post by **knob** » Sat Jan 28, 2006 1:53 am

I haven't played the game (I have no desire to play it MP), but I don't know what to think of this:

http://www.saveheroes.org/

Meghan · Post by **Meghan** » Sun Jan 29, 2006 4:13 pm

According to Gamespot, the release of Heroes IV has been pushed back to an unannounced date. Ubisofters are saying the game's date was pushed even befor the beta began but they just didn't mention it. No word on the new date yet.

I'm not sure how I feel about this except that I'm sort of glad my order with Target got cancelled. I sort of wish they weren't calling it HoMM. I sort of wish they would just make their own game and call it whatever. They could even say, "in the spirit of ..." I'd be cool with that.

EddieA · Post by **EddieA** » Sun Jan 29, 2006 7:23 pm

I've heard reports of the game crashing, but other than that, what it is that people don't like about it?

Zork · Post by **Zork** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 2:32 am

For those of you that want to try the game out without having to connect via MP, there's a hack out that will enable the hotseat option.

You can read more about it here.

With the hotseat option, you can either play both sides or select to play against the computer (there's no AI and the comp player does nothing but at least you get to travel around and fight against the other mobs).

In the short amount of time I've played it I have enjoyed it. It's not as good as HOMM3 IMHO, but it looks promising.

-Zork

Fishbelly · Post by **Fishbelly** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 10:07 am

Yeah, I tried the solo play hack yesteday and it worked fine for me. At last I could play and explore at me leisure w/o waiting for opponents to act. I'm not sure if this game will ever live up to the Heroes III legacy, but I am at least intrigued. It certainly has potential to surpass Heroes IV. (faint praise, I know) If Nival can craft a decent AI I will certainly be purchasing this game.

I must admit, I do not like the battlefield portion of the game. The map itself is often cluttered with way too many obstacles, making flying and ranged creatures more valueable than before. Perhaps it's just a philosophy change, or the battlefield maps are limited in the demo. Or maybe it was just me . . . I wanted my giants to tromp across the battlefield and stomp some foes, but often everything was dead by the time they worked around all the obstacles

DArtagnan · Post by **DArtagnan** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 10:31 am

There is very little indication that this will be a game worthy of the previous games. The interface is horrible, especially the one for city building. The UI is clumsy and smacks of previous Nival games, which isn't good in my opinion.

The entire feel of the game has changed, from a charming colorful style to a dreary traditional fantasy game. I don't know about other fans, but I always loved the somewhat less serious approach to high fantasy. In previous games, you always got these wonderfully detailed pop-up screens when taking over a resource note, stumbling upon treasure etc. Now, you get a little colored number floating up your screen, which does nothing to explain what just happened. It's like they took the horrendously bad strategic portion of Etherlords 2 and converted it into HoMM 5.

The battle portion is decent enough, if a bit restricted. It's here that it's most evident that they've used the Etherlords engine, even down to the needlessly huge unit turn indicator taking up a fifth of the screen. The close-up sequences get old really fast and slow down the game, which is supposed to be fast according to designers, so that's pretty contradictory. I assume it can be disabled, or it would be an insult.

Do I sound happy? No, and I'm not. I really like the HoMM series, even the fourth one which has been unfairly over-bashed. This is nothing like HoMM and I hope it will fail miserably. Call it Etherlords 3 and all will be forgiven.

Peacedog · Post by **Peacedog** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 11:03 am

Dartagnan wrote:No, and I'm not. I really like the HoMM series, even the fourth one which has been unfairly over-bashed.

I dunno about unfairly. It did some things well IMO. and the hero development system was probably as good as it's ever beenin that game. I really liked heros in combat (invulnerability potion exploit aside) - and think things were actually decently balanced there (and had they stuck to the model for another game, it could have gotten better IMO). Too bad the strategic AI was very much wanting, and that was the deathblow.

So far, what I read about Homm5 is not promising (imo).

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 3:43 pm

Peacedog wrote:
Dartagnan wrote:No, and I'm not. I really like the HoMM series, even the fourth one which has been unfairly over-bashed.
I dunno about unfairly. It did some things well IMO. and the hero development system was probably as good as it's ever beenin that game.

Broken development system IMO. I didn't even have to figure out that Sanctuary was a broken spell, because the otherwise dead AI showed me the way on the first scrimage I played against it. I didn't even play long enough to truly discover that that the strartegic AI was dead as I suspected it was.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 3:46 pm

Zork wrote:For those of you that want to try the game out without having to connect via MP, there's a hack out that will enable the hotseat option.

You can read more about it here.

With the hotseat option, you can either play both sides or select to play against the computer (there's no AI and the comp player does nothing but at least you get to travel around and fight against the other mobs).

In the short amount of time I've played it I have enjoyed it. It's not as good as HOMM3 IMHO, but it looks promising.

-Zork

And now you are tempting me to check in the community of leeches.

Peacedog · Post by **Peacedog** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 4:11 pm

LordMortis wrote:Broken development system IMO.

Sanctuary being unbalanced doesn't mean the system is broken.

It was better than the too-much-randomness of 3s. They need to drop the randomness entirely and acknowledge that some of the skill fields just suck and need to be dropped or changed. I liked how each of 4s offered you 3 areas of minor focus. It would have been more interesting f they had tried to make you make tough choices between them. Alas.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 4:55 pm

Peacedog wrote:system is broken.

Not unblanced broken. Me memory is that three hero casters with the ability cast sanctuary means you don't lose unless the other guys got the same thing. Then it's just a wait and see who runs out of spell points first game.

Peacedog · Post by **Peacedog** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 4:59 pm

LordMortis wrote:Not unblanced broken. Me memory is that three hero casters with the ability cast sanctuary means you don't lose unless the other guys got the same thing. Then it's just a wait and see who runs out of spell points first game

The spell not working doesn't mean the development system is broken. They're separate issues. You can take a single spell out of the available arsenal and have minimal affect on the overall development system. And would have in this case. Further, sanctuary clearly worked as intended. Lack fo testing, or crappy testers, or refusal to listen to tester feedback simply didn't provide a chance to fix (or remove) the spell.

The fact that sactuary was horribly unbalanced doesn't really speak to the overall development system at all.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 5:42 pm

Peacedog wrote:
LordMortis wrote:Not unblanced broken. Me memory is that three hero casters with the ability cast sanctuary means you don't lose unless the other guys got the same thing. Then it's just a wait and see who runs out of spell points first game
The spell not working doesn't mean the development system is broken. They're separate issues. You can take a single spell out of the available arsenal and have minimal affect on the overall development system. And would have in this case. Further, sanctuary clearly worked as intended. Lack fo testing, or crappy testers, or refusal to listen to tester feedback simply didn't provide a chance to fix (or remove) the spell.

The fact that sactuary was horribly unbalanced doesn't really speak to the overall development system at all.

The problem is that of all of the things in game for the AI to figure out, it mostly knew the spell was broken and used it to its benefit early in the game.

At least in HoMM3 with expert TP being broken this wasn't a problem until late game. The game is fun until you get the expert move spells, then it's just a matter of time. In HoMM4 the option is available after 3 heroes get 3 units of experience. If you don't take advantage of the option, you're foolish, because the computer does.

Zork · Post by **Zork** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 3:09 pm

LordMortis wrote: And now you are tempting me to check in the community of leeches.

It's at least worth a look. I'm usually overly-optimistic before any release.

However, the more I play it, the more I am leaning toward what others here (and on UBI's forums) have said: there are some definite issues that if not addressed before release (such as a clunky UI) will probably prevent me from buying the game.

I'm so desperate for a good TBS game right now that I bought HOMM3 Complete today

. It will be interesting to compare the two side by side.

Happy gaming,

-Zork

tripcrow · Post by **tripcrow** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 11:04 pm

I usually find Dev Letters boring. But this one linked to from RPGdot is a pretty interesting insight on running a beta. It has renewed my hope that this game may be a good one.
http://forums.ubi.com/groupee/forums/a/ ... 3151072314

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 12:19 am

tripcrow wrote:I usually find Dev Letters boring. But this one linked to from RPGdot is a pretty interesting insight on running a beta. It has renewed my hope that this game may be a good one.
http://forums.ubi.com/groupee/forums/a/ ... 3151072314

Don't you dare get my hopes up, you.

Octopus Overlords

Heroes of Might and Magic V goes open beta.

Heroes of Might and Magic V goes open beta.

HoMM V pushed back