Celestial Gamer

GAME DETAILS
Publisher:	Ubisoft
Developer:	Nival Interactive
Genre:	Fantasy Turn-Based Strategy
Release Date:	May 23,2006
ESRB:	TEEN
Official Site:
www.mightandmagicgame.com/us

The basics of Heroes V have been the same with its previous predecessor. You must command an army of creatures, conquer resources and towns and defeat your enemy with might and magic. You can recruit Heroes to scout the map, gather resources for you while you are strengthening your posts. As your Hero explore and defeat an enemy, he gains experience, artifacts or in some Hero raise undead. You explore a vast map filled with resources, an underground subterranean area to explore, raise morale and luck for your army or even dig for the ultimate artifact for your town.

Heroes V present a very unique, fantastic environment with an interesting creatures and heroes. Your Heroes has its own unique specialization that allows them to do even better in the battlefield. In addition, your own creatures also have its own special ability that can be used on demand. For some creatures, their ability triggers randomly during the battle. Depending on your luck, this ability can have a devastating effect on the receiving creature. Heroes V have six playable factions, each of which has its own heroes, creatures and castle type. You can control elves, demons, undead, wizards and knights.

Heroes V have its usual campaign and custom games that you can play for hours. Each campaign is composed of five missions with a good 3d cutscenes that makes the campaign an engaging story. Each campaign may vary in setting; some starts you off with little resources and some without a castle to start of with. Although you will carry your main hero all throughout the campaign, you may need to rebuild your army from scratch for each campaign. Here’s a tip, create a hero that specializes in magic and learn Phantom Forces spell. This spell allows you to duplicate lower lever creatures. Duplicate lower level creatures and cast a powerful spell (i.e. if you have an artifact that freezes an enemy when you cast any cold spell then keep using that spell) against your enemy.

One of the most difficult things to acquire in the game is resources. Without the right amount of resources, you won’t be able to build structures in your town that will allow you to recruit higher level type of creatures. Heck, you won’t be able to recruit the highest type of creature with just gold. So keep an eye on your resources and make sure they don’t get stolen from you.

Heroes V feature a number of stand-alone scenarios to extend your game for hours. You can also play multiplayer maps against a computer or other players in a hot seat mode. Since this is a turn based game, you can play in ghost mode while waiting for other players to finish their move. Although the multiplayer feature may run some issues and bug, it may still be worth it to play against another Heroes fan.

The game’s graphics have improved a lot since the last installment of Heroes. But it comes with a price. In some portion of the game such as attacking an enemy castle, the frame rate can be slow pretty badly. In some cases, casting a spell can slow this down to almost a halt. Some powerful spells executes animation that even in a regular battlefield can cause some poor performance. Some battlefield environment causes poor performance too and casting spell will surely slow this game down to a crawl. Despite the high requirements on playing this game, the detail in the creatures, town and environment is just simple amazing. This a must have for any Heroes fan.

Mark

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