HoMM V Demo Impressions

Skip this post if computer games aren’t your forte.

About an hour ago, I finished a long single-player skirmish match in the Heroes of Might and Magic (HoMM) V demo and have reached two conclusions: 1) It still needs work. 2) Otherwise, it’s a heckuva lot of fun.

First, let me mention the terrible public beta. Everything was wrong with it: incomplete animations, missing text, spells that did nothing, etc. Based on that, there was an outcry among the HoMM community (myself included) to leave the game in development for at least a few extra months so that the game would live up to its pedigree. Fortunately, Ubisoft seemed to hear, as the game was delayed a few months.

Now, a month or two after that beta, we have a demo. I installed it tentatively, afraid of what I would find upon completion. I even decided to go do some work outside (translation: get a bit of reading done before having impromptu conversations with friends who walked by and then joined me) before loading up the demo.

Fortunately, the worst offenses of the beta have been expelled. Most of the content is finished, with the exception of some poorly worded text descriptions. Unlike the beta, this demo offers a single-player mode where you can either play a campaign mission or a custom game scenario (only one map though). In the beta, the only option I tried was a multiplayer quick battle mode that let you get right down to the tactical level, ignoring the adventuring aspect of HoMM. Now, one can explore the full HoMM experience, and I’m quite satisfied with the results so far.

However, early on, I encountered two major problems. During the campaign mission, I laid siege to a castle and, about halfway through, all the enemy units suddenly became invisible. However, my units were still getting attacked by the castle’s towers and also one of the enemy’s ranged units. I tried the auto-combat button to see what that would do; my units simply defended constantly, refusing to act, and were slowly killed off by the projectile weapons. Furthermore, in order to cancel the battle, I had to Ctrl-Alt-Delete out of HoMM V because you can’t retreat from a siege, and there are no menu options during a battle. I was very frustrated, but when I tried the siege a second time, everything went smoothly.

My second issue was the mission itself. The objectives say that you have to liberate this castle and also capture a town (any town) within a week. By taking this castle, I figured I was making a tactically brilliant (I enjoy hyperbole from time to time) double play. However, the game had other ideas; after taking the castle, the “capture a town within a week” objective was accomplished, but the main one was not. Once a week (7 turns) passed in game, I was informed that I had failed; game over. Not cool.

After a several hours interlude for dinner and various meetings, I returned to the game, deciding to go for the skirmish mode this time. Finally, I found the great HoMM gameplay that I craved. No buggy mission objectives, no annoying graphical glitches that render the game unplayable, just classic HoMM dungeon crawling. As with previous games, the AI is challenging; I couldn’t beat the enemy hero’s army (too many freakin’ marksmen!). Still, I enjoyed every moment up until my eventual defeat.

I must say, I was quite pessimistic going into this demo, but my fears appear to have been groundless. It looks like Ubisoft (or, more accurately, the developer, Nival Interactive) got its act together and handled most of the fans’ concerns. Given that there’s at least another month before the game goes gold (i.e. starts getting copied for distribution), I’m now confident that HoMM V will not ruin my gilded memories of epic quests in a fantastic world but rather create new ones.