HoM&M V Vs. King's Bounty Vs. HoM&M V: Tribes of the East

[fld88]

I really like Kings’s Bounty and I’m looking forward to the expansion but HOMM has been my favourite game series of all time. HOMM has a much longer shelf life than because of all the maps, campaigns and scenario editor. Tribes of the East is the best but I would only start with that one if you were sure you were not going to play the previous two versions of HOMM V.

I too avoided HOMM V for quite a while because of not liking the demo but later I took a risk and bought the game and now I would say HOMM V is my favourite for single player while HOMM is tops for multiplayer.

[master.jimmy]

king's bounty 1990
Heroes of might and magic 1994

hoM&M comes later... i always wanna say this

I ve played both. No match about it. Music, design, combact/strategy, arts. KB is so much better.
The only disadvantage is "no multiplayer game".
Heroes is a "stage/episode" game, KB has an history and it's 1 story. A Strategic game/rpg (with strategic battle)
In HOMM EVERY episode, u should "build",find resource, clear buildings to hire troops... very boring.
No match for me.
KB > all

[goodview]

Originally Posted by master.jimmy

king's bounty 1990
Heroes of might and magic 1994

hoM&M comes later... i always wanna say this

I ve played both. No match about it. Music, design, combact/strategy, arts. KB is so much better.
The only disadvantage is "no multiplayer game".
Heroes is a "stage/episode" game, KB has an history and it's 1 story. A Strategic game/rpg (with strategic battle)
In HOMM EVERY episode, u should "build",find resource, clear buildings to hire troops... very boring.
No match for me.
KB > all

Vol 2 on 1988

[jake21]

Well steam had a special on HOMM V (v+ expansions for 13.00). I've played a few hours and so far hate it as much as the demo but I will play a bit more before deciding conclusively. This isn't to say it is a bad game - but so far the campaign is dull as can be. Then again you noted that you like the multi-player - can't comment on that aspect (yet) but to date for TB games AOW-SM has been my favorite (though the graphics are now a bit dated). Would love to see 1C do a new version of AOW-SM or space rangers iii

Originally Posted by fld88

I really like Kings’s Bounty and I’m looking forward to the expansion but HOMM has been my favourite game series of all time. HOMM has a much longer shelf life than because of all the maps, campaigns and scenario editor. Tribes of the East is the best but I would only start with that one if you were sure you were not going to play the previous two versions of HOMM V.

I too avoided HOMM V for quite a while because of not liking the demo but later I took a risk and bought the game and now I would say HOMM V is my favourite for single player while HOMM is tops for multiplayer.

[Elias_Maluco]

Kings Bounty is a RPG game with a turn-based tactical battle system; HOMM is an strategy game with some RPG elements. Their combat system is similar and both have "heroes", but apart from this, they are very different games. HOMM is about strategy and city building and tactical combat and hero development; KB is about questing and exploring and tactical combat and hero development.

Personally, I like then both. KB single player is very good. But once you are done, you can only replay the same game with a different hero, using different troops, etc. HOMM is way more open-ended, you have several campaigns, 8 different factions, several single maps, hundreds of user-created maps (and some campaigns), a random map generator, and, of course, multi-player.

[Vilk]

I quickly look at the fan guide to get an overview and homm5 seems a lot about management, how to manage heroes, troops and cities to build more powerful armies.

My grin when looking at the rules is they made a confusion with the number of rules and game quality, no no this isn't linked.

The complexity remind me how complex had become AD&D classes, at the end it's more confusion than more cool features.

For the battles I noticed different things:

• For all snapshots I saw, no obstacles or pointless in battle fields. Obstacles add a lot to battles finesses.
• And I could not found spells like target, time back, slow, invisibility, sleep, skills of cannon fooder summon, walls, field armor like the glot armor, some complexity like damages linked to movements like for Leena Ball or Horsemen, enemy teleporting and so on. Ie all the fun is missing.
• Units seems not have so many special talents and most if not all are purely based on fire power long range or close range. The only exception is perhaps some stuff linked with necromancy.

I haven't played yet homm5 but my feeling is that there are many strategy elements from resources, improvements, heroes choices, managing armies and movements and so on. But on the battlefield it seems a bit too much like brutal encounters.

I'll still try the game but I think that it's from strategical elements that I'll take the fun not from tactics in battle field like in KBTL.

[McSwan]

"And I could not found spells like target, time back, slow, invisibility, sleep, skills of cannon fooder summon, walls, field armor like the glot armor, some complexity like damages linked to movements like for Leena Ball or Horsemen, enemy teleporting and so on. Ie all the fun is missing."

Homm does have most of these.

Spells like time back, mass sleep etc. don't exist because they're hard to balance in multi-player.

[Vilk]

I understand the problem of multiplayer but that's also my grin, make a game for both always lowdown the gameplay quality for standard play.

About the spells there's in homm5, be less vague, what spell in homm5 for those:

• So I'm not wrong, no Time Back, no Target, no mass sleep.
• But there's invisibility? What homm5 spell?
• There's walls to put obstacles like wall or ice thorns? I only saw fire wall and that's totally different.
• There's slow? I saw haste but not slow. Some spell effect can freeze and at highest level that's a 100% chance but still that's not slow you use for a pure tactical meaning with a low mana cost.
• There's free mass cannon fooder summon with zero mana cost? Sure the game allows summon, any game does, but for no mana cost, that makes all the difference and there's that in homm5?
• There's field armor that disable any movements? Pure field armor is just another protection spell.
• Leena ball is a very special thing, most player don't use it and don't know use it. But once you learn that's rather interesting. I won't even ask I know there's no stuff like that in homm5.
• Is there magic spring? That's a rather complicate way to restore some mana during a battle but that's what make it fun. I haven't quote any stuff like that in homm5.
• Is there mass Magic Shackles that block magic talents of enemy troops? Well units seems not have many stuff like talent but also I didn't quote any spell like that in homm5.
• Enemy teleporting isn't teleporting, is really homm5 has that? In KBTL it's only through the use of Archmage skill but that's still huge and very interesting in a tactical point of view.
• Is homm5 units has choices for attacking or using a non attacking talent? That adds a lot to finesses of battles and homm5 seems not have that.
• Gift, can you in homm5 have units get back all its special talents?
• Fit of Energy, is in homm5 you can make a unit attack a second time during same round?

Now I have played a bit homm5, finished the first campaign, start the second... and for now battles are rather pathetic in comparison with first areas of KBTL. Not that the game isn't fun, i have been catch but by the strategy aspects, in second campaign.

Mmm and for the quote I have seen some battles video of homm5 and they only confirm my feeling.

EDIT: And obstacles, no battle of homm5 seems have obstacle like in many of kbtl battles, and what make battles more subtle, obstacles obviously. If really battles design of homm5 had take profit of the same focus and quality than in kbtl, battle fields of homm5 would have much more obstacles.

[Elwin]

There is slow, it always been in homm series. Other mostly not but hell, that is good its diferrent.

[garzahd]

I played HOMM5 quite a lot after it was first released, but not much with the most recent expansion. In general I would argue that KB:TL has a far better single-player campaign, but I do enjoy HOMM's multiplayer.

I can answer most of these questions:

Originally Posted by Vilk

• So I'm not wrong, no Time Back, no Target, no mass sleep.
• But there's invisibility? What homm5 spell?

No mass sleep, but there is a single-target sleep (Blind). And KBTL doesn't really have true mass sleep either ... you can defend against the dryad one by simply having L4+ units. Time Back, Target, and Invis don't exist in HOMM5 because playing against a human opponent makes those hard to enforce.

Originally Posted by Vilk

• There's walls to put obstacles like wall or ice thorns? I only saw fire wall and that's totally different.
• There's slow? I saw haste but not slow. Some spell effect can freeze and at highest level that's a 100% chance but still that's not slow you use for a pure tactical meaning with a low mana cost.

The new expansion (Tribes of the East) added a spell to place obstacles; it didn't exist before then. Haste and Slow both exist in HOMM5, and they're more powerful because they affect the number of actions you get rather than when those actions occur. To pick an extreme example, hasted blood furies vs slowed zombies, the furies would get roughly 5 times as many actions.

Originally Posted by Vilk

• There's free mass cannon fooder summon with zero mana cost? Sure the game allows summon, any game does, but for no mana cost, that makes all the difference and there's that in homm5?

All demon units have a once-per-battle ability to summon reinforcements at no mana cost (like thorns in KB except without the corpse or adjacency requirement). The reinforcements take 1 turn to arrive, then another turn before they get to act, so they're not universally awesome. Demon heroes get a series of upgrades that affect demon summoning speed and which units have unlocked the ability to summon. Other mana-based summoning includes the Summon Elementals spell and Phantom Forces (which is like KB's Phantom spell except the summoned units have 50% evasion and 1 hp, but no time limit). All variants of summoned units in HOMM5 are not "required" to be killed to win the battle; they'll persist even if their creator dies, but if one side has only summoned units remaining, they automatically lose.

Originally Posted by Vilk

• There's field armor that disable any movements? Pure field armor is just another protection spell.
• Is there magic spring? That's a rather complicate way to restore some mana during a battle but that's what make it fun. I haven't quote any stuff like that in homm5.

Assuming that by "field armor" you mean Glot's armor, no that doesn't exist in HOMM5. The closest thing, Arcane Armor, doesn't prevent movement but does allow a portion of the incoming damage to still hurt the target stack. The rage mechanic of the new orc race in Tribes of the East also works this way.
Magic Spring doesn't exist, but Elder Druids have a once-per-battle ability to dump their entire mana pool into the hero's mana pool. This is handy because creature mana always regenerates at the start of every fight while hero mana does not.

Originally Posted by Vilk

• Is there mass Magic Shackles that block magic talents of enemy troops? Well units seems not have many stuff like talent but also I didn't quote any spell like that in homm5.
• Enemy teleporting isn't teleporting, is really homm5 has that? In KBTL it's only through the use of Archmage skill but that's still huge and very interesting in a tactical point of view.

Magic Shackles doesn't exist.
As for Teleport, it's a Light Magic spell, which means anyone can get it, not just Archmages. (Dark-oriented casters, like undead or demons, would have a harder time finding it, and would have to rely on a map feature to learn it.) Some heroes can learn Teleport Assault, which basically gives an instant boost of haste to the teleported unit, so they jump ahead in turn order.

Originally Posted by Vilk

• Is homm5 units has choices for attacking or using a non attacking talent? That adds a lot to finesses of battles and homm5 seems not have that.
• Gift, can you in homm5 have units get back all its special talents?
• Fit of Energy, is in homm5 you can make a unit attack a second time during same round?

Non-attacking talents are quite abundant; priests, liches, shadow matriarchs, all demon units with summoning, sprites, druids and mages are a few examples.
Gift and Fit of Energy do not exist in HOMM5 (Though Fit of Energy, to some extent, works similarly to haste and teleport assault, because those affect quantity of actions instead of turn order.)