It's time for some critics.

[Roman]

KB:L is great, but the Tribes of the East is a great game too and it can be played in multiplayer mode. You won't regret buying it.

There is a LOT of depth to the Tribes of the East. You can play the game at many levels of skill and there are a large number of different viable strategies at different levels of play and depending on what faction you chose.

HOMM 3 was great too - it was a classic, but it is a bit dated now - I think you are better off with HOMM 5 Tribes of the East now. Indeed, HOMM 5 is in many respects a 'remake' of HOMM 3, just like KB:L is a 'remake' of KB. HOMM 4, however, was not good at all and not in the spirit of the rest of the series.

[Zhuangzi]

Thanks. I played the first mission of ToE and thought it was great fun. Then I thought I'd better start on the original campaign and the first three missions were deadly boring (and very easy, even on Hard difficulty). So I think I will go back to ToE.

[Roman]

I thought even the original HOMM V was a respectable game, but they have really improved on it with Tribes of the East. I have actually played through the entire HOMM V campaign (but I have not played the HoF and TotE campaigns, so I cannot really comment on those), but the campaigns are really not the strong point of the series at all- they cannot compare to KB:L in that regard. Do not be deceived by the apparent ease of the HOMM B campaign at the beginning though - it can get pretty tough later on (of course, once you know the tricks of the game, it gets easier, just like KB:L). Not in the first campaign though for sure, but there are six campaigns and they do get progressively more difficult.

The main attractions for me, however, are the various single player scenarios, the random map generator and especially the multiplayer possibilities. I play Tribes of the East for the hot seat multiplayer. It is a family game for me - I play it with my sister and cousins when we meet up over the holidays!

It really is a good game and it is, in fact, through hanging out on some HOMM V/TotE boards that I found out about KB:L. KB:L received a very positive reception there, which is not surprising, given the fact that the games share the same ultimate roots.

[Wenla]

There are also tons of maps from various players on the net. Some of those are really good, so also I, who don't play multiplayer, can find new challenges.

Wenla

[Zhuangzi]

Originally Posted by Roman

I thought even the original HOMM V was a respectable game, but they have really improved on it with Tribes of the East. I have actually played through the entire HOMM V campaign (but I have not played the HoF and TotE campaigns, so I cannot really comment on those), but the campaigns are really not the strong point of the series at all- they cannot compare to KB:L in that regard. Do not be deceived by the apparent ease of the HOMM B campaign at the beginning though - it can get pretty tough later on (of course, once you know the tricks of the game, it gets easier, just like KB:L). Not in the first campaign though for sure, but there are six campaigns and they do get progressively more difficult.

The main attractions for me, however, are the various single player scenarios, the random map generator and especially the multiplayer possibilities. I play Tribes of the East for the hot seat multiplayer. It is a family game for me - I play it with my sister and cousins when we meet up over the holidays!

It really is a good game and it is, in fact, through hanging out on some HOMM V/TotE boards that I found out about KB:L. KB:L received a very positive reception there, which is not surprising, given the fact that the games share the same ultimate roots.

It's funny because the first campaign in HOMM V is just absurdly easy, even on Hard. It's so boring; you just have to slog through it.

On the other hand, the Tribes of the East campaign is a real challenge for me right now on Medium difficulty. I just played the second mission, Last Soul Standing, and I had a LOT of fun. I won by the skin of my teeth. It's a timed mission and I reached the objective on the last possible day, and then died three times trying to defeat the castle guards (I am still learning this game ) On my fourth try I won with 2 archers and 5 zombies left. What fun I had! So I will try to forget about the HOMM V campaigns and see how far I can get with ToE.

[kennec]

HOMM V shit game played it 2 days then i unsintalled it

HOMM 4 more of the same lostthe edge and to few upgrades, to ,many spells and hero as avatar on battlefield was imba

HOMM 3 best in serie, played hotseats and local networks with 4-5 computers and had tournaments and 2v2 and 3v3s superb game , one of the best

HOMM 2 huge upgrade, several dragons sorts and stuff, played it for hours and hours and days

HOMM 1 very fun game remember installing it with several floppy discs on my computer and thought it was a huge game

KBL : fun game, was realy hooked for weaks, some things i didnt like was that random mobs to buy and unable to complete quests sometimes, classes wherent balanced.

[Metathron]

The first HoMM V campaign (haven/knight) is sort of a tutorial, that's why it's easy; the last missions (not to mention the campaigns that follow) do become more challenging though, so you shouldn't give up on it.

[Roman]

Originally Posted by Zhuangzi

It's funny because the first campaign in HOMM V is just absurdly easy, even on Hard. It's so boring; you just have to slog through it.

The original HOMM V (without the expansions) has 6 campaigns, one for each race (I assume the 2 extra races added get their own campaigns in their expansions), which are interconnected story-wise. All of the missions in the first campaign are sort of a tutorial for players who have never played the series before. You coming from the related KB:L gives you an advantage. The later campaigns do get tougher, but that said, many players have complained that the campaign itself is pretty uninspired tougher or not.

On the other hand, the Tribes of the East campaign is a real challenge for me right now on Medium difficulty. I just played the second mission, Last Soul Standing, and I had a LOT of fun. I won by the skin of my teeth. It's a timed mission and I reached the objective on the last possible day, and then died three times trying to defeat the castle guards (I am still learning this game ) On my fourth try I won with 2 archers and 5 zombies left. What fun I had! So I will try to forget about the HOMM V campaigns and see how far I can get with ToE.

Yeah! I love the battles when you just barely win against a superior army! I have not played it, but the TotE campaign, according to most players, is a huge improvement over the original campaigns. Some reviewers, however, actually marked ToTE's scores down for the game being too difficult!

In any case, the overarching difference between KB:L and HOMM (any game in the series) is that HOMM has another strategic layer, where you capture mines, cities and build up/level your cities, which then produce your units. The maximum level of units themselves is level 7, which is approximately equivalent to level 5 units in KB:L.

The skill system in HOMM V is the best in the series (much better even than in HOMM 3 - which was the 'classic' HOMM game for many, myself included) and is truly great.

There are 4 primary ability scores. Attack and Defense functions similarly to the same stats in KB:L. Spellpower is similar to Intellect in KB:L and Knowledge determines the amount of Mana the hero gets.

There are 12 basic universal skills that a hero can learn and each has three levels. Orcs in TotE, however, add sort of 4 more pseudo-skills, as they cannot learn the magic skills, but instead have 4 equivalent anti-magic skills. Your hero only has slots for 5 basic skills, however, so you have to chose carefully what skills you want to learn depending on the type of hero you are building. The probability of what skills get offered to you at level-up depends on the class of your hero (each faction's heroes belong to a different class), but in theory all heroes (except Orcs) can learn any 5 of the basic universal skills.

On top of the basic universal skills, all factions's heroes also get one racial skill (also at three levels of expertise [plus one extra {4th} level with special artifacts]). This is unique to the race in question.

The basic skills and the racial skills open up 'perks'. The perks offered depend on the combination of skills and other perks you select. There are a large number of them and not all factions' heroes can access all of them. Each hero has 3 slots for perks for each skill.

The right combination of skills and perks can open up access to an 'ultimate' ability that is really powerful and differs by race, but the hero has to be high level to get that.

On top of the above, each hero also has a unique specialty ability of his own.

The skill system can get very deep! It is really good once you get the hang of it!

[Smash]

One thing i miss in homm5 there is no more to choose heroes of might and magic, now is magic or might depend castle/side you pick up. I would really want to play necropolis as Death Knight once again .

[Ish]

Originally Posted by sector24

I have to admit I laughed when I read this, but then I felt a little bad for laughing. A little.

Anyway, it's been quite awhile since I played HoMM 3 and obviously my memory is a little hazy. I honestly don't remember them implementing recursive waiting but it could very well be true. So I'm just going to have to go back to my "gut feeling". I remember HoMM 3 battles being largely about attrition and not very much about strategy. Basically every time you were in a battle with a non-trivial opponent, you were going to lose some of your army no matter how good you were at the game. You might lose a little more or a little less, but you were always going to lose some units just because your opponent had an army of a certain size.

This makes sense in the scope of HoMM because you can buy new units every week and the game is primarily about resource management, not tactical combat. But that's not the focus of KB at all. I like that if you really take the time to think things out, you can pull an Alexander the Great or Sun Tzu type of overwhelming victory. It's the same concept that makes the Total War games great. You don't get that in HoMM at all.

The other thing that bothered me in HoMM (and this has no comparison to KB) is that the enemy heroes could just run around willy nilly and sometimes you couldn't catch them. I remember being in a protracted battle with an AI the same size as me across a huge wide open continent. His heroes were just a tiny bit faster than mine, so I could never catch them. He'd always just run around stealing my weekly resources, or putting himself in a position where he could attack 1 of 2 castles, and I had to choose which one to defend. Then he'd always take the other one, and I'd take it back and crush him, but lose about a week's worth of units doing it. He'd buy his hero back from the inn and we'd do it again.

The whole thing was frustrating and pointless and due to the fact that no matter how skilled I was, I was going to lose half my army taking back my castle, I could never get out of that stupid cycle. I eventually just quit. That is the sour taste that sticks with me from HoMM and why I stopped playing. It's not a game about strategic combat like KB is.

Having played a huge amount of HOMM I dont find this to be the case at all... the main factor in having large/small losses is obviously your hero, and there are any number of ways to achieve this.

You could have chosen logistics + pathfinding to increase your movement, and also only have fast troops on your hero which increases his movement too.

You only attack the enemy if you have something significant to gain from it, and castles provide a large advantage, so if the enemy is hell bent on attacking you - you can shack up in your castle and improve your chances of an overwhelming victory.


I think if you played the heroes games a bit more you would find that