King's Bounty Vs Heroes V

[lauvhk]

After all, HOMM is a game focus on competition, even if the competitor is just the AI. Since HOMM1, it deviates from the original KB in terms of the core mechanics. The only thing that both games share is the concept of turn based encounter.

[phoenixreborn]

In King's Bounty the competition is to beat your best time.

No competition, they are both great fun games.

[Gatts]

Well, I personally am not a competetive type at all, also I am very weak strategyst, so games that bear strong competetive signs are creating strong fear inside me, but it is always the "magical" fantasy world/ fantasy army, spells/magic and my own imaginations (where I can see in my head the 1230 goblins clubbing 2 black dragons to near dead, one dragon dies with strong roar, but in last second 21 angry black titans shoots theirs storm arrows which decimate the goblins who are finished by the bleeding but furious black dragon who saw his mate dying in frenzy battle. .. I see all the bodies of 1230 dead goblins, some without armor or helmets, some black from fire of dragons, some still sparking from the arrows of lightning from titans.. and in the middle of the hoard is the wounded but victorius dragon, viciously searching for revenge, aiming it's dead cold look towards 3 lasting cyclops, who do not know that their last hour will just pass away very soon)

Even in King's Bounty I realized I have much less fun when I found out that I can't finish the game without loses, not even in 7 days, and that I got huge problems on impossible (even with dryads), the same was for HOMM x, where I was able to win not few scenarios on internet/hot seat or lan, but still some players where unbeatable by me... but it was the fearie environment, spells, dragons, heroes, artefacts... castles (In Homm 2 I loved the building of castles... and I fought the first games only to be able to finish / complete each type of castle to 100%... also searching for more enemies - as I didn't have manual and did not know what all types of armies are lurking in the beutiful lands... and what does the wind mill do? and what happens when I visit the tent with two swords? What is thief's den?... the winning if any was only the small cherry on the top)

[prowler]

I am playing KB like 10 days now and i must admit its pretty good and adictive. I especially like graphics and nice story with funny characters. I am not easily impressed, to tell you the truth i have played and stick to only several games all my life cause those others dont have that something. I just install new game, play it few hours and on most time uninstall it
This game was something different it has something special. I havent felt that since i played Heroes III, which is till today IMHO the best game that i have ever played and i am still playing it online. I remember i played it for month without stoping and changing to another game. I hope it will be similar with KB. Heroes V doesnt have that something. Its just Heroes III with new graphics, but IMHO bad graphics. And story and gaming is not that adictive as in Heroes III and KB. It misses something. I dont know what. It felts like it was made just like another project (game) with no good ideas, and on the other hand KB is something really fresh and new in gaming world. I think that heroes V with KB graphics engine and funny storyline would be something special. Anyhow i hope KB team will keep up the good work.

[phoenixreborn]

For me playing heroes v online made it from an ok game to an excellent game.

[jwallstone]

I agree with Warmonger. The leadership system makes a big difference. In HOMM V, stacks grow without limit, so the game becomes a race to accumulate tons and tons of units, and typically you want to concentrate all the troops on one "super-hero" rather than spread them out, even though the game theoretically is designed for people to utilize multiple heroes strategically. The reason for this is that with huge stacks, a huge part of winning is simply hitting first. If two equal stacks fight, and the first one to hit kills over half of the other stack, then even with retaliation, that small battle is already won. It becomes annoying because in the late game, it's no longer fun anymore to see half or all of one of your stacks wiped out in one hit. The entire game becomes accumating units, avoiding major battles with your main opponent, going after neutral stacks until you build up your hero and a large army, and then one large "super" battle at the end where the built-up armies decimate each other and whoever happens to come out on top wins (i.e. whoever manages to get some good first hits). You could try to play more strategically, with multiple heroes engaging in medium-sized skirmishes, but the game will punish you for that compared to the person that just builds up a single large army. The economies of scale from large armies is just too powerful.

The leadership system I think goes a long way to solving this. By controlling the increase in power for heroes, it prevents this runaway arms race to simply accumulate units. I imagine if HOMM V had leadership caps for heroes, it'd become a much more strategically rich game, involving managing a number of decent armies across the map to control resources, towns, chokepoints, etc, but where even an opponent who's already behind in army strength due to bad luck or a lost battle can still recover with good strategy and tactics.

[jwallstone]

A couple more thoughts. Leadership is big, but there are a few other differences to be aware of. If you compare creature statistics between King's Bounty and HOMM V, you'll find that HOMM V creatures are designed with much higher damage potentials versus hitpoints. In KB, you'll have units with 50-80 hitpoints doing 5-10 damage (roughly), whereas in HOMM V units with the same hp range are doing 15-20 damage. Even the top tier units have 200-300 hp, but are doing 40-50 hitpoints. Compare that to KB top tier units, with 600-800 hp, maybe 3-4 times as much, but doing about twice as much damage. This means units die a lot faster in HOMM V. Even Attack and Defense give 5% bonuses rather than 3.3% in KB.

Also, I like the hero leveling system in KB more. Talent runes and skill trees are great, despite whatever skills may or may not be balanced. In HOMM V, just figuring out how to pick skills, abilities and perks (yes, they have three names for practically the same thing) can be a complicated mess. There are so many crazy rules and dependencies that it makes it difficult to plan and for me requires a skill wheel just to make sense of it (very well done, by the way, thanks to the HOMM V community). Furthermore, the choices are random, which can make it impossible to build a hero the way you want, and sometimes you can get offered two poor choices where choosing either one completely rules out other skills that you want. I like that in KB there is some randomness, in getting choices for Attack, Defense, Mana, Rage, etc, but it's a much smaller impact and not a big deal if you don't get what you want, and you can direct the growth of your hero's talents, which has a bigger impact in my opinion, whereas in HOMM V poor random choices can completely screw up your plan. Also, some skills in HOMM V are almost entirely useless, i.e. I think there's more imbalance in HOMM V between good/bad skills.

Sorry to rain on HOMM V so much. It really is a fun game that I like, and I've been a fan since HOMM 1 (or even since the original KB, if you count that). There are many things to like about HOMM V, but I think there are some major game design problems, which KB does a great job of addressing, and which make KB a superior game overall.

[Roman]

Originally Posted by Zhuangzi

Gatts, this very clearly demonstrates one of the crucial differences between HoMM V and KB:TL. From what you said, it sounds like multiplayer and map editing is a big part of HoMM V, two things I have never been interested in. What I want in a game is an engrossing single player campaign, and this is why I much preferred KB:TL.

Yes, this is correct. In single player KB:TL dominates HoMM V without a doubt. KB:TL is simply en excellent game - there is no doubt about that. For multiplayer, though, HoMM V and particularly the second expansion TotE is a very good game indeed (and I also dislike competitive games - I play HoMM V multiplayer cooperatively to defeat the AI).

[Zhuangzi]

KB:TL is in my top ten games ever. 15+ years of gaming. I played it solidly for two months, like 4-6 hours a day, every day. I was addicted. Then, finally, I stopped in mid November. Heh, I even deleted the shortcut off the desktop so I wouldn't play any more.

Now I just booted it up again for the first time since 16th Nov.