I loved Heroes of Might and Magic V. I tried the earlier installments before, but never understood the game and its mechanics. For some reason, HOMM V was a lot more accessible and easier to understand.

In Heroes of Might and Magic V, you follow a classic story about saving the kingdom, repel invading factions like demons, undead and creatures of the deep, and become the hero that saves the day. You can play the good and bad campaign, each consisting of many different missions, or scenarios. The story is fair and has a good pacing. Because the game thrives on this story, I will not spoil it further.

The mechanics in HOMM V are relatively simple. You explore a map, with various resources, towns, small buildings and upgrades, to increase your strength, stats and army. On the map, different units are stationed, some friendly and ready to join you, but most of them are hostile. You fight them to earn XP, level up and unlock more skills. The goal of each map varies from scenario to scenario but mostly includes the conquering of a town or gate to win. Some scenario’s are timed, adding to the challenge.

This game is really hard. The first scenario is some sort of tutorial, and can be completed easily, but after that, the game turns 180 degrees and throws everything it got at you. In the later scenarios, the enemy AI can be unforgiving.

I really like all the units, their backstories and their overall design. They just look badass, have awesome attacks, sound effects, animations and skills. In terms of creativity and design, I think the creatures in this game are better than the ones from King’s Bounty.

The graphics are great for the time and the animations of the units en environmental buildings are nicely done. The color pattern is warm and soft and enhances the experience.

By far the best aspect of Heroes of Might and Magic V, is the sound. The (combat) music is absolutely great and the sound effects are spot on. I loved the satisfying sound effect of the scythe of the Wraith units and the four-sword attack of the Rakhasa rani. It is sound design at its best.

The mechanics, controls and interfaces are easy to understand and can be mastered fairly quickly. The only small issue I experienced are the timed missions. In your quest log, you see that you need to capture a city in a certain amount of days, but on screen, no timer, reminder or warning is shown, making you instantly lose the scenario when not paying attention.

Another small problem is the “stalemate situation”. In the later missions, you and an enemy AI hero can both control heroes and cities and try to take over the enemy city. Because all units get replenished every start of the week, both heroes can get exactly the same power level when buying new units every week. This way, there is no real advantage over the enemy and it is just “luck and prayer” if you hit hard enough.

Looking back at the game in comparison with King’s Bounty, I think I prefer the latter in terms of graphics, mechanics, story and overall atmosphere. Nevertheless, Heroes of Might and Magic V will always remain a classic and a piece of nostalgia from my youth.

Definitely recommend this game.

Personally, favourite version of heroes for me.

It comes ahead of heroes 3 in terms of more interesting classes, creatures and magic. Creatures are the most important - here, they actually feel different.

It falls behind in terms of weird maps and less comfortable view. Balance of default heroes 5 is also kinda not good. Can't say much about campaigns though, i rarely ever played those. Multiplayer and generated maps have been main priority

If someone interested, the best experience of this game could be achieved by using mod "Might & Magic: Heroes 5.5". It has own site (just google it), it is simple to install and has great guide-app, that covers and lists all the changes + detailed info about game mechanics.

Heroes 5.5 does heavy work on improving various elements of the game, most notably balance issues. Dark\light magic doesn't reign supreme anymore, damaging spells are powerfull in lategame, AI is smarter, useless heroes and perks received reworks, hero races are farther devided into classes (so, for example, you can build Mage-Demon or Warrior-Demon, while in default game it will always be some sort of weird mix, with badly distributed stats). Also few of the best things here: improved simultaneous turns (in basic game it turns to turn-based when players got near, which IS bad), and much better map generator (though a bit non-intuitive to use - here you should read and understand their guide. It is definitely worth it)

Shortly speaking, i don't suggest playing game without "Heroes 5.5" mod. But with it, game becomes a wonderfull multiplayer experience. It could be roughly compared to Civilization (because of similar simultaneous turns machanics). Just create a map using template you like for needed number of players. You can increase power of monsters so that players couldn't meet very soon. Then level up your hero and army, gather items and, later on, clash with other players with what you've build for spectacular fights. At least, that's my favourite style of playing this