Nicely put Ethric.
Thankfully, I never bought H5. I played it at my friends house, and we both think it's an abomination mostly because it's very obvious that the developers didn't bother to finish making the game.
And now, from what I hear around this forum, they're incapable of making the game complete through patches. I can't seem to shake the feeling that this is just like the H4 trauma all over again.
It's a damn shame that for the third consecutive homm title, it's going to be the fans once again who pull H5 out of gutter through the map editor and mods. (Although, I thought H3 was originally a good game, WoG just made it more interesting.)
These people are going to spend their time and energy to do the developers job for them, simply out of passion for their favorite series. The fans seem to care more about making a good game than the developers. Which is why it's even more insulting that they have ignored fans so much. (Though this is not surprising, since in capitalism, it always boils down to the "bottom line.")
As for H3 vs H5? I don't think H5 is anything like H3, because I still find H3 enjoyable, where as H5 is unbearable. Ideally, they should have took inspiration from ALL homm games, because they all had innovative ideas.
I wholeheartedly agree with DL and TT. And from the posts that I have seen, they have provided far more contributions of ideas than anyone else I've noticed who just praise H5 blindly.
I'm very happy for those who like the game and find it enjoyable. But I don't understand why you are going through so much trouble to confront those of us who don't like it. I'm not sure if this is true, but I thought there was an ignore button if you'd rather not see DL and TT posts.
Maybe it's just because I have very high standards with video games. I'm the type of person who might buy only one excellent game a year. So I'm not satisfied that my favorite series has turned into an average game, which combined with so many bugs, has turned it into a below average game.
EDIT: DL, the succubi is just a modification of the magog. It's not really a new creature. So that makes zero truly "new creatures." Although, I'd have to check to be sure of that, I could be wrong.