Reviews
- by Angelspit
Our former host GameSpy was able to see Heroes of Might and Magic V in action before the end of the E3, and they posted their preview article: "Seeing the game on the show floor, it was an amazing experience to see how stunning the Inferno faction's city looked (think Mordor) or how detailed a fully developed Knight city looked. It's a Heroes fan's dream come true, at least aesthetically. The combat actually reminds you of Etherlords, only it looks a whole lot better. In the combat demo we saw, a Knight Hero battled an Inferno Hero and it was a spectacle of light, spells, and fantastic unit animation. To see the Griffin unit vanish from the screen for a turn in preparation of its dive attack, and then to rapidly swoop down unexpectedly on a stack of enemy Nightmares … it's just something that fans of the series will have to see to believe."
The article also mentions the hero trail feature, hints at some new skills being worked on and reveals that players will only control one hero per faction. (You can recruit more than one hero but there is only one archetype per faction.) That hero will however be fully customizable. Read it all here. Notice the ranking system on the GameSpy site for all games that were shown at E3. Heroes V ranks at 587, which is quite good if you check out the position of some future blockbusters on the list. There's no doubt the new Heroes made a good impression at the show. Good work, Ubisoft and Nival!
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- by David Mullich
Heroes V E3 Preview
David Mullich was the Director of Heroes III, Armageddon’s Blade,Shadow of Death, Heroes Chronicles and Heroes IV
During my annual pilgrimage to E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo), I could not resist finding out how Ubisoft was doing with the game that was my love and labor for nearly five years.
Finding the Heroes V demo proved to be about as hard as locating Heroe’s grail object. The Ubisoft booth was tucked away in the corner of an enormous hall that was also home to the behemoth Activision, Electronic Arts and Vivendi Universal booths. Then, it took me several minutes to find the Heroes V display, which was set aside in a back corner, barely noticeable next to the attention-grabbing Peter Jackson’s King Kong theater. (Fortunately, there was a second demo station for the best turn-based strategy game of all time at the more prominent Games For Windows booth, where E3 adventurers are more likely to discover it).
Indefatigable Heroes V producer Fabrice Cambounet gave a short, well-rehearsed game demo to visitors, two at a time. Because the noise from nearby games was deafening, visitors had to wear headphones to hear Fabrice’s demo as he spoke into a microphone headset. When it was my turn to don a headphone, Fabrice asked me if I had ever played a Heroes game before. “A little bit,” I replied, then quickly glanced down to verify that my name badge was visible and wonder if he would recognize my name without me wearing Sir Mullich’s big floppy hat. If he did, he didn’t show it.
Fabrice began the demo on the town screen for the human faction, whereupon the camera began encircling the town, which was being rendered real-time in gorgeous 3D graphics. Heroes creator Jon Van Caneghem had long resisted the urge to take the Heroes series from the realm 3D because he felt that technology was not powerful enough to render artwork as beautifully as pre-rendered 2D artwork. Well, let me tell you, based upon what I saw, technology has finally reached a state where I think JVC would have been satisfied. Many of you old-time “Heroes” players will be pleased to hear that the color palette had been changed back to the cheerful hues last seen in Heroes 2, before I introduced the grittier “extreme fantasy” look of Heroes III and Heroes IV.
The town was a fairy-tale-style medieval village of about a hundred small houses, in the middle of which was a very tall sky-scraper-like castle with tall turrets built adjacent to the walls and elaborate structures sitting on top. After admiring the visual splendor, I began to wonder about gameplay. Fabrice described this as a “fully built town,” and as there were no user interface elements (buttons, icons, indicators, roll-over text) anywhere on the screen, I didn’t get any hints of what town construction or the build-tree was like.
I did see what appeared to be an Angel generator and another high-level creature generator on top of the castle, but where was the mage guild, black smith and grail structures? If the town included these buildings, was Ubisoft adhering to the Heroes design principle that you should be able to tell (or guess at) the function of an object just by looking at it? I worried that a lot of the turrets and structures looked indistinct.
Fabrice went on to say that as the player built up the town, more and more houses would appear around the central castle. While we did something similar in the previous versions of Heroes, there appeared to be many more dwellings in this fifth incarnation, and I wondered if the functional structures were too-tightly packed in a too-small portion of the screen. Granted, this was now a real-time 3-D game with camera zoom controls, so the functional portion of the town could take up as much or as little screen real estate as you choose, but the previous versions of Heroes had shied away from the idea of zoom controls on the belief that the camera should remain at an optimum, fixed position so that you always be shown everything you needed to see and interact with during that turn without worrying about zooming the camera to the proper distance.
My concern about camera placement and gameplay grew when Fabrice transitioned to the adventure screen, which showed the mounted hero waiting at the town’s entrance at a high zoom level that reminded me of the over-sized graphics in Heroes I.
Now, before I alarm anyone with my concerns, let me bring several caveats to your attention.
First, this was a demo made for an E3 audience, which consists of buyers and press who have a very short amount of time to be dazzled. So, I’m sure that everything shown was set up to be as visually impressive as possible and may not represent final gameplay.
Second, this is a work-in-progress. Fabrice said that the game would be released in Spring 2006, so there is still a year’s work to do on it. Much has not yet been properly adjusted or even initially implemented, and I have no doubt that Ubisoft will eventually undergo lots of gameplay testing, and they will adjust anything that they discover needs to be adjusted.
Third, watching a game being played is not the same as playing it yourself. You really can’t tell what works and what doesn’t until you spend time at the controls yourself.
Finally, making sequels is a tricky business, whether they are games, movies or books. To be successful, you need to make enough changes to make the sequel different enough from the original to make people want to buy it too, but without changing it so much that it loses what made it popular in the first place. Worse, technology and taste change over time, and what made the original successful yesterday may no longer be popular to the audience of today. Sometimes you guess right about what combination of changes will work (Heroes III, if I may be so bold) and sometimes you don’t (Heroes IV, anyone?)
Getting back to the adventure screen, the graphics were gorgeous. While the camera was zoomed in closer to objects than in the last few Heroes sequels, the graphics were also more detailed. The mountains had much more texture to them, the branches of trees swayed in the wind, and the lava pits glowed and flowed very realistically.
As I mentioned above, your army is still represented on the adventure screen as a hero on horseback and the town is still represented as a castle surrounded by a wall, although the castle’s details change as you build up your town. When you click on the adventure map, your route is still traced out by arrows (still looking very much like the solid-green arrows from Heroes II) following a hexagonal path.
As has been noted in other previews, the user interface has been reduced down to just a mini-map in the lower left-hand corner and an end-turn button surround by information screen buttons in the lower right-hand corner. Gone are the gold and resource indicators, buttons for quickly accessing your various armies and towns, and indicators showing what creatures your currently selected army consists of. The interface was streamlined “for simplicity,” but I wonder how having less information on the screen will affect the game’s strategic and tactical depth as you play it.
Fabrice first moved his army to a nearby windmill, which told me that the game still has resource generators. When the army arrived, a symbol representing the player’s forces appeared over the windmill to show that he now owned it. For the first time I noticed that this symbol also appeared on the player’s fluttering flag. Where player’s no longer represented by colors? No, the mini-map showed town and resource generator ownership by color. I then looked back on the symbols on the army flag and above the windmill and saw that they had a tinge of the player’s red color around them. I wonder whether the use of both a color and symbol will be as easy to “read” as just using a color to represent player ownership as in previous Heroes.
Fabrice then moved on to a treasure chest, which offered him a choice between 1500 gold and 2500 experience (if I recall the numbers correctly). He next went to an experience obelisk, at which he leveled up. As a Level 11 knight, he was offered a choice between two “Skills” (diplomacy and pathfinding, I believe) and two “Attributes” (logistics was one, I think). Fabrice said that the pop-ups were less wordy than in Heroes IV (a good thing, I say), although these particular pop-ups looked to me about as wordy as their Heroes IV counterparts.
As I looked at a nearby river as was pleased to note a whirlpool present, an (unmounted!) Inferno enemy hero approached and engaged me in battle. The game transitioned to the combat screen, which Fabrice said was incomplete and did not yet have the movement grid and battle options buttons found in previous versions of Heroes. I did note that there were stack numbers set in teal-colored boxes next to each troop on the battlefield.
For Heroes V, the heroes have been moved back off the battlefield and no longer participate in combat other than to cast spells. (That’s probably a good thing. Although I was the one who championed putting heroes onto the battlefield in Heroes IV, I’m not convinced that that actually added much to the game and perhaps even took away from it).
Each side had four stacks of creatures in its army. The humans had among it troops archers, griffins and cavalry while the flame-engulfed Inferno army had devils, hellhounds and two types of demons. The real-time 3D creatures were detailed enough that I think JVC would have been pleased, although things like helmets, shoulder guards, gloves and swords were over-sized for my tastes.
The armies were closer together than we have seen in previous Heroes; Fabrice said that when armies with fewer stacks fight, the battlefield is reduced accordingly to make battles go more quickly. I wondered how this change would affect the tactical distinguishments between walkers, shooters and fliers, as well as movement point balance, particularly with a mix of high and low-level creatures.
When battle commenced, I was reminded of the Playstation 2 version of Heroes, “The Quest for the Dragonbone Staff”. The camera would automatically shift to show a close-up of an attacker firing a weapon or hero casting a spell, and then immediately cut to show what happened to the victim. The camera placement was usually very good, and it felt more like watching a movie than playing a game, although the addition of a moving camera did concern me that it took away from the chess-like experience of previous Heroes games.
The creature and spell animations were all very good, although they had a feeling of being incomplete. Sometimes creatures popped into animation sequences rather than smoothly transitioning into them, and some of the spell effects seemed to be lacking start-up or end animations (like a puff of smoke when a creature was incinerated) that would made some spells more dramatic. I didn’t see any of the graphical icons we used in previous Heroes that communicated what the spell actually did (for example, a magical bolt being deflected off of a mirror to denote Magic Mirror).
However, the demo ended with a nice visual treat of a smoking bone dragon suddenly fly out of nowhere and land in the battlefield and blowing everyone away.
After Fabrice finished the demo, I quickly introduced myself to him, congratulated him on making such a magnificent looking game (which it is) and wished him well with the finished product (which I do). However, there were other people waiting to see the demo, and so my time with Fabrice was short.
While I did have some concerns about some of the design decisions I saw in the demo, I’m going to give Ubisoft the benefit of the doubt and keep my fingers crossed that next year we will have another great Heroes game to play.
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- by Biggles Final Flight
Get your pacemakers ready... According to an article by Andrew Park on Gamespot, they have already seen a brief but revealing demo of the forthcoming heroes V game. There's a fair whack of juicy info in the article to bend your brains around, some of it which is corroborated by the HOMMV E3 Trailer. Especially the Bone/Ghost Dragon I noted in my previous news item.
Read the preview on Gamespot.com.
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- by Psychobabble
The Civil War mini-map which flated around on the front page for a while interested me enough to decide to give a couple of Equilibris maps a go. Unfortunately that map, Civil War was somewhat disappointing, but this was more than made up for by the other map I played, The Economists. This was an exceptionally good map and in the end I awarded it my third perfect score. It's a fanstastic map which should give you a challenge no matter what level player you are, thanks to the graded difficulty scripts. It's very highly recommended.
Thanks to all your feedback after my 100th review post, it was much appreciated. In repsonse to some of the comments I will now make it clear which alignment(s) the player has the option of playing and will attempt to more clearly bring out the map's concept and gameplay style.
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- by Angelspit
Mystic Phoenix posted in our forums the highlights of a preview in a German gaming magazine. Here are some of the most interesting tidbits:
- "there will be a completely new designed world in Heroes V, thus known heroes won't appear.
- Confirmed factions: humans, demons, undead
- heroes don't act on the battlefield, but wil cast spells
- the storyline begins as follows: The demons kill the recently crowned king of the humans, Nicolai, whose wife Isabel seeks revenge. To defeat the demons, she makes an alliance with the undead followers of the necropolis - a fatal decision...
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- by Psychobabble
If I've counted right, then one of these two reviews is my 100th formal map review on Celestial Heavens. At an average of 400-500 words per review that's... far, far too much writing I've done over the past 2.5 years or so. Seeing as I've hit this milestone I've decided I'd like some feedback from those who read these reviews. I intend to keep writing reviews on and after the release of Heroes V so I'd like to know if I'm on the right track as far as length, format, focus and style goes. If you're able I'd very much appreciate if you could fill out this survey by replying to the forum post or emailing me.
Anyway, on to today's reviews. A number of Qrystal Dragon maps were mentioned in the map-maker's top 5 lists which I put up a little while ago and to my shame I hadn't played any. So for this round of reviews I played two of his maps, Shadow of the Dragons (single) and Water Wyrd. Both were great maps which got the same high score, though I gave a special award to the latter cause it was more my style of map.
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- by Angelspit
The Qurqirish Dragon submitted a review of Painted: the Misfits, a huge two-layer Wake of Gods map. He found it to be a unique map with a nice story and a lot of scripts. Before you give the map a try, read about the potential problems you might encounter along the way.
Ekshenman sent a new version of his Commander script for Heroes of Might and Magic IV. The size of the script has been decreased and a bug has been fixed. We would like to get some feedback about this script; has anyone been using it in a map?
- by Psychobabble
Maybe it's because I'm in a map contest mood due to the launch of our very own (Ubisoft-sponsored!) map-contest, but I've decided (very belatedly) to review two maps from MapHaven's old Power of a Hero competition. The two maps are Alexandra the Great (now correctly named in the database) and Plan B (which I've just added). Both are extremely different, but enjoyable, maps. They also go to show you can't trust the difficulty level map-maker's set for their own maps, Alexandra (which was really easy) was rated "impossible" while Plan B (quite challenging) was rated just "hard". I have updated my Picks page with these maps as I recommend them both.
I've also made a minor change to the map reviews page. Qurqirish Dragon's Heroes 3 map reviews now have a small Heroes 3 icon (
) next to them.
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- by Angelspit
Published in 2002 by Strategy First, Disciples quickly got noticed thanks to its beautiful and dark art as well as its deep gameplay. The game became a critical success and a cult classic among strategy fans and later got several follow-ups: Guardian of the Light and Servants of the Dark are two standalone expansions that are limited to a few races. Rise of the Elves adds a playable race and an extensive campaign. What is probably going to be the final repackaging of the game is the Gold edition, which combines the core game and its companion packs. A die-hard strategy fan could get hundreds of hours of gameplay in that game alone.
Celestial Heavens' Kristo gave the game a try, and made the inevitable comparison with the Heroes of Might and Magic series. He describes as a solid game with some quirks. Read his impressions here.
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- by Kristo
Since I'm a long time player of the Heroes of Might and Magic series, I felt right at home with another fantasy turn-based strategy game. The general formula is always the same: build an army, gather resources, explore the world, and kick ass. How a game goes about implementing that is what sets it apart from others. Disciples II presented me with an immersive environment; it has a very "hands on" feel to it. The game's best feature is its simplicity. It was very easy to dive right in and start playing without memorizing a bunch of complex rules first. If you strip the game down to its core elements, you'll find that there really isn't that much to it. And yet that's what makes it fun. You can do a lot with just a few basic concepts.
GAMEPLAY
My favorite gameplay aspect was that you cannot win with firepower alone. I've found that the best party is the one that's most diverse. Units that aid the party are invaluable despite the fact that they usually have no offensive attack. There's also no concept of "stacks" of creatures like in the HoMM games. Your parties are instead made up of individuals. This was a big change for me and in many respects it was a change for the better. It meant that I could now level up each of my units rather than just the leader. A player now feels closer to the units he commands as he is more intimately involved with their development. The Leadership skill, therefore, should be prized for allowing you command a wider variety of troops rather than simply more troops.
Combat in Disciples II is up close and personal
The one thing that bugged me was that I was never concerned about my units dying. Death in this game is far from final. A dead unit's experience points are so valuable that it's more than worth it to pay to revive it than replace it with a level 1 unit. As long as you have enough gold and a nearby town at which to heal, your army can continute to fight indefinitely (unless it is completely defeated of course). On the plus side, non-permanent death presents an interesting strategic element. You will always need a steady income to heal your units. Because the four factions are so well balanced, it's virtually impossible to emerge from a fight unscathed. No creature deals an insignificant amount of damage, so it's almost a requirement to enter every battle at full health. Since you're constantly paying to heal your units, you never reach a point of effectively infinite money. During the endgame period of most TBS games, you often have more money than you could possibly hope to spend. This is not true in Disciples II.
GRAPHICS
The graphics in Disciples II are gorgeous. The creature models are stunning and the adventure map is a sight to behold. The color palette used is rather dark, adding to the atmosphere. Just by scrolling around the map a bit, the player can "feel" that something evil is amiss. There is one nagging problem though. If you're playing the Legions of the Damned or the Undead Hordes, you CAN'T SEE ANYTHING without banners turned on. Their native terrain colors, and thus the colors of adventure objects near your capitol, cause neutral parties to blend into the background. This display artifact is so severe that often your only clue to their presence is a red flag on the pathfinder. "So turn on the banners," you say? The trouble there is that the banners are far from discreet. They tend to cover up a lot of space and take away quite a bit from the ambiance. In short, playing with banners on makes the game less immersive. The best solution I've found so far is to toggle the banners on and off just to make sure I haven't missed anything.
"The graphics in Disciples II are gorgeous."
The capitol screens are pretty too, but don't seem to serve any actual purpose. The different structures flash into view for a couple of seconds after they're built, but they blend in so well that I'll forget where they are shortly after leaving the capitol. I really can't tell whether or not a specific building is there without looking at the build tree. That means my attention is focused on the right sidebar rather than the town graphic. Clicking on a particular structure in the town graphic takes you directly to its build tree, but that requires you to find it first. As a new player, I need stuff like this to stick out in order to notice it. Perhaps a seasoned veteran would know where the buildings are, but if I'm not looking for them now, I don't see myself finding them in the future.
ADDICTIVENESS
Disciples II definitely has the "just one more turn" thing going for it. I've completely lost track of time on more than one occasion while playing. What struck me as odd was that there was no concept of score. You can spend as long as you want on a quest with no negative effects. In this light, the standalone quests are rather unrewarding. It's just, "Congratulations, you won." Kind of anticlimactic, don't you think? You're allowed to export your leader for use in custom sagas, but not everyone likes to create their own scenarios. It looks like the main sagas are where all the fun is. The standalone quests will probably serve as some "last-minute" entertainment before the game goes back on the shelf for a while.
"You're allowed to export your leader for use in custom sagas..."
REPLAYABILITY
The sagas can be played from any side, so that means you have effectively four campaigns in one. The four factions are quite unique so each side of a saga is a new experience. Because there is no score, however, a player has no incentive to do better once he's completed the game. Die hard fans will want the bigger challenge that comes from upping the difficulty level, but casual gamers will probably only play each quest once. One could conceiveably use the higher difficulty settings as preparation for multiplayer, but I think that's a waste of time. The School of Hard Knocks (i.e., getting trounced a few times by a human opponent) is a far better teacher than even the best AI. Unless I'm feeling particularly masochistic (or get really good), I don't see myself ever going above the Average setting in single player.
OVERALL
On the whole, I would give Disciples II about a B. For those of you not familiar with the grading system from American schools, grades range from an A to an F, with A being the best. C is about average, so that means I gave this game an above average grade. It has some quirks that bugged me a bit, but overall Disciples II is a solid game. I will definitely get many hours of play time out of it.
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