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Platform: PC
Genre: Strategy
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Nival Interactive
ETA: Q1 2005 

 

 

 

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Heroes of Might and Magic V

 

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I wrote a preview article for Heroes of Might and Magic 4 many moons ago and it, among all the crap I've written over the years, remains remarkably easy to find on the net.  Better yet, a search for the article (“Heroes of Might and Magic IV” and Tolen Dante) reveals that someone actually bothered to translate the preview into Russian and it ended up for a while on the Russian 3DO website.  Only my Pikmin review got stolen and used by more websites.  The thing is, there was at least some quality to the Pikmin review (slight though it may have been), but 3DO had given us so little to work with that the HOMM 4 preview was mostly me gushing about how cool it was that we were getting a HOMM 4.

 

Unfortunately, when all was said and done Heroes IV didn't have the staying power that the other games in the series had (for me at least).  To this day, I play HOMM 2 and 3 on occasion, but I only recently re-installed HOMM 4 to remind myself what I didn't like about 

it.  Those negative elements (lack of battlefield grid, too complex “tech” tree, cluttered maps) remained, but the core HOMM goodness stood out more on replay, which means I'm again excited about the series.

 

Enter Ubisoft with Heroes of Might and Magic V.  The game isn't due until early next year, but Ubisoft seems to be putting considerable resources into the project and the development team is certainly talking the talk.  We'll have to wait until things get closer to form any real opinions—no gushing yet.  For now, here is what Ubisoft is promising:

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- Fully 3D graphics

- An Updating of the art design for a more mature audience (I'm guessing the angels and harpies will have big boobies)

- It will still be turn-based, but will feature scalable battles

- Expanded RPG elements  

 

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Danny Webb

(June 9, 2005)