Retro Review of the Legendary Classic "Heroes V"

The modern community of "Heroes V" is deeply concerned about the lack of Conjugation, Fortress, and there have even been talks of crowdfunding for Dock. There is a mod adding **Sanctuary of Nagas** from "Heroes VI", but no one worries that "Heroes VI" has a failed dwarven town.

It's great that Olden Era moved to Jadame, because Ashan ruins the original mythology (I'm talking about the dancing and dark elves, the nameless orcs), for which nerds, like me, come into the game.

The virtual bestiary should serve an aesthetic function. It's inexcusable to have ugly units in "Heroes V" — I'm referring to the headless djinns, faceless dragons (remember the charismatic Chinese dragons of Stronghold), neutrals, and generally fat units.

There’s a persistent feeling that Ashan of Dark Messiah of Might & Magic is harsher and darker than Ashan in "Heroes V" — there's no blood, dismemberment, or talking succubi. The plot, cutscenes, and visual style are weak in atmosphere. In the cutscenes of "Heroes V", the character models do not open their mouths, greeting "Heroes VII". Think more often of zombies in "Heroes V" to realize that "Heroes V" is quite unserious. The unit doesn't even evoke fear.

Regarding towns: the palette choice is weak; more colors could have been used for town design. The dark elf town suffers greatly from an overabundance of purple. Noticeably, the unit statues by the stalactites stand for differentiation of buildings. This technique — depicting a statue at a building for differentiation — is not only used by the dark elves (Academy, Inferno, regular elves), but their town has suffered the most from this issue. The human city suffers from indistinguishability of buildings, yet the developers preferred not to create a garden of statues. The necropolis employs a rare artistic solution — a massive number of spires drown in darkness, some like it, some are indifferent, but more variety and mixing of styles would benefit the town.

"Heroes V" desperately needs a remaster/remake. Shadows, terrains, models — outrageously outdated. Even Disciples III: Reincarnation from 2014 looks more modern.

What’s great in "Heroes V" — this is the skills and (super-)abilities wheel. Without **the corresponding** mod that gives access to it and simplifies gameplay, it can be tough. The factions truly differ now. Not only necromancers from "Heroes III" can boast faction abilities; all factions can. Every creature has its own abilities, and there are magical creatures with a spell book, like in "Heroes IV".

3D is impressive at first: all this magical spectacle from the "living" spell book, rotating city screens. I still haven’t gotten used to the battlefield; units look small in "Heroes V". I also liked the presence of altgrades from DLC "Lords of the Horde". These and the 3D screens were what should have been present in "Heroes VI-VII". In Olden Era, they took care of having altgrades; I would also like to see the promised replacement for caravans.

"Heroes V" lags behind "Heroes III" in the number of conceptual factions. The number of factions, and thus variety, always prevails in the debate over which game to play — "Heroes V" or "Heroes III".

Turn-based strategies are a niche genre, so the aesthetics of the genre will never progress to astronomical quality — sometimes it's so desirable to see cerberi, unicorns with real hair. So that everything is strictly according to mythological canons, without fabrications from the Ashan universe.