As a fan of HoMM since the first game, thats 12 years of it, I am happy to see the series continued in such a way.
Many people throw out their hype that this game isn't what the older ones were, that its just a rip off of a good franchise, honestly those people don't know what they are talking about, its just like the older games in almost every way and brings forward many new things to the table.
As an avid Turn Based Player, this game bring so much enjoyment with hot seat games at home, taking turns with friends, enjoy what is systematically just a giant board game, with 3D graphics.
The first thing you notice when you start the game is the title screen, a battle between a Monk and a Devil, its an amazing cinematic that I sat and watched for at least 15 minutes before actually starting the game, it may only be a little thing but its a very nice touch to the game.
You have your options of a few different ways to start, jump into skirmish, multi-player, or the campaign. I started out with the campaign just to get used to the units before getting my ass handed to me in multi-player or skirmish.
The campaign has an interesting story, nothing too special, but just enough to follow it and want to know the ending, the saddest part is the foreshadowing in the story is.. too much, enough to flat out say "oh this is going to happen".
The voice acting is kinda poor as well, too much emotion or not enough, some are very monotone and others just sound plain stupid in their approach.
After the first few missions of the campaign I jumped into a hot seat skirmish game with my friend (I chose Haven, he chose necropolis) For those of you that don't know hot seat is the ability to play turn-based games on one computer, just basically taking turns.
In skirmish the first thing I noticed was how detailed the world was, I think I probably spent a good chunk of my time just zooming in on things, enjoying the details and mapping out my surroundings before moving out.
After about an hour or two, I finally got into a few skirmishes with my friend, almost everything was dead on the map, but us, so what is there to do but fight?
Sadly, I ended up losing but, the point is, I had fun, like any game people nowadays take too much thought into things, they forget thats what these games are for, to get together with friends and enjoy yourselves.
To this day I still partake in extremely over-lengthy skirmishes with my friends in this game, and this game honestly shall remain a part of my collection for the better.
So whine all you want about bugs, and crashes, patches will come, this game has its fair share, but what game doesn't on release? This game provides well worth its share of hours of fun for the patient (yes the non-patient shouldn't play this game, might cause aneurysms, taking turns isn't made for everyone) This game remains a good party game, and a good time waster if you have time to burn, for its price it provides a nice game replayability for its cost. =D (until HOMM6 =p)
For this, I give HOMMV a 9.3/10