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With the US release of Heroes of Might and Magic V coming up in a week I thought it would be prudent as Strategy Editor to sit down with the demo and get to know the latest addition to the franchise. I have been a big fan of the Heroes of Might and Magic series since it was called King's Bounty on the Sega Genesis. Heroes of Might and Magic V is published by Ubisoft and was developed by Russian developer Nival Interactive. The release date is slated for May 23rd.

Everything you see here, including any screenshots or other media, is taken directly from the demo available Ubisoft's FTP site. Anything that I mention here may change between now and the time the game gets to your hands.

For those who don't know Heroes of Might and Magic V is the fifth in a series of games based off of the series of roleplaying games. The original concept for the game dates back to 1991 with King's Bounty from New World Computing. King's Bounty was an adventure game in real time where players would collect armies from recruiting posts throughout the realm. The army gathering concept of theKing's Bounty system was heavily modified into a turn based adventuring armies mechanic and released as Heroes of Might and Magic was re-released in 1995. Sequels followed in 1997, 1999 and 2003 as well as expansion packs and additional campaigns with each installment of the series. The game was originally created by New World Computing and published by now defunct 3DO. Since the demise of 3DO the rights to all of the Might and Magic series have passed to Ubisoft.

The gameplay is much the same as the other Heroes of Might and Magic games. The elegantly simple core mechanics of the game are still the same. Players start off with a hero, or adventurer, who, instead of leading a small party, is the leader of a war band or army. Heroes have the ability to cast combat spells and map based spells that help with travel or resource gathering. I'll hold off on full details about gameplay mechanics until my full review later next week.

The designers have gone all out with the graphics in HoMMV. Everything is fully rendered in bright, beautiful 3D. When accessing a town or stronghold menu, for example, users are treated to a clickable flyby of the city showing all the upgrades and features of that town. The greatest problem I see is that you no longer have a direct, complete view of the town. In the previous Heroes games the 2D town/castle view showed the entire town. Every time you added a new building you got a sense that your town was really growing, the 3D flyby removes some of that sense of expansion.

The interface has changed slightly as a necessary byproduct of the transition from 2D to 3D. The basic interface is the same: a control panel is down in the right hand corner of the screen. A small circular indicator changes to let you know what day of the week it is and how long until recruitment spots refresh. Navigating the town is done with the same interface or by clicking on individual buildings when in town view. All of the changes made to the interface are all improvements or aesthetic changes.

There appear to be a handful of changes for the worse. Visiting shrines, temples, schools and other stat-building structures now simply give a stat bonus. Other versions of HoMM included a little short story telling you how you obtained this bonus, whether at the hands of a capricious leprechaun or by hard training by esoteric weapon masters.

Some gameplay changes allows for heroes to develop special abilities above and beyond the standard “plus X to [insert stat here]”. Heroes will be able to directly attack or defend other units or their own units. The skill tree has also been changed, allowing characters to develop these special, class based, abilities as they pursue certain styles of upgrades. Characters who focus directly on combat upgrades will receive a different set of special abilities than one who focuses on resource management or magic.

In short the demo gives us an excellent preview of things to come next week. Heroes of Might and Magic V promises a great graphical and gameplay upgrade to this venerable series. I look forward to being able to do a more in-depth commentary on Heroes of Might and Magic V. It has been too long since we had a follow up to this series.

If you want the opportunity to preview Heroes of Might and Magic V yourself click here to download the ~560MB demo from Ubisoft.