|
| Thread: Heroes V Campaigns Poll |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · NEXT» |
|
ThE_HyDrA
Admirable
Famous Hero
The Leader of all Hydras
|
posted June 14, 2006 12:11 PM |
|
|
Poll Question:
Heroes V Campaigns Poll
Yep, I've taken over the reigns for this week's HC Poll.
This week, we're looking at the job Nival have done with the campaigns in Heroes V. Compared to the lengthy, verbose, but in-depth campaigns of Heroes IV, has the lack of actual storytelling detracted from your experience of the campaigns in Heroes V?
If you've just plain forgotten the campaigns, you can view that here, At Age of Heroes.
The Queen (Haven Campaign)
The Cultist (Inferno Campaign)
The Necromancer (Necropolis Campaign)
The Warlock (Dungeon Campaign)
The Ranger (Sylvan Campaign)
The Mage (Academy Campaign)
If I had to be critical of one aspect, it would have to be the names - it seems they've gone blank after conjuring up so many other imaginative elements in the game.
Don't worry if you haven't finished them yet, vote regardless of your progress. Also, feel free to justify your answer with some sort of explanation.
____________
"Dragons may breathe fire, but Hydras have many heads." - The Creed of Hydras
"As the Dragon drew its breath, the Hydra pounced, swiftly but powerfully, and the Dragon was defeated.”
|
|
roellut
Tavern Dweller
|
posted June 14, 2006 01:56 PM |
|
|
I have played H2 and H3. never tried the campaigns of those games though because I didn't understand them. My English was even worse than now at that time ;-)
Anyway, for a very casual gamer as myself, normally playing games from Battlefield to Dungeon Siege, the storyline in the campaign is good. No more and no less than that.
I think that hardcore RPG players and fantasy-lovers don't agree?
|
|
Thanatos
Known Hero
|
|
posted June 14, 2006 02:44 PM |
|
|
My main gripe is the difficulty level - some missions are quite easy ((almost) the whole Haven campaign) while others are ridiculously tough (such as Inferno mission 3, after I've beaten Gilraen with a lot of trouble they send ANOTHER hero at me in the same week. After twenty-something tries I manage to win with 1 Druid Elder left  ) I'm currently at mission 4 and it's smooth sailing up till now but I'm curious what kind of rotten cheese the AI is going to throw at me this time (and in the missions to come)... I'm playing on hard by the way.
Also, I've met the infamous objective bug - I didn't even have to beat the druid circle, just beating Gilraen and capturing all towns was enough. This time it had a postive effect though  (normally I'd reload and beat the druid circle anyway, but I was so fed up with this mission I continued on anyway)
But other than that I suppose they're done well enough (and a good way to discover that I've lost most of my skill at this game after not having played H3 for a loooong time )
|
|
rojodiablo
Tavern Dweller
|
|
posted June 14, 2006 03:10 PM |
|
|
I liked what they tried to do with the storyline and the actor's voices and the little cutscenes. However the difficulty levels are all out of whack. I know its old hat by now but Inferno campaign mission 3 is just a massive massive lame-up. Its stupidly tricky and not even Inferno-based (you spend most of the level using your Elven towns/heroes and you can't even get your Inferno town to a high enough level for it to be useful).
Still apart from a few low points the campaign has mostly been fun. There is no such thing as "too easy". I REALLY enjoyed "The Necromancer" especially and am looking forward to "The Mage" as I love the Academy towns (unit-wise and aesthetics-wise).
____________
[url=http://rojodiablo.livejournal.com]saidin[/url] drove me insane
|
|
Fuzzier
Adventuring Hero
|
|
posted June 14, 2006 03:22 PM |
|
|
Average indeed.
Compared to H3 campaigns, you'll easily see that H5 campaign is just a copy of H3 campaign - "The Restoration of Erathia".
First we get "Long Live the Queen", then "Devils and Dungeons", then "Long Live the King"... All sounds too familiar!
When I first played H3, I immediately felt the smell of medieval wind --- the feeling is just right!
H4 is a failure. H5 tries, but still does't bring the feelings back.
|
|
Greggy
Hired Hero
|
|
posted June 14, 2006 03:26 PM |
|
|
Rojo, you're going to be upset then. The Mage campaign is really a Haven campaign. You only have one map where you have any mage towns...gasp, i know...
____________
|
|
Greggy
Hired Hero
|
|
posted June 14, 2006 03:31 PM |
|
|
I voted good. The Campaigns do tend to be geared towards veterans though. You have to move fast a lot of times to make it through or, as some have posted, the scripts take you down. The Necro campaign was a joy to play. The Sylvan campaign was very good too (because of powerful hero). This is a new company's first try at this game, so can't vote average. Had it been 3do then I could understand, but we wanted this game out and they gave it to us...
G (-:
____________
|
|
hotsoup
Tavern Dweller
|
|
posted June 14, 2006 03:56 PM |
|
|
Voted very bad for the numerous bugs in the campaign missions.
Still stuck at campaign6 stage3, unable to achieve mission objectives..
____________
|
|
Iris
Responsible
Supreme Hero
of Typos
|
|
posted June 14, 2006 04:21 PM |
|
|
|
I think the campaigns are pretty good. I do like the story and how it all flows together. And after playing them, I've also learned to appreciate some of the factions that I don't normally use (like Haven and Inferno). I'm not happy about the bugs, but that's the technical aspect of the game, and can be fixed by patches.
|
|
Beseiged
Tavern Dweller
|
|
posted June 14, 2006 06:38 PM |
|
Edited by Beseiged at 18:40, 14 Jun 2006.
|
Well I'm still fighting my way through the Dungeon campaign but based on my experience so far I voted "very good".
Why?
Well mainly I like the variety I've seen so far. Some missions have let me play for the gross-out - taking my time to explore and build a huge army for a big all-out battle. Others have forced me to attack early using what limited forces I could scrape together. The current dungeon campaign is excellent - all along the way I'm having to take great care when choosing what to spend my experience and resources on.
My only real criticism would be inconsistency in the level of difficulty. I found level 3 of the Inferno campaign to be a killer. I only managed to complete it by following the advice of a poster on these very forums - without that I wouldn't have believed I could have dealt with the pheonixes so early on. By contrast the Necro campaign, though enjoyable, was almost laughably easy.
____________
Hey - enough with the puppet master already!
|
|
Incendax
Tavern Dweller
|
|
posted June 14, 2006 08:50 PM |
|
Edited by Incendax at 21:00, 14 Jun 2006.
|
I voted Bad for the following reasons:
The plot is indeed too similar to "Restoration of Erathia".
The voice-acting is seriously lacking in realism, including inappropriate emotions and inflections, as well as simple things such as a single person shouting when it clearly displays multiples. This is completely disregarding errors such as Markal saying "Lich Crown" instead of "Vampire's Garments". Additionally, the random casting of spells during conversations at the wrong times is a minor issue.
The Inferno and Academy Campaigns are a travesty. Not in creativity, but for neglecting the faction entirely for new players. Instead of getting a good 'Feel' for the Faction and playing to their strengths you must effectively play another faction entirely with a few leader perks.
The plot itself could have been better written simply by posting to the Forums for a plot request, then holding a large scale Poll to determine the winner. On second thought, there are a lot of games that could benefit from this simple wisdom.
The difficulty levels are too radically different from one mission to the next. This is partly due to power differences in Spell Selections.
On the positive side:
The Necromancer campaign, while suffering from the above issues, is otherwise constructed very nicely and lets you sincerely enjoy what it means to be the Necromancer Faction.
____________
|
|
Rainalcar
Promising
Famous Hero
Heroji su zakon
|
|
posted June 14, 2006 11:07 PM |
|
|
Voted horrible - frankly I don't really care about campaigns - I play them once or twice and do not judge the game on them. But to me, the story of H5 is a disaster, a hilarious cliche, the ingame story revealing animations are a laugh, voices totaly unrealistic and unsynchronized, bugs in missions that are a headache (restart after 3h play anyone?), lousy two pitiful animations etc. etc. But as I said, I don't really care for this element.
____________
|
|
nocaplato
Adventuring Hero
Lover of Ancient Philosophy
|
|
posted June 15, 2006 05:37 AM |
|
|
Average-
Some of the campaign scenarios are very nicely done, and throw interesting spins on the game, just enough to add some different flavor. The 1st Sylvan Mission, for example, which seems to be much maligned in other places, is a very nice change from the standard smash and grab. The 1st Necromancer scenario is a great twist on stealth, a nice added feature to the game, even if it doesn't always transition perfectly, it gives a sense of suspense that might not otherwise be there.
Unfortunately, and by far, the biggest drawback to the campaign is the very inconsistent challenge level. Some of them are just ridiculously hard, so much so that the frustration of them far outweighs the potential of the other gems. I'm not a fan of imbalancing the computer to such a massive degree that if you're not in the right place you lose the game. Several of the scenarios are like this, and not just the Inferno mission against Gilraen. At the same time, the scenarios just after the imbalanced ones will often be a mere click fest of simplicity. I can't even recall the mission following the Gilraen scenario, due to its blandness.
Another thing that draws down, though to a lesser degree, is the fact that several scenarios do not offer the chance to really dig into your class towns. Again, the Inferno mission is consistently played with a gimped Inferno town where you focus more heavily on the Sylvan towns. To me, having an Inferno hero does not amount to playing an Inferno town. Really it's the town that sets the tone. After all, I might hire a Necromancer, Knight or Ranger, but be playing out of the Academy. I can do that with any town, since they all have taverns, and they all offer two choices per week, one of which is typically of a different class.
Solutions:
To the imbalance issue: fix the AI. If the AI is fixed credibly it won't need all the artificial support of enhanced creature stacks and imbalanced town control, or at least not as much.
To the Town issue: Allow some progression and focus on the main town type, at least in 3 of the 5 scenarios for each campaign.
All the same, the game is growing on me, and I have to say I'm happy with it, and thanks in large part to my exprience with the campaigns. I've only marginally delved into the multiplayer, since I'm particular about my play partners. I'm glad to see that HoMM is back, after the horrid fiasco of the game they claimed was part 4.
|
|
Kai
Hired Hero
H5 Kaspar avatar needed.
|
|
posted June 15, 2006 05:51 AM |
|
|
I'll be conservative and give the campaign a "Bad" rating.
Reasons it could be lower:
1. Plot that you can almost predict just by looking at the campaign list
I've seen worse stories out there, but I expected more from H5.
2. Lousy voice acting (except for the decent Markal)
Agrael is the worst. Most of them seem to have no emotions.
3. Bugs
Objectives that don't appear or can't be completed, enemy heroes that get stuck, movies that don't play, scenarios that don't end squat...
4. Difficulty spikes
Some missions are harder than others, but it doesn't naturally progress from easy in the early missions to hard in the later missions. As mentioned a thousand times, some missions are way too difficult for the newer players.
5. Lack of help from the manual...
The manual is unclear... it does impact the campaign since there are no clear directions for finding/locating the Tear of Asha. It's rather vague. I find too many people have had to post on messageboards like this one or GameFAQs and ask about digging. Also it is easy for new players to create a hero that sucks so bad they are not able to tackle the later missions in the campaign.
|
|
Wiseman
Known Hero
|
|
posted June 15, 2006 07:16 AM |
|
|
Storyline? OK
Difficulty of missions? No complaints either.
Cutscenes and voice acting? Most laughable thing I`ve ever come across in computer games. Completely ruined a decent storyline.
____________
Truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.
|
|
hobowu
Known Hero
|
|
posted June 15, 2006 01:06 PM |
|
|
i felt really really nice and gave an average...
it should've been bad
reason? i was playing the academy campaign... and guess what... where's the academy? why haven? this is an academy campaign not a haven campaign!!! nival has lost all sense of the storyline...
____________
|
|
Ma_trix
Adventuring Hero
Carpe Diem
|
|
posted June 15, 2006 02:30 PM |
|
|
|
My personal feelings about campaigns are bad;/ They were too simple (i mean there was TNE ONLY way how could you pass maps). Despite not-so-bad scenario, quests weren't very impressive and there was some situations when i couldn't finish the map 'cause game forgot to check for example thath i already have bought bone dragons :/
|
|
radazek
Tavern Dweller
|
|
posted June 15, 2006 04:32 PM |
|
|
I agree with Fuzzier, average indeed.. maybe my vote could be a better one if didnt play HOMM3.. that stroyline of HOMM5 is like HOMM3..
____________
|
|
casta
Tavern Dweller
|
|
posted June 16, 2006 09:17 AM |
|
|
The story was decent, but could have been performed better with voice acting. The story was not very original though, and i was very disappointed with the dungeon campaign which seemed like they just had to come up with something, dungeon was my favorite race in the earlier games and i would've liked them to have an evil conquer scheme instead of some stupid love quest.
The bugs in all the campaigns was horrible and i had to restart several maps or load old save games to eventually make it work (played before patch).
The campaigns get an Avarage from me.
I would like to comment the game a little bit in general also:
The fact that no map editor or random map generator was inculded in the release made me throw the game away after completing the campaigns.
I was a big fan of heroes III and I really hated heroes IV, so im glad they have gone back to some of the nice aspects that game had. I miss expert town portal though, and non-random hero advancement.
____________
|
|
JoonasTo
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
What if Elvin was female?
|
|
posted June 19, 2006 09:04 AM |
|
|
The campaigns were quite good actually even though I had to quit them on Academy mission 4 where the enemies' turn's started to take HOURS, without that scenario I would have given them Very good instead of good
____________
DON'T BE A NOOB, JOIN A.D.V.E.N.T.U.R.E.
|
| |
|
|
