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(More customer reviews)Disclosure: I'm a huge fan of all the Heroes of Might & Magic (HoMM) games going back to HoMM1, AND, I'm a huge fan of Macs, so much so that I don't use a Windows machine at home. For me, I *had* to buy this game simply to "vote with my dollars" and encourage future Mac HoMM development. But, I will try to put aside my biases and rate the game on its own merits.
If you are unfamiliar with HoMM games, stop reading this review and *run* to buy HoMM2 and HoMM3 immediately for the Windows platform. (Why not get them for Mac? More on this later.) I won't get too involved in describing the games, as there are plenty of sites with great descriptions. HoMM games are turn-based strategy in a fantasy setting. The player manages heroes, armies, castles, resources, artifacts, spells, and quests, and competes with other human or AI players to conquer the map. As heroes gain experience, their primary stats improve, and they can learn specialty skills that help them in unique ways. This description hardly does them justice, but suffice it to say, HoMM games are incredibly addictive. Over the years, I've returned to HoMM2 and HoMM3 many times, as they are among the best games ever made, and highly replayable.
In fact, all I really want is HoMM2 and/or HoMM3 ported to work natively under OS X. I would pay dearly for such a privilege. This would allow me to avoid the hassle of Windows and still have access to some of the best games of all time. True, HoMM2 and HoMM3 are both available for Mac, but both are pre-OS X, so you need to run them in Classic mode. That would be acceptable, except for the fact that Apple doesn't support Classic for modern, Intel-based Macs, and is phasing Classic out entirely under their upcoming operating system Leopard. Though I haven't tried this yet, I recommend just using the Windows versions of both classic games and running them under Parallels/Fusion/Boot Camp, hence my earlier recommendation. (HoMM4 was written natively for OS X. Unfortunately, it's also the worst of the entire series and doesn't compel replay years later.)
This left a hole in the Mac HoMM experience. HoMM5 fills that hole nicely. First off, HoMM5 undid some of the failed experiments of HoMM4. Your hero no longer can fight and die directly in battle, you can't have a band of all heroes, and you can't have a band of just monster units. This restores the most interesting gameplay aspects of HoMM2 and HoMM3. It's been said that HoMM5 is just HoMM3 in 3D -- so far, I concur. HoMM5 has all the interesting exploration, empire building, skill-acquiring, and great mini-game combat of the earlier classics. I'm particularly intrigued by HoMM5's interesting primary and secondary skill system. With the release of the v1.5 patch, the game is plenty stable enough.
I downgraded the game to 4 stars because of the steep system requirements. I have a maxed out Mac mini, I've turned the game down to its very minimum settings, and still the game is tediously slow to respond. Frankly, I would have preferred a 2D version of the game if it meant the game would run well on normal hardware.
But overall, a very strong game and worthy successor to the classics of HoMM2 and HoMM3, and it's native OS X to boot.
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