![]() An encounter is resolved when either all of the opposing creatures have been skewered, or the same fate has met the player's army. This means that attacks can be organized in the manner most efficient before the sword is even swung. One particularly interesting strategic facet of combat is that once the player selects a stack, he can mouse over an opposing stack to see approximately how many creatures within it that his selected soldiers will kill. The fighting is fast-paced and fun, with nicely modeled animations detailing the actions of each attack. Initiatives are tracked via a sliding bar on the bottom of the screen, with faster creatures moving before slower ones, as is logical insofar as physics is concerned. As soon as this is complete, the attack can begin in earnest. Terrain plays a major role in the decision-making process, since stones and tree stumps can provide an advance halting barricade for your ranged troops, but can also stymie the forward progress of your own soldiers. ![]() Stacks can be managed, which is to say that they can be split, merged, added or dropped, depending on the specific needs of an imminent battle.īattles themselves are organized into two phases, the first of which is a tactical fielding stage that allows the player to configure and place his stacks on a small grid in front of the controlling hero. For instance, a group of 10 lance-wielding cavalrymen will be portrayed not as 10 separate bodies, but as one single model with a tag denoting the number of troops occupying this specific stack. Each army is organized into a series of stacks based upon the various creature types that comprise it. In addition, through the capture of towns on certain maps, the player can hire additional heroes (and armies) to assist in the conquest. In each of the game's six (!) single-player campaigns, the player is given control of a mounted hero, who in turn controls a small army. It achieves this, largely, by sticking to the concepts that made the original games great while throwing in just enough new flair to set this HoMM on a tier above its predecessors. It does so admirably, with a slew of features that are not only interesting and fun, but also provide hours of challenging gameplay interspersed with moments of edge-of-your-seat action. As a member in the genre's most infamous franchise, the title was met with no small amount of anticipation and had a virtual mountain of expectation to meet. So when Heroes of Might and Magic V hit shelves in May, it could not, like other TBS games, be summarily dismissed. The same can be said of the Heroes of Might and Magic games, a series of fantasy titles that put players in the shoes of a menagerie of creatures as they wage war against demons, armor-clad knights, or any number of fantasy staples. Mention that title in the vicinity of any gamer over the age of 25, and you will invariably induce a haze of euphoric nostalgia. One of these exceptions, of course, is the oft-pined-for old-school favorite, X-com. With the notable exception of a handful of titles, TBS games rarely manage to make any sort of splash and are usually simply ignored by the gaming community entirely. ![]() There are, in the collected works of the computer entertainment industry, few genres as potentially mind-numbing as turn-based strategy.
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