AstralLein
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I finished playing the map, “hero,” 77 days. The gameplay was sometimes interesting, sometimes not, but it was fun. I especially liked the ideas behind the map. Thank you to the author for that. The list of criticisms is longer. I didn't like the main character – Lorik. He should have been either a normal gnome or a regular necromancer. There's no point in forcing necromancy onto gnomes or runic magic onto necromancers; the number of skill stacks is limited, and something important for each race will inevitably appear. This also applies to the mentor's location. He's needed in the gnome lands, towards the end of the map, but even there, his usefulness is minimal. The cursed Castle turns out to be almost useless in terms of gameplay. The main troop increase there comes from vampires, and they are the most effective combat unit. But there's nowhere to upgrade them throughout the game, and Lorik only slightly improves higher-tier vampires. By the end, you have two weak, disparate stacks. The curse on the Castle is removed with a nuclear explosion, after which it's impossible to rebuild it in the remaining time, and you can't get a significant troop increase. Removing the curse turns out to be a double mistake because of the loss of income-generating buildings. In the dungeon, you can free the necromancer Giovanni, but he has no army or artifacts; I couldn't even figure out what he's there for.
The ending is unclear. The Empire's troops are destroyed before they even arrive, Kirdan is defeated, but this is considered a loss. I didn't like the large number of merchants. These aren't Heroes of Might and Magic; they're heroes who just buy and sell. There's a lot of text in the dialogue scenes. The heroes just talk, talk, talk. It's like a talk show.
Unfortunately, in Heroes 5, a town can't be rebuilt in any other way. But there's also a +6 bonus to the growth of thanes. Plus, a rebuilt town has no restrictions on rebuilding.
The mentor is intended to change the build at the end of the game if needed. The map isn't focused on the mentor, but if the player desperately needs a different build for the final battle, it can be useful. Theoretically, it's more of a formality.
In the end, I gave Lorik both runic magic and necromancy. But it should be noted that, in terms of class, he's a necromancer. He just looks like a gnome. Regarding the vampires: they are limited to a basic upgrade to weaken the final strength of the green faction. It would be much harder to defeat them if they were fully upgraded.
Giovanni has all the high-level Dark magic spells. If you get the training through the mentor, it will become clear why he's there.
There are several endings to the map. This is a bad one, and it's the one that players get most often, for some reason.
Well, some people like extra quests and dialogues, and some don't. It's a matter of taste.
Thank you for the feedback!;)
Added 2 minutes ago
And special thanks for the replays.