Posts from The Price of Freedom

Nowadays, the appearance of any new map for Heroes 5 is an event. Therefore, the author deserves gratitude simply for attempting to create a scenario map. Although, overall, I liked the work, the product turned out to be "unrefined." Let me explain why I got this impression. Playing as a mage without magic and with a set of non-native troops is joyless. It's not that the losses are high; it's just dull: there is nothing you can do to change the course of battle. All possibilities end at the start when using the hero's special ability. In such a situation, auto-battle is the best thing you can do. I played on "hero," but 90% of the battles were played automatically, without losses. This is a result of the player being given too much—troops, resources, time. It remained a mystery to me why such an excessive amount of resources, mines, and chests are placed on the map. There is nowhere to put the resources: there's no point in exchanging them for money—there are mountains of gold; buying spells is a one-time purchase (the time to complete the map is less than a month), and you don't need many, and even then, only if something useful comes along (I was unlucky).
A level restriction should ideally be stated somewhere. In my opinion, the development ceiling is low. I reached it while still in the Dungeon before exiting to the city. At the same time, the existing Tree of Sylana remained unused.
Battles with Necromancers in the Dungeon become interesting if the MC is left only with joining troops. If you remove the army from the liberated Jack—these battles are over in one round. Out of desperation, the AI casts some strike spell and that's it, the end. I would suggest unloading Jack of his army. It would be better if you could get artifacts or spells from him. If we follow this path, Alaric should not block the corridor, but only patrol the top. At the same time, Jack himself would be useful for gathering troops. Currently, he is completely useless.
Returning to the situation with spells. The fact that there are few of them and they are random should be stated at the start of the map. As it happened, the first time I completed the map, I had a book of 4 simple spells, two of which I would have learned anyway.
Dialogues with the "queue" for the ship occur every time you pass through the points, even when that "queue" is no longer there.
I strongly advise abandoning the term "industrial zone." It does not fit, either visually or stylistically. This area could be named a dock, shipyard, port—something like that. I saw nothing resembling a factory there. In general, the text part should be "polished."

I am posting the battles with Alaric, whom it seems you don't need to touch, and the final one with the tomb guardian, with the "remnants" of the troops to illustrate the redundancy of the MC's army.

I didn't manage to get into the Dungeon before finishing the game. Are the Necromancers a checkpoint, or is there a hero there? Can we play so that everyone is on their own?

From the author: The map is planned as the first mission for the "Free as the Wind" campaign, which tells about the difficult pirate life.