The long-awaited next chapter of Heroes of Might and Magic is back with part five, and though this addition isn't developed by the original creators, the spirit is kept well and alive by Nival interactive. So, the first question is what's different about part five? Nothing much, really. Nival has kept pretty close to the Heroes formula, keeping the theme of the overworld and underworld. You will have to develop cities, control and gather resources, build up your armies, and level up your heroes by exploring the world and combating creatures.

There are six single player campaigns, which can only be accessed by successively finishing them. Each campaign individually focuses on one of the six factions, which is pretty much a collection from the previous games. All the factions that players expect to be there are present, which is pretty much an ongoing theme for this game: Great delivery, with few surprises. There is the classic Haven faction, which works with angels and griffins pitted against the demonic Inferno faction. Somewhere in between are the Sylvan Elves, which is nature themed, the undead Necropolis, the Wizardry Academy, and finally the Dungeon dwelling faction. Each have unique units that go along with their faction-specific castles. The thing about these campaigns are that they start ridiculously easy. Many of the missions play out like long, drawn out tutorials which many of the enemy armies practically falling down in front of you. Then, all of sudden, things suddenly get incredibly hard, requiring players to fight long and hard for every bit of territory they claim. The difficulty comes out of nowhere and suddenly piles onto you without any real transition missions.

The one thing that has changed a lot is the graphics, which wonderfully compliments the game here. While Heroes of Might and Magic IV might have had a slight struggle with the transition from 2D to 3D graphics, part five finally brings it all together. The fully rotating 3D map works perfectly, and encourages players to be more careful during their explorations, since it's easy for trees to hide bits of treasure. The graphics make very good use of color, making the battle sequences endlessly amusing, especially when spells are being thrown around.

Aside from the exploration and the castle building aspects, the heart of the game of the game can be found in the strategic combat, where heroes play a big role. While heroes are still very powerful, unlike some previous games, it is no longer possible for a single hero to practically win without an army. All creatures, including the hero, has a turn on a battle queue. In earlier games, the moral system would allow creatures to attack twice successively, which sometimes meant incredible victories if larger creatures were allowed to get in a few extra moves. Now, higher moral simply means that they get a higher place in the queue, which significantly balances out gameplay.

While all the basic parts of gameplay are available, amounting to a fantastic turn-based game that is bound to eat away hour after hour, as you continue with the "just one more turn" mentality. However, long-time players can't ignore what's missing. While there are plenty of multiplayer options, including LAN, Hotseat, and Ubi.com - all which include the very creative ghost mode which gives players something to do while other players are moving their heroes around - there is no random map generator or campaign editor. The developers promise that a campaign editor will become available for download later on, but for now, players have to settle for using the collection of pre-designed maps and scenarios.

Still, regardless of what might be missing, or the overall lack of anything incredibly new and unexpected, Heroes of Might and Magic V is still a very addictive game that easily sucks players in with its strategic gameplay. When you get right down to it, this is still HOMM, and it's still great.