Heroes of Might and Magic V Preview

GameSpy has put together a two-page preview of Heroes of Might and Magic V, presumably based on a recent build of Ubisoft and Nival’s turn-based strategy/RPG hybrid. An excerpt to follow:

Despite all of the new goodies packed into the game, without question the star of the show is the new 3D graphics engine. The game just looks flat-out marvelous, particularly during combat and when surveying one of your towns. The overland map looks great too as nearly everything is animated, from the windmills to the trees. The map is littered with details. When gazing at a simple peasant farm you’ll see roosters hilariously fighting each other. When you take control of a resource building like an ore mine, the mine comes alive and you can see the minerals start to flow. Things like this certainly don’t add to the gameplay, but they sure do add a lot to the atmosphere, and the game is jam packed with this sort of thing. The only problem with the overland 3D look is that a lot of important sites can get lost behind trees and other obstacles, and even though you are free to zoom the camera around at your leisure, it’s very easy to miss something that you never would have missed in the old 2D game. That said, it looks fantastic and will most likely just take time to get used to.