Heroes of Might and Magic V

This game is bugged as hell, and not all that different from its previous iterations, but still a lot of fun to play. I haven't tried the multiplayer (which, I hear has more issues than the singleplayer mode), but don't look for this game to rock your world. This game is more of an insidious widowmaker than a sanity thief.

Heroes V is supposedly more like Heroes III than Heroes IV. Whatever that means. I was a Heroes III nut (I bought and played all the expansions), and I am one of the rare few who liked the fourth iteration better (I hate having to hire heroes as a creature-delivery service). The truth is, you'll feel like you're playing the same game with 3D graphics. You'll be leading armies of creatures aligned to your town type and destroy patches of creatures or decently-intelligent foes on a square-based grid. The strategy is the same as the previous games: get your production on and control the map.

For the RPGers in all of us, you level your hero throughout the campaign, eventually leading to cool abilities (for example, the ultimate ability for the Ranger is that your creatures will always have luck applied to their attacks). The skill trees and ability trees are two mechanics that seem to have undergone a change for the better. However, you still don't carry your items between scenarios, which is still annoying.

Presentation and general polish is where the game falls short. In fact, if you bought this game before the 1.1 patch, you might have been tempted to concoct some desperate plan to evade store policy and return it.

The game teases you with many great tooltips. You can right-click to find out vital information about buildings and units. For example, right-clicking on a Grim Raider reveals that it has the ability Lizard Bite. But what could Lizard Bite mean? You're on your own. How a strategy game could be missing creature abilities blows my mind (check the my resource recommendation at the end to find out what it does). Not to mention that there is just no description on some artifacts. Who told them they could release it like this?

The music is standard, the voice-acting is spotty in some cases, and the 3D, rotating/zooming camera pretty much just gets in the way. Unless you're willing to move your camera every turn (and trust me, you won't be), you're bound to miss out on some precious resource or building because trees have occluded it. This is a bit of a minor issue, but the 3D terrain also gets in the way of some battles that involve sieging a town. You almost always have to zoom all the way out in these battles. The occlusion is also a problem when trying to target a small unit adjacent to a big dragon in some cases.

I won't even bother telling you about the story. It completely sucks. Everyone's all crazy about Queen Isabel, but she's a stupid loon and almost completely unlovable. I would be rebelling against her as well, the witch.

A couple of the new features, like a cinematic combat camera, I turned off by the time I was on the second scenario. When you are already going to devote 40 or so hours to a game, you probably won't want to waste the couple of seconds every creature action to have the camera zoom in on your creatures.

Bringing up the save dialog takes way longer than it should. My computer isn't the fastest thing on the face of the planet, but it should really be able to handle saving.
Some of these issues have been fixed with the 1.1 patch, but it seems to mainly focus on multiplayer bugs. I don't have the patience to try turn-based multiplay, even for my beloved Civilizations 4, so I don't think I'll delve into this one.

So, in summary: long, sweet, but it'll annoy you just enough so that you won't be playing it until you lie passed out at a cybercafe.

Powergame

My personal view on the factions, in order:

1. Necropolis - These guys are beaters. They're probably terribly unbalanced in multiplay. They will have 2k of skeleton archers in no time, while keeping their population up with a level 2 summoning spell. Plus, they can recruit at will and convert them to undead. Beaters.
2. Dungeon - Black dragons and elemental chaining. First-level shooters with a decent ability. You can basically own anything with destructive magic in the early-mid game. The only faction with a level 2 walker that can actually be useful, albeit only if they're upgraded. You can also get cool combos off like land your Grim Raiders beside a unit and send your double-striking minotaur guards at them for two free attacks.
   
3. Sylvan - With the right skills/abilities, lots of ancient treants and master hunters, you should be able to dominate. Their level 2 walker is useful on very rare occassion, and only if you have at least 30 of them and they're upgraded.
   
4. Academy - Ranged level 7 critters is actually not that big of a deal, unless you're defending or applying a siege or fighting mobs. That being said, Titans are waaaay better than Colossi, so upgrade soon. They suffer in the second and third tier but make up for it in the higher tiers.
5. Inferno - Sure, gating is good (especially with the ultimate ability), but their level three walkers are useless until upgraded. If you're desperate and you want to recruit from other factions, you're out of luck because your own succubus mistresses will destroy them. Large stacks of imps are crazy good against enemy heroes though.
6. Haven - Archangels are a bit of a pimpsmacking, but this faction is so vanilla it's hard to pay attention. Cavaliers/Paladins are also allstars, but I hope I never have to play this faction again.

The best magic schools, in order: Dark Magic (good at all levels, espcially with the master of X abilities. Especially brutal late game), Destructive Magic (dominates early-mid game, especially with Master of Ice and Master of Storms), Light Magic (mass haste is good, and ressurection is nice, but not cost-effective), and Summoning Magic (unless you're undead. Then this could be better than destructive just for Raise Dead).

The best link I've found relating to this game is Celestial Heavens. They have a really cool skill wheel and up to date information! Oh, and of course there's a wiki. There's always a wiki.