HMMV = DOA

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After waiting years for Heroes of Might and Magic franchise to return, (I still play HMMII&III, 4 was OK, but III is still the best turn based strategy game out there. With random map generator, replay is endless!)3DO having gone under, now Ubisoft has the rights, and there website showed some great beginnings but the last time I checked, nothing was near finalized. Then, I stumble across this game at Walmart for $50. The last online info had this game coming out for Xmas, so I figured next summer . But there it is, great box, six recognizable factions, going back to its roots. Great looking graphics, still turn based, but with some combat options. So for the first time in maybe 15 years I spend full price on a new game. While at work, I pull out the manuel, so when I get home, I can have an all nighter on the new game.
The manuel is straight forward very similar to the past games, game play seems to be exactly the same, incorperating all the best parts of past games, while leaving out some lame "improvements" from 4. Disappointedly, however, there is no cardstock flowchart of town building and army upgrading. The manuel doesn't even list the armies for each town. How to know their strengths and weaknesses? But oh well, I can learn as I go, the exploration of new games is half the fun right.
So I get home and start to load the game. It comes with 4 disks! Man this must be some game to need that much space. So 23 minutes of loading and trading disks, I am done, ready to jump into this game. Hit the icon on the desktop, wait 2 minutes then get a message telling me to put the original disk in, not a copy. WTF, that is the original! I am redirected to their copyprotection company website, who cannot explain easily, so I can change all the settings on my CD drive, again WTF, I have a year old Dell, specifically designed for gameplay, but after 50 minutes of setting and resetting I get the game to recognize its own disk by exploring the disk directly.
So now I'm in, I little angry, but still ripe with anticipation. Now I get a choppy Ubi intro, followed by a choppy Nival intro, the finally the HMMV movie. Great music in the background, but voices skip. Finally on to the game, but wait, nothing happens, cursor is locked, game is locked, oh great computer is locked up. So turn it off and try again. Oh yes put the original disk in! Play around for 20 more minutes and I'm in again. Skip the intros and hit the lockup again. Turn off, rinse and repeat. This time I get to the player creation, so I try to put my mane in, but you can't click on the box! So I tab to it and load my name. Hey, whataya know, there is no tutorial to learn the town building and whatnot, oh well I know this franchise well, so I will go for it. Stardard play and campaigns, the old campaigns were fun, and maybe the first one leads you through the game, so I'll try it. Oh wait, you only have one choice of campaigns, can't start off as my favorite undeads. Oh well again, I just take what I can get at this point. Now mind you all this time, a 3D clip is trying to play in the background. Some giant fire demon seems to be battling a cleric, but who can tell with the stop motion effects. So I get the campaign selected and now its loadind, I know this from the bar at the bottom of the screen. Once it reaches the middle, it stops, locked up. So I scream for awhile then restart.
I then head over to Obisofts website looking for answers. Oh wow, two patches are out for a game that has been released for 3 weeks, not a good sign. I download the patches, even though they do not list my problems in their fix lists. Now we are 3.5 hrs into this ordeal, I it will not reach the campaign, so after 3 tries I move over to the stardard game with similar results. After 2 attempts I give up, package the game for its return trip to Walmart.

Why, why, why do companies rush these games to market so buggy. I really enjoyed ToEE, but I bought it for $8 months after it came out and plenty of patches were available. Maybe someday I will get this game again, but not until it hits the bargin bin and Ubisoft isn't making any $$$ from it.

 

I had the same problems with the copy protection, which I eventually got around by downloading a cracked version of the game, but the game itself has performed just fine for me.

 

CD edition is teh suXx0r. DVD ftw.

 

Hmph, the third mission in the Wizard campaign is broken so I had to install the patch - which then meant that I had to hunt down a whole new no cd patch that was compatible with version 1.2.

This game has defintely set the record for the most time I have ever had to waste just trying to get a purchased game to actually start running.