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Heroes of Might & Magic V: Tribes of the East

So what's in the package?

Tribes of the East is a stand-alone expansion to HoMM V, meaning that one does not have to own the core game or the earlier expansion to fully enjoy it; however, because of the branching storyline encompassing all three iterations of HoMM V, and it's generally steep learning curve compared to the core game, Tribes of the East may be somewhat confusing and discouraging to new players, so they may be better off buying something like the Gold edition, which includes all 3 episodes.

Besides the new campaigns, the expansion pack can pride itself in numerous extra features. When the core game was released, one of the main criticism it had to face was that certain features were lacking (such as the map editor, a wider variety of single scenarios, decent multiplayer), most of which have been resolved in patches since it was released. This expansion pack further enhances the game in different ways, with the most notable being alternate unit upgrades. Until now, each creature that could be recruited in the various castles had a single upgrade, just like in Heroes 3. One of the main advancements of Heroes IV was that the players could choose between two different units at each tier, thereby choosing a different army setup each time, allowing for more varied tactics.

Unfortunately this meant that the player could only recruit 5 different units at any given time in a castle only. Tribes of the East strikes an interesting compromise, by allowing the player to choose between two similar, yet differently acting units in each upgraded castle-dwelling. This allows players to mix and match their armies according to their unique game-style, or to best counter a certain situation. These choices aren't final in the game, and the units can be retrained in castles to their alternate upgrade for a fee. The total unit count is raised by almost 50% because of this (if we don't count the new race and the external units).

The new ability of the Orcs, Bloodrage, in action.

The new units all look great and play differently from anything we are accustomed to. Finally another race without a dragon as their top tier unit...

Besides this, a new and very interesting race makes its new appearance: the Orcs. What makes them really stand out is that one has to completely change the tactics employed, when playing the Orcs, since their racial ability works best when attacking constantly. A lot of their units have something called "Blood Rage", a meter that increases after each successful attack, and decreases when the unit remains idle during its turn or when it takes damage (although the rage they lose is used to lower the damage received, so it's not all lost).

When reaching certain levels of rage, the unit affected receives additional bonuses based on how skilled the Orc hero is. This in itself can often turn the tide of battle, and therefore it is absolutely necessary for Orc players to attack, no matter what during the entire combat. As a trade-off, Orc Heroes don't have the ability to cast any spells, but have passive abilities lowering the effectiveness of opposing spell-casters.

Besides these major additions, numerous single scenario/multiplayer maps, a lot of small fixes and minor new features are included, such as a host of new spells, caravans for transporting units from external dwellings to castles / from castles to castles (this was also implemented in Heroes IV, and was one of the new features that was actually very interesting). Besides this, the game also offers Diablo-ish artifact sets with cumulative bonuses for the first time, and it has an improved implementation for the cut scenes, but more about that later on.

All in all it has a lot of new content, and one can literally get hundreds of hours of enjoyment.

Page 1: IntroductionPage 2: New Features & GameplayPage 3: Art, Design & HardwarePage 4: Final Thoughts & Scores

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