Meevious

It's staggering to see another attempt to improve a game from 1995 end in tears and vomit. If you can see past the sea of bugs, you'll find a desert of gameplay, graphics, audio and whatever else might endear you to a game. Not a dessert, a desert. Do not eat it.

A huge leap from the original in every respect, this is a perfection of the system that HoMM introduced, pioneering one of the most successful strategy formulas. HoMM II stood tall in an era of strategy giants like Civ II and Age of Empires. It's a masterpiece and easily the best fantasy game to date.

The rights were sold to Ubisoft, who dropped the ball completely. The game is full of bugs, the graphics are jarringly ugly, with a nonsensical camera and bad animations. Gameplay is dumbed down. Nothing about the game is interesting or engaging. It makes me sick to see the HoMM title on such a trashy product.

It could be said that the game doesn't add a lot to the original Mount & Blade. There are some minor graphical changes, a new faction, a marriage system and multiplayer. Though I played a lot of the original Mount & Blade and gave it a 10/10, I've barely touched single player since I bought Warband. Multiplayer is a huge addition and a completely new and different experience, showcasing the beautiful combat system that could be largely ignored in the original. There are a lot of ways to play and while many of them have a steep learning curve, it's easy to be competitive with just the basics.

A truly original, well thought out and polished game. Gameplay is solid, deep and engaging. Combat is visceral and makes sense. The tutorial doesn't cover anything but the basics, so there are a lot of nice surprises. I played for a year before I realised it was possible to control my troops. The graphics are barebones, but the design is good. The character generator is without parallel. The weather is well executed. The randomly generated maps are a pleasure to explore and to strategically exploit. There is a lot going on on the campaign map and the battle map, but load times are virtually nonexistent. The mod community is the best you'll find anywhere, producing countless excellent full conversions. If you have any minor problem with the game, they've probably fixed it. I got this game expecting a low budget Elder Scrolls, but it's original, it's huge and it's brimming with kinds of satisfaction that no other game can offer.