Out of the two expansions for Heroes V, Hammers of Fate is the obviously less inspired one. It mainly adds more of the same regarding the Fortress / Dwarves faction. What it does greatly is giving player new non-generic underground campaign maps that often feel like running through LotR Moria mines, which is a huge positive spike in atmoshpere.

The 4 added campaigns felt rather short in my personal opinion and it is by far not as great as Tribes of the East, but all the same, I had quite a lot of fun with Hammers of Fate and it certainly doesn't deserve all the downvotes it got. On sale and as a fan of the franchise or the genre in general, this can definitely be picked up along with the base game and with Tribes of the East.

The first expansion of HMMV. Pretty good. There are several new mechanics and abilities. Adds a lot of content. The story is interesting. 3 long campaigns with almost 60 hours of play time is quite a nice deal, specially compared to many DLC nowadays that provide so little in content and play time.

Found no bugs or crashes. Runs troubleless on win 7.

I think the game is really entertaining, as HMM usually is, so I recommend it gladly.

Adds generic dwarves as the Fortress faction, not as interesting as HoMM 3´s Fortress which had lizardmen and other fun stuff, also adds other stuff like random map generator which was missing from the main game

If you like Homm5 then you'll love Homm5:HoF. New Faction, new creatures, new locations. If you have not yet played Homm5 and are considering whether to buy the bundle I strongly recommend it. The story is a little soap opera-ish, but entertaining nonetheless.
Hammers also offers a random game generator which I do not believe was found in Homm5.

RIP HOMM :(

The world needs more HoMM. Unfortunately this wasn't the best title, but it's still fun.

Do me a favor, do it, do it.

TL; DR Heroes of Might and Magic 5: Hammers of Fate is the first of two expansions and takes place after the events of the base game. No campaigns from the original are included but all scenarios are, hence, you will need the base game if you want the full story.
It does a good job at improving the flaws of the original release and building on its better aspects.

Note If you are only interested in the multiplayer, you should consider buying Tribes of the East instead since it is more feature complete.

Finally, as this is an expansion, I will focus on what is new and exclusive, therefore I will not discuss the base-game factions or the gameplay.

Skip this if you do not want spoilers for Heroes of Might and Magic 5.

Things have changed since returning from Sheogh and most of the people you know have returned to their own lands, but in the Empire, things are especially strange. The Queen is conducting a purge of rebels, demon worshippers etc and at the onset of the first campaign you are assisting her…
The events that follows are told in three campaigns with each having five chapters. On the whole these campaigns are better than the original’s, with the first two being great, and the final one a bit varied. As you could suspect from the introduction earlier this game is noticeably darker and takes itself more seriously, which is fine. Especially since the expansion’s story is a lot more interesting.

In this game you get an actual cast of characters that interact with one another throughout the campaigns, they get the time to bond or become enemies without it feeling forced. Furthermore, what is this production value? Why does the expansion get lip-sync, and good cutscenes? I am not complaining, these campaigns are great, and way more engaging than what came before.

However, was it really necessary to play the same map three times? I understand that the original game did something similar, but they could have switched things around a bit more to make it interesting and not so tedious.
I will also have to criticise the Dungeon Campaign; it is not filler like Raelag’s Campaign, but the first two chapters are handled pretty poorly and while cool in premise are lacking in execution. Without a town you are limited to whatever spells RNG blesses you with which combined with poor luck on skills can make the beginning very annoying and tedious. It is a rather big shame since subsequent chapters are also a bit different from what you usually do, and they are handled well. Funnily enough this variation in quality makes the entire campaign more memorable than Raelag’s.

So yeah, the Dwarves, are a really strong faction, possibly even overpowered. Most of their roster has great defensive capabilities but they also get phenomenal offensive options. Do you want to cross the entire battlefield in one turn? Done. Want to be as annoying as Ghosts? Done. Just those options are ridiculous but that is far from them at their peak.
If they want, they get a chance to attack twice a turn, stun or attack every single adjacent enemy unit. Did I mention that their two strongest units can hit multiple targets? Keep in mind that this is without even considering that their three highest tiers of units get free fire immunity and that their ultimate ability gives their opponent Bad Luck on each attack.
However, its not completely unbalanced as many of these options require resources to use, with each following use increasing the cost. This makes it very costly in the early game but basically free in the endgame at which point you might also have Armageddon

Unfortunately, they are not as visually striking as all that might have you believe, meaning they fit in with the rest of the rather stereotypical looking factions. However, I find that their Tier 7 unit the Fire Dragon is particularly interesting, it is rare to see a dragon standing upright, and having them be literally made out of magma made them one of my favourite creatures growing up.
Lastly the music does the usual thing by being really good and it fits in well with the atmosphere that is being evoked with the faction. They also have another fantastic town screen, visually very cool as it goes along perfectly with the overall aesthetics but living there would be a literal nightmare.

Hammers of Fate includes another five scenarios but also all scenarios from the original release of Heroes of Might & Magic 5. These scenarios have a few different functions but one of the most important ones is expanding the worldbuilding of Ashan which they do a fine job at.
Another reason is giving some more content for the factions that did not receive a new campaign, as well as Fortress since they obviously did not exist in the base game. In general, these new scenarios are better at differentiation themselves from multiplayer maps by giving you unique heroes or situations that would otherwise be limited to the campaigns, this is a great improvement.

These scenarios are also here to explain what happens to former player characters whose factions are not playable in the expansion’s campaigns. Namely Academy in Temptation and Sylvan in New Enemies, I think this was a great decision as it is relatively subtle and more organic than forcing the topic in the storyline.
It bears mentioning that one scenario, the Union, introduces characters that appear in the final expansion, Tribes of the East. This map serves as the Necropolis scenario but also has you playing a Haven town, you will be given a hero from each town, and it is the two of them that appear in the sequel.

They had wolfs.
I had dragons.
How the f**k did wolfs defeat dragons?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1222498177
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=696125226
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=695839524

In my ongoing and likely futile effort to write a Steam review for every game in my library (#430 out of 612)... it's time for Heroes of Might and Magic V: Hammers of Fate.

Where vanilla Heroes of Might & Magic V might err in being a bit too safe, a bit too conventional, a bit too predictable, it's expansions (Hammers of Fate and Tribes of the East) are a welcome breath of fresh air. Here is where HoMMV really shines!

The core combat remains very tightly designed, if somewhat lacking in quality-of-life features by modern standards, and the tale told continues to lean heavily on Tolkien-esque cliche. But the introduction of a new faction of dwarves (in Hammers of Fate) and orcs (in Tribes of the East) go a long way to making the combat feel more diverse, varied and interesting. If you enjoyed Heroes of Might & Magic V in its vanilla iteration, Hammers of Fate offers all that and just a little bit more.

Note: Also played on PC, sans-Steam.