The Germans Limbic Entertainment got a difficult and very responsible task: to return the "Heroes" to their former popularity. The reputation of the cult strategy series was badly damaged by the previous studio that was responsible for the development of Heroes 6: the authors made too many dubious innovations in the classic game formula.
Fortunately, Limbic did not repeat the mistakes of its predecessor. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, new developers went back to their roots and borrowed best ideas from past Heroes. This approach turned out to be correct: looking ahead, we will reveal the main thing - it is incredibly difficult to break away from Might & Magic Heroes 7.
Everyone who played the third or fifth part will immediately figure out the mechanics of the new Heroes: we rebuild the city, hire units, send the hero to explore the surroundings, pick up resources, loot and fight neutral monsters or enemy generals. Factions in Heroes 7 once again have unique features that were not in the sixth part: for example, necromancers again know how to resurrect skeletons at the end of the battle, and sorcerers of the Academy use the most powerful elemental spells to support their soldiers.
Factional features in combination with an improved role-playing system (dozens of skills are available for heroes to choose from) make battles much more interesting and tactically deeper: the number of different builds in Heroes 7 is huge, and it will take a lot of time to master each one.
To win in combat, the player must know which units and hero abilities interact most effectively. For example, when playing as the Academy of Magic, it is imperative to remember that the Phoenix Bird Simurgh increases the damage of all spells when attacking an enemy, so it should only be used in conjunction with a mage hero.
The skills of the heroes play a decisive role not only in combat, but also on the strategic map. Warlords can now take on the duties of governors: characters who specialize in managing settlements are able to improve financial condition factions and speed up the construction of buildings in the city where they are located.
The development of the city in Might & Magic Heroes 7 is a fusion of concepts and ideas from the fourth and fifth parts: here you need to move through the technology tree in order to construct new structures. At the same time, some elite buildings are mutually exclusive: in the same city of necromancers, you cannot simultaneously place a castle for hiring death horsemen and a bone dragon graveyard. This creates additional strategic dilemmas and at the same time encourages you to re-play as the same factions in order to see all the content of the game.
Despite the fact that Might & Magic Heroes 7 is perceived as the quintessence of the entire series, the Limbic project still falls short of the ideal. The main reproach to the game is an uninteresting campaign and a weak plot, written at the level of a cheap paper fantasy. However, for most Heroes fans, this is not such a problem, because the franchise is primarily valued for online battles.
In addition, the art style of Heroes 7 leaves much to be desired, especially against the background of the fifth part: the game lacks its own face, it looks like an ordinary project for smartphones, and not an AAA strategy game from a major publisher.
Be that as it may, the unremarkable art style and weak story campaign practically do not spoil general impression from an overall great game. Might & Magic Heroes 7 brought back important features of the series that were missing in the sixth part (unique faction features, a complex role-playing system) and only slightly modernized them without touching the basics. As a result, the seventh "Heroes" turned out to be modern and at the same time recognizable. But more importantly, the Limbic project, like the cult Heroes 3, is seriously addictive: this is a game that will steal all your time and ask for more.
You can buy Might & Magic Heroes 7 for PC at (1999 rubles)
Heroes of Might and Magic has been a favorite of mine for a long time, we've been playing them as a family for 10 years if not more. And here comes the new part...
So let's start with what I for a long time I couldn’t install the game on Windows 7 and 8, it didn’t install on my favorite xp ... But to my joy at work I have Windows 7 and tried my luck there.
I’ll make a reservation right away that the price of such a game in the incentive is 1500 rubles, during the summer sale they reduced it by 50%, but, IMHO, it’s not worth that money either.
With grief in half, but it was installed and even started.
However, it occasionally crashes when I take screenshots. As a result, I agreed that it is convenient for me to expand the screen with small indents from the bottom and top of the screen. The picture is slightly stretched, but this makes it easier to work with other programs.
Sketches on loading are perhaps the best in this part, the art is beautiful, the characters are loved.
This is how the company looks like, you can choose a character and play for his faction.
The company of Ivan known to fans is blocked.
Recently I saw that there is another display, it is a little more convenient. Actually, I played for several factions, but I could only go through the elves and the alliance of light. Now I will explain why.
I tried to play as my favorite orcs and dark elves, but for some reason, due to lags, I could not finish any of the quests and had to refuse.
Now I'm trying to play as mages. These are the video inserts .... Beauty, right?
I absolutely do not share the general enthusiasm about the graphics, in my opinion they are terrible. Even regular card looks much worse, although in the company of magicians she was even more or less. Sometimes there are inserts with text.
Cities also did not distinguish themselves with special beauty, although, in terms of gameplay, a fairly well-understood system of buildings. I managed to try out the dark elves, druids, knights and necromancers. The rest somehow went wrong due to lags or the lack of a city in the mission.
In the story Heroes VII it is easy to see an allegory for the game itself. Duke Ivan - just like the developers - stands in front of difficult choice. He - just like the developers - does not risk making a decision himself, and therefore - just like the developers - he surrounds himself with wise advisers who know better than him what is right.
But there is one caveat: Duke Ivan, according to the Ashan legendarium, eventually became the emperor, and the developers of Limbic just got confused in everything. They arranged discussions on forums, did public polls on various important topics(including, of course, the main one: what pose should the figurine from collector's edition), defiantly stated that they strive to arrange everything the way true connoisseurs want.
But practice in again showed that the opinion of the mythical multitude of "true connoisseurs" is not enough to make a full-fledged game. First, this set itself does not know what it wants. Secondly, something else is needed.
Six tales, one Ivan
Ivan's story format is the most interesting part of the campaign Heroes VII. To help the duke, each of the six advisers tells his story with some kind of high morality, and each story goes deeper and deeper into Ashan's past. But the stories themselves are extremely simple. They just fill the space and provide a reason to play for each of the six factions.
In the end, many people stopped playing Heroes for the sake of the plot since the second part. This series is loved for strategic maneuvers on global map, per interesting development cities, for measured turn-based skirmishes and strange, unlike anything else: when you collect one pile of resources after another and rejoice that no one else will ever get them.
Now, a forty-hour campaign is probably the worst way to get to know all this. The value of planning in story missions is overwhelmed from time to time by far-fetched victory conditions like "Find n small specific units in the middle of huge and completely unreadable maps to the naked eye." Story missions are full of restrictions, including all the old conventions like the ban on defeat in battles. It's been surprising since New World Computing: why on earth should I always juggle my generals and keep them safe from risky battles, although I still have well-defended cities and tons of resources? Heroes has—has had since the beginning—an escape mechanic. So why in story missions does it only work in the fourth part? By itself, the ban on escape does not give the game anything other than annoying situations with instant defeat just for the sake of an extra reason to load an autosave.
Sometimes cards look decent, but are completely unreadable without highlighting active objects.
On the other hand, AI opponents have a good time: jumping in circles, ignoring resources and artifacts, and attacking when such an idea or, occasionally, a script comes into their heads. They're here for furniture, they're part of some diabolical production. The game depressingly winds up the gameplay drama, forcing, for example, to participate in battles in which, according to the scenario, you still cannot win, like in the first mission for the Necropolis. Do not miss them by autoboy, be patient. Otherwise, the necessary strain will not work, you understand?
Something good
When Heroes VII freed from the plot and nothing interferes with the gameplay, you begin to notice: the basis of Limbic, in general, did well. For example, she put in order the role-playing system, which was greatly twisted in the sixth part. Among the skills are many old ones, but they are laid out in a more slender form: the development trees fit into a visual wheel, and spells were separated from skills, and now they are again trained primarily in cities with a mage guild.
They tried to develop the theme of non-combat heroes-economic managers who increase the efficiency of the economy and took out many related skills in separate system governorships: if you register the desired hero in the city, he, say, will increase the growth of vampires or allow you to build buildings twice per turn.
The cities themselves do not live up to what was in HoMM V after the additions, but they are still well drawn again, they have a lot of buildings again, and it's just nice to see the progress. There are more active objects on the maps, even if they are still poorly read without outline highlighting (don't forget always hold down the Alt key).
In tactical battles, the idea of increased damage when attacking from the flank came into place, although it would not hurt to bring it to mind: any melee skirmish because of it turns into an erotic leapfrog, in which fighters take turns bypassing each other from the back to strike. But in conjunction, for example, with the racial skills of the dark elves, this creates interesting combinations.
After the ugly pseudo-3D castles of the original version Heroes VI the drawn cities of the seventh part are still pleasing.
Racial skills are always at the top of the skill wheel. Around - a set of disciplines, depending on the hero. It's impossible to learn everything.
Limbic abandoned the reputation system from the sixth part (anyway, many ended up choosing not for conscience, but for prizes given for adherence to “blood” or “tears”), forced online (servely) and dynastic weapons that improved along with you (it still didn't make the game that much smarter).
There are seven resources again, not four, so hypothetically, you can try to cut off the enemy from some specific element that he needs for growth. The caravans that carry troops from one city to another have returned - not critical, but appropriate and helps to get rid of some of the "postal" heroes.
In mechanics, many things fell into place. And while there are still a lot of balance issues (if you search hard, it's not hard to find cheat combinations), these "Heroes" play like "Heroes" - with the adjustment that you know how to play them, since there is nothing like there is no training here. Some commanders lead troops with them, others conduct reconnaissance, others collect resources and bring reinforcements from castles so that nothing prevents the advanced from moving forward. Having learned all the rules again and adjusted the logistics, you begin to feel like how to.
Until everything is covered by another filthy bug.
Significant weeks are back in place, but they are here more often for beauty and stupid Easter eggs - gameplay effects like an additional increase in conditional troglodytes are activated quite rarely.
But doesn't work
In non-story modes, there is one a big problem- Opponents. AI does not know how to handle troops, does not know how to measure its forces, does not know how to play. Sometimes he skips resources, sometimes he even forgets to make a move. He likes to spend a round finishing off two skeletons when he could cut a squad of vampires in half with one hit. If you trust the computer to fight boring battles and use fast combat, it will make the same mistakes.
Of course, one can always argue that such games are not played against the computer - but even after the patches, the network multiplayer continues to spoil the games with desynchronization errors. It remains only hotseat, which, fortunately, is.
There are no problems with readability on the combat screen. There is another nuisance: close up and on the move, the fighters look quite sad.
Technically, start Heroes VII- a complete disaster, and it's not just about small mistakes. Once I completed the tasks in the mission, apparently in the wrong order (although how can the order be “wrong” if you just have a random list of tasks in front of you?), The item needed for the plot broke, and the mission became impassable. Another time, a similar thing happened on the first map of the Academy campaign: the altar, which was supposed to remove the field that was hindering progress, simply did not work.
More than once the game freezes in battle after the attack of one of my units: neither I can do anything, nor the enemy. Sometimes, the gold counter went into the red. In the third mission for the necromancers, I took my hero to the shelter, and after loading the save, he simply disappeared from the map. After all this, I postponed the game until the patch.
Having downloaded patch 1.1, the game stopped loading saves and loading in principle.
One of the few mechanics of the sixth part, which was nevertheless retained, is zones of influence. You can’t just take away a mine from the enemy, first you need to assign the nearest fort to it.
Limbic brings the game in order with varying degrees of success. With patch 1.3, it crashes a little less often, opponents began to move almost instantly (before, the AI’s turn lasted minutes even on small maps), multiplayer is still problematic, but some games can already be completed. Not everything works as it should, but finally you can play.
But is it really worth releasing the game in this form?
* * *
The main problem with all the latest "Heroes" is not that they refuse to follow the canons (to hell with the canons, for that matter), but that they spent much less time on them than they should. Maybe the sixth part would have been loved if it had not worked through a stump-deck. Maybe the seventh would not have seemed like a monster of cigarette butts and sticks if Limbic had his own clear vision and the ability to properly distribute limited resources.
Why does the game have such a long campaign if it suffers from the same problems until the very end? Why is Unreal Engine 3 completely unsuitable for global strategies, if stationary models with open mouths, and the cards look worse than in the sixth part, although they use half the same materials? Judging by the city art and promo images, Limbic has some good artists, so why not make small but concentrated and stylish two-dimensional "Heroes" in the spirit of games on UbiArt?
Places in Heroes VII visible stylization for stained glass painting. It seems that they still tried to find a single style.
The seventh "Heroes" is a mess. They do not have their own appearance (only pulled from different games models and music), no core (only timid attempts to do "as before"), nothing really special. For this series to be taken seriously again, nothing was needed: one good, balanced, finished the game that herself understands what she wants from life. Heroes VII but he is lost among the demands of all those whom he tries to please, and in the end he does not succeed at all.
turned out to be a frankly unsuccessful game, so the seventh part had to either pull the series out of oblivion, or bury it completely. So far, everything indicates that there will be no triumphant return. However, not everything is so bad.In the empire of people, hard times have come. The throne is empty, and there are too many contenders for it. One of the strongest candidates, Duke Ivan, faces a choice: try to save the dynasty or become the head of a huge state himself? In order to make the most informed decision, the duke convened six trusted advisers from all existing factions.
As a matter of fact, from this moment a rather non-standard campaign of Might & Magic Heroes 7 begins. Almost all the missions in it are stories told by advisers from the history of their peoples. Only two of them will take place on behalf of Duke Ivan. For example, the angel of Elrath will tell about the heroic adventure of a young knight from the Duchy of the Wolf, the mention of which for some reason has been lost. The sorceress, in turn, will remember ancient history love and about the times when the orcs rebelled and staged a bloody war, destroying all who stood in their way. There are six advisors, as well as factions for which you can play. These are the Forest Union, the Academy, the Necropolis, the Orc Tribes, the Alliance of Light and the League of Shadows. Each will have their own story, on the basis of which they will have to decide on the future fate of the empire.
However, it all just looks intriguing. The stories turned out to be very simple and full of clichés. Small scenes between missions are banal, and dialogues are poor and pathetic. Even the scenes of betrayal are not surprising.
Before moving on to game mechanics, it is worth reassuring a little those who have already managed to be disappointed. Might & Magic Heroes 7 is still better than its predecessor. Not least thanks to some novelties and the return of mechanisms from previous parts. So, the attack modifier has now appeared on the battlefield, depending on the angle of attack on your soldiers. Now plays the role of flank bypasses and strikes to the rear. If you attack in the back, then the damage can increase up to one and a half times, and this is already a significant addition. However, there is also back side medals: frontal strikes against most creatures are now completely ineffective, so you have to break the formation and reduce the number of defenders of your shooters.
The composition of the armies has also been updated. The League of Shadows received troglodytes and strange magical golems called "The Misfits". Fire-breathing kabirs and huge magical eagles became part of the army of magicians. Lamassu near the Necropolis are also interesting - not living and not dead sphinxes. In general, the bestiary of the game has been updated about a quarter, but Ubisoft promises to add new creatures in add-ons.
Your warriors are divided into three types: basic, elite and legendary. The difference between them is very noticeable. The main ones are ordinary meat, which is able to crush in quantity and nothing else. Elite ones basically complement and develop the success of their base. And the legendary creatures bear their name for a reason: they have several times more health than the elite. They are able to change the outcome of any battle, but are terribly expensive. They will have to spend not only gold, but also rare resources.
The armies look pretty good. There are only problems with the animation of creatures: some of them look like wooden blanks.
There was a system of territorial control. The city now not only serves as the only calm place on the map, but also spreads its influence around. If you assign a governor to any of your strongholds, then certain bonuses will apply to all controlled lands, which the player will choose in the process of developing heroes. For example, the morale of all characters will be increased in each battle, or the growth of their experience will be tritely accelerated.
Urban planning has not changed much. The cities themselves are a drawing with a small number of active elements. This is more suitable for some kind of browser game, and not for a large project.
The development of heroes is carried out with the help of a special skill disk, in each of the segments of which there are three levels. By pumping some branch, you can unlock stronger abilities. Each hero has a specialization, so some branches will only have two levels of development available. So, from a warrior it will no longer be possible to develop an omnipotent magician. However, as well as from a magician, one cannot make a warrior who poses a serious threat.
And all this would be even nice if the game was a little more stable. You have to literally wade through mistakes. The game may crash immediately after some important battle. And considering that in some of them you cannot use the automatic result, this is terribly annoying. Well, at least autosave works every turn. In addition, the game often crashes when trying to start a mission. What prompted Ubisoft to release it so raw is the big question. Steam players complain about a huge number of bugs, up to the impossibility of launching. Uplay Might & Magic Heroes 7 behaves more stable.
“These guys are holding a punch well,” a fleeting thought flashed by when a team of four thousand crossbowmen simultaneously fired a hail of arrows at a hundred magical giants, after which only one of them remained standing on his stone legs. At such moments, you involuntarily think: when does victory come? With the fall of the last enemy castle, or when you realize that your army is no longer equal?
The history of Heroes of Might and Magic is full of ups and downs. If the even parts followed the dangerous path of experiments, then the odd ones always returned it to its roots. But is this the kind of return fans of the series have been waiting for? The answer is somewhere nearby, in the review of the game "Might and Magic: Heroes VII".
- My God! Treasure chest! I'm rich!
- The third level, and already considers himself rich. Nubyo...
"Theory big bang» (2008)
Astrologers have announced a week of bugs
Performance is halved.
If I were asked what feelings and emotions the seventh "Heroes" evoke, one word would come to mind - fatigue. When one card captivates for more than three hours, and the whole campaign is hardly enough for a day, you feel like after an exhausting working day, where there was no place to rest.
But instead of inner satisfaction, there is only bewilderment, emptiness and the question “what was it all about?”. New part The legendary series burns so much time not because the gameplay is fun, but because everything in it works to dilute time, from cunning opponents with their dozens of heroes dancing in circles in their domains, to the speed of loading and playing animations in battle.
The effects of the week became many times more. Some are funny and some are extremely useful. The prohibition of ranged attacks or the absence of a counter-punch can drastically affect the outcome of the game.
It's time to remember our review of the expansion of the sixth "Heroes" and understand that either the experience of past Ubisoft releases did not teach anything, or about possible problems the publisher was aware, but they seemed acceptable to him, to launch the third phase of beta testing. No longer by volunteers, but by the efforts of angry buyers who managed to strike back with a series of negative reviews.
You can argue that over time everything will be fixed, the technical side will be tightened up and the game has great potential in general, but you will never be wrong. All the problems of the "Seven" will not be solved either by patches made in haste, or full-scale additions with new factions and campaigns - they can bring the patient back to life, but not raise him to the level of the iconic "Three" or even the "Six" despised by many.
Bugs of the seventh "Heroes". Note #1. Incorrect lighting work. In fact, this is a desert and now it is far from night.
The root of all evil is artificial intelligence. Yes, he is bad in nine games out of ten, and constantly complaining about this in the reviews is already indecent, but this case special. The virtual brains in Heroes VII aren't even bad, they're… missing. The enemy does not collect resources, does not fight with neutral units, does not attack us - he can easily sit the whole game in his castle without doing anything at all.
In campaigns, such passivity is most noticeable, even scripts do not save. An enemy hero, at the flick of an invisible switch, can run into your city and kill himself against an army that is invincible for him, and sometimes he simply rides nearby, although he can take the stronghold within his strength. Sometimes the opponent will respawn indefinitely with the same army and level until you complete certain event which is pretty annoying.
There are enough picturesque arenas in the game. True, you will never guess with the size of the battlefield, which is why the tactics of quickly pressing to the arrows risk failing.
Tactical battles are also not without quirks. The computer rarely uses shock magic, does not run away from the battlefield, and often orders a large squad of shooters to take up defensive positions instead of finishing off the fighters blocking them. Sometimes he doesn't close, sending troops parallel to your retinue, and when he runs to all available cells, he exposes himself to the shooters, instead of going only the distance that will allow him to attack in the next round.
Intelligence of allies at the same level. The system for calculating the results of the battle does not work correctly, because during the automatic battle no magic is used, and you can lose troops where, in theory, you should kill everyone before they wait for their turn.
Bugs of the seventh "Heroes". Note #2. The Minotaur stood on the cell, where the enemy squad was partially located. Now it cannot be attacked.
With such a track record, the AI manages to think about its moves on the map for a long time, so for now it is better to refrain from trying to play a game in the world maximum size and with a bunch of opponents. But even if you have a fair amount of patience, you are unlikely to finish it - at some point the game will crash with an error due to a memory leak, and the last saves will not be able to load for the same reason.
The cost of your playground and the number of memory bars practically does not affect this matter - in any case, the enemy will think for a long time, and the game will eat all available memory. The latter is already a calling card of Limbic Entertainment, since in their game Might and Magic X: Legacy there was a similar problem, but then only users of 32-bit versions of Windows suffered.
You can unlock pixel mode with Uplay points, but it's hard to call this kind of experience pleasant.
On the part of Uplay, this time there were fewer problems. The game was taught to update automatically, like on Steam, there is no longer a strict gradation between the digital and retail versions, as well as a ban on playing with foreigners. Gone is the Conflux online service: there is no need to be constantly connected to the network to get full access to game functionality (like weapons in the right hand).
We were deprived only of the choice of language. Wherever you buy the game, get a single language Russian version. And even though the voice acting is done at a decent level (although the actors sound a little too theatrical in places, with overacting, like at a children's party), the very fact of such restrictions is frustrating, especially on Steam, where the possibility of reselling cheap versions to the West is completely eliminated.
Who will come to us with a sword ...
The one from the magic will rake.
It is not worth dwelling on the bugs in more detail - you will find the brightest of the ones I personally encountered in the illustrations. Otherwise, the game is not as hopeless as it seems: even taking into account the fact that globally the work was done on a C grade, individual elements deserve, if not applause, then at least praise.
The most important defense argument - conceptually, these are the very "Heroes". With the study of the world map, pumping heroes, collecting resources and rebuilding cities, and, of course, tactical battles, where units take turns bludgeoning each other until one side is completely destroyed. In this aspect, the series was more fortunate than Sacred or Command & Conquer, which degenerated into something incomprehensible.
Close-ups in combat are no longer shown only when luck is triggered. Their frequency can be adjusted or completely disabled in the settings.
Changes for the better are most noticeable in the skill system. If earlier it was possible to raise anyone from any hero, only the racial property and specialization remained unchanged, now we get a skill wheel spied on in the Heroes of War and Money browser, where ten groups of skills are available that fit the style of the hero, three of which can be study for a master's degree.
Considering that advanced skills cost the same as training ones, you can master the highest rank in one of the categories already at the fifth level, which makes short online games more interesting and varied. The problem is only with balance: any mage with a pack of weak gargoyles in a blitzkrieg will muddy a warrior hero if he is lucky with a class spell mass destruction like "chain lightning" or "tsunami".
The skill wheel is not too visual, but I would like at least one section of the highest rank to be given to the player to choose from, so that during online battles there would be something to surprise.
New spells are now, as expected, being studied in the city's guilds of magicians and shrines scattered around the map, provided that the hero is not a complete ignoramus and understands something in the magic of his school. For those who rely on weapons and the size of the host, war cries, learned as skills, but playing as a fighter is not very comfortable now, especially at first.
There are also relatively peaceful specializations like a diplomat, researcher or economist, so a couple of secondary heroes are not a luxury, but rather a necessity. While the commander quarters the monsters, the logistician is on his heels, collecting orphan resources and capturing the mines, and the philanthropist improves financial well-being when he becomes a viceroy in a city.
Bugs of the seventh "Heroes". Note #3. Heaps of resources do not always bring something, although in theory they should.
The developers carried out a construction reform, for example, mutually exclusive buildings appeared in the Seven. You have to choose between the type of dwelling of the legendary creature (hydra or black dragon), an additional mine and a source of a rare resource, an altar with a temporary bonus, and a protective moat.
Buildings are not just more, some of them open up new opportunities. With the help of the guild of thieves, you can find out about the number of enemy heroes and the level of its economy. Due to the buildings, the differences between the factions were also emphasized. So, magicians learned how to create spell scrolls and dismantle artifacts for resources, and the dark elves began to send scouts to rob enemy enterprises.
A lot of bad things have been said about city screens, but right now it's the last thing critics should pay attention to.
Among the advantages, one can add the plot, albeit indirectly, but continuing the events of the sixth part. He tells about civil war that engulfed the duchies of the people after death last empress the Falcon dynasty and the rise of the Griffins as the ruling family of the Holy Empire.
Starring the man from the cover with an infinitely tolerant face, Duke Ivan. He collected secret council from representatives of different races, and before going to the enemy with a saber unsheathed, he wants to listen to the arguments of each of the participants. In this elegant way, the game brings us to six main campaigns, of which it is enough to complete two to gain access to the final. But the more stories the future emperor listens to, the more opportunities and side missions we will have in two denouement missions.
The choice of Ivan's bride is one of the game's few dilemmas. The decision will determine who will help you on the final task.
The story is presented in the form of dialogs with portraits of heroes familiar from the Six, sometimes interrupted by clips made in the style of hand-drawn slides, which looks very beautiful and atmospheric ... especially against the backdrop of dialogues in the council room, where close-ups of narrators are shown with open mouths in frozen postures. There wasn’t enough time to make the animation, or it’s so conceived, it’s hard to understand.
The events of the main campaigns unfold in different time and in different places, and even within the same chapter characters sometimes they change, but their stories are captivating, and despite the predictable endings, it is always interesting how and how it will end. The scriptwriters did a particularly good job of referring to the plot of the Might and Magic X: Legacy game - to the development of the universe of Ashan and the disclosure of this world within three series (role-playing Might & Magic, Heroes and Dark Messiah) so far there are no complaints at all.
The Force Awakens
Why these are not the heroes you are looking for.
Love for knights, deeds and valor was instilled in many of us in childhood, but in the seventh "Heroes" we appear not only as readers and listeners. This is the part that cannot be fixed with updates, without reworking everything. If artificial intelligence is a kind of tripping on the road to success, then the design and level of elaboration of the cards is such a tasty slap on the face on the asphalt.
Most of the scenarios and maps of the campaign are played according to the principle “pumped up the hero -> gathered an army -> took out the enemy -> performed the plot action”. Something original is found at least once in five games, and even there incentives to think appear only due to the time limit or the lack of evidence of how to get to a certain point. As a result, the whole process turned into a routine, viscous and monotonous.
There is too much unused and just empty space on the cards. This leads to the fact that you run longer from one useful point to another.
Similar symptoms appeared already in The Six, but there were dynasties, multifaceted in-game achievements, leveling along the path of Blood or Tears, memorable boss battles, upgradeable artifacts that motivate even a hero to fight neutral armies maximum level. All this is not in Heroes VII, and the developers have not figured out how to fill the resulting void.
At some point in the game, you simply find that it has become uninteresting to play, and apart from the desire to find out the denouement of the story, nothing holds you. The low difficulty also makes things worse: even at the “heroic” level, neither neutrals nor enemy heroes pose a big threat, and the balance of scripted battles where we fight with fixed armies is set up so that even a baby will win them.
Sometimes there are puzzles in missions. But they are here to distract from the monotony and routine, and not to challenge your ingenuity.
The game is not able to conquer novelty. Before us are the same "Heroes VI" with cut opportunities, where for a couple of really sensible ideas there are three unsuccessful ones, or pleasant innovations are too insignificant against the background of current problems.
For example, battles now have bonuses to damage when attacking from the flank and from the rear, heroes have mastered new field spells like reconnaissance of lands and a temporary increase in mine production, and some creatures began to attack with elemental rather than physical damage. Fighters from the fort of the surrounding lands can be hired right in the city, as well as improve the forts themselves so that they immediately give birth to improved versions of creatures. But all these are minor changes that could be added to the same sixth part with a patch.
We will not be allowed into this city. But you've been there before, haven't you?
The connection with predecessors is also expressed in direct borrowings. Part of the portraits, models of creatures, cities and buildings, as well as part of the interface migrated here straight from the sixth part with little or no changes. The armies of the Forest Union and the Academy were almost copied from the "Five", only some creatures were renamed and shuffled between ranks.
But where the big problem of beings is impersonality. In the sixth "Heroes" every second fighter had some kind of trick like an enhanced attack or spell, here most of our wards are just shooters and melee fighters, differing in indicators of attack, defense and health, and a couple of insignificant passive skills. Even skeletons have lost their signature defense bonus against archers, and instead of resurrecting the undead and a chance to miss, the ghost counterparts have been given a ridiculous immunity to attacks from the flank and rear.
The game has a built-in encyclopedia. In the picture, the newcomer to the castle of magicians is a simurgh, which can be considered to some extent the successor of the phoenix.
Problems also overtook those who saw Heroes VII as a good potential for online play. There are only eight hand-crafted cards, and the random card generator, although available ... but not quite. It is launched from the editor, and if it does not freeze at the time of the creation of the world, it will offer territories dotted with narrow paths, where it is simply impossible to reach some of the buildings. It is impossible yet to create a map with a mixed landscape - either desert, or forests, or snow: there is always one thing.
Such shortcomings are no longer surprising, because even in the campaigns, the design of the cards is the worst in the series. The maps are linear for the most part, though the developers tried to hide it by littering them with a network of portals and passages between the surface and the dungeon, and side quests that open up alternative paths are very rare.
Bugs of the seventh "Heroes". Note #3. One day Ivan was crossed by an invisible man. He had no name and, unlike the rest of the opponents, left no trophies.
You can never tell if doing what is written in the task diary is enough, or if something else will be thrown at you later. This is especially critical for albeit rare but unpleasant missions with a time limit: you planned a route, calculated the situation a few moves ahead, and then it turns out that this is not the end, and you need to start all over again, because you missed the timer.
Hence another annoying factor: unpredictability. Let's say they pumped one character into the attack, and the other into the economy. Then it turns out that shock hero by the will of the plot twist, he goes over to the side of the enemy along with the entire army, and you are left with nothing with a guy who, instead of attack and magic, taught logistics and economics. Loading a save can prevent the loss of an army and artifacts, but the very fact of such precedents for a game in the strategy genre is unacceptable.
Five of the most pointless things in the game
Not all resources are equally useful.
Altars and seals of the dragon gods. Often key places are not blocked strong army or a hero on the principle of "gather troops and prove your strength to win an award", but with seals. Everything comes to the point of absurdity: in order to get what you want, which is very close, you should find and visit an altar (maybe even more than one), located in the back of the game space, which provides you with unreasonable running around from one side of the map to the other.
First aid tent. Missed her in the sixth "Heroes"? If not, then this is normal, since it is difficult to find a more useless device in the game. She was never taught to resurrect the fallen, although this decision has been suggested for a long time, so you will often see how she restores 5-10 health units to fairies or swordsmen. And even pumping the “Art of War” skill tree will not help: as the crumbs of life were restored, everything will remain so.
Guards in the garrison. Building fortifications used to increase weekly creature growth, walls now provide a castle additional protection in case of a siege. Alas, it does more harm than good, because a serious onslaught of regular warriors cannot be beaten off, and AI likes to kill small units, since the death of a group now affects the morale of the troops. There are also guards at the outposts, and such a garrison cannot be disbanded as unnecessary, which is annoying when the enemy constantly beats off the key passage.
Buttons "Army and equipment" and "Continue move". Double click of the mouse is a wonderful invention of mankind. But neither our compatriots from Nival, nor the Hungarians from Black Hole, nor the Germans from Limbic know about him. You can open the hero's menu by clicking on his portrait, and to walk around the map, just double-click on any part of it. So why duplicate these options with separate interface buttons? And why is this block on the screen at all, if the options can be hung on hot keys?
The hero hasn't made a move yet! (click1) Dear player, be a hero! (click2) Note that your hero hasn't done anything this round yet. (click3) No, I won't give the go-ahead to attack with your last unit this round, reconsider your decision. (click4) You really don't want to be a hero? OK.
Conclusion
For all its shortcomings, there is no feeling of hostility or contempt for the seventh "Heroes". The attitude towards this part is more like a naughty child - you need to scold and, in which case, put in place, but not out of hatred or righteous anger, but in the hope of making a person out of him. And while this message is unlikely to reach the developers, let it serve as a warning to those interested in the series.
While the game should be postponed until patches that fix artificial intelligence, memory leaks and numerous bugs, and for those who have not yet got hold of it, it is better to postpone the purchase altogether until the release of the Complete Edition with all the fixes and additions. The game is not bad, but it is still far from even the level of the sixth part, and given the lukewarm reception of the players, it is appropriate to ask: will it even get better?
Verdict: Trying to sell a game with an indie soul for the price of a summer blockbuster is a gamble in itself, but a return to the roots on the principle of curtailing opportunities is almost a fatal step.
Rating: 6.7 ("Not bad").
Vitaly Krasnovid aka Dezintegration
We are grateful to:
- Ubisoft for providing the game key.
- Might & Magic: Heroes VII - performance testing
Summary testing thirty-one video cards (including the latest innovations) and forty-five processors in a couple of resolutions and two modes of operation. - Discussion of the game at the conference site.
