I had fun enough to play through the campaigns, but I don't like only 3 resources, the zoning, and the drm part.
Might & Magic Heroes VI Review
By
Chris Watters, Editor
Engrossing exploration, diverse development, and challenging combat return in Might & Magic Heroes VI.
The Good
- Classic formula remains as addictive as ever
- Some welcome restructuring and streamlining
- Vibrant, creative visuals
- Tons of campaign content
- Quick combat can bypass drudgery.
The Bad
- Quick combat can engender drudgery
- Some helpful information is hard to find
- Online competitors frequently quit.
For more than a decade and a half, the Heroes of Might & Magic series has offered players the chance to adventure through fantastical worlds while training heroes, developing towns, and building armies to explore the realm and conquer their enemies. The turn-based titan returns in Might & Magic Heroes VI with the same engrossing and rewarding gameplay that its predecessors served up so well. New creatures, spells, and a lovely new faction help make this visually vibrant game feel fresh, while the restructured skill tree and new dynasty mechanic make hero development more flexible. Progressing through the five lengthy campaigns can drag at times, which is something the new quick combat feature both ameliorates and exacerbates. And the diverse tactical considerations can outpace the game's ability to explain them properly. But the addictive rhythm of building, fighting, and exploring is as powerful as ever, making Might & Magic Heroes VI another compelling entry in this storied series.
Whether you play one of the campaigns, a one-off game, or a multiplayer match, you must choose from one of the five factions. Each faction has a different town in which it can construct unique buildings and recruit seven faction-specific creature types. The medieval Haven, hellish Inferno, and ghoulish Necropolis factions will be instantly familiar to veterans of the series, as might the snarling Stronghold faction introduced in Heroes of Might and Magic V: Tribes of the East. The Sanctuary faction, on the other hand, is entirely new and makes a great addition to the existing roster. The blue and green temples of a Sanctuary town feature the curved eaves of Japanese pagodas and sit atop flowing waterfalls. The creatures also draw on Eastern inspiration, including slithering, four-armed samurais (kenseis) and ethereal, kimono-clad water spirits (snow maidens).
Regardless of which faction you choose, the creatures are all richly detailed and appealing. Some examples include the hulking, skull-fisted jaguar warriors (Stronghold); the floating, feminine radiant glory (Haven); the corpulent, spike-limbed breeder (Inferno); and the desiccated, sphinxian lamasu (Necropolis). The creatures and buildings of a given faction share a strong artistic theme, creating a great sense of cohesion among the ranks and a strong visual opposition between rivals. This artistry also extends to neutral creatures, buildings, and environmental elements that litter each map. The lush forests of Sanctuary regions, the cavernous Inferno depths, and the gloomy plains of Necropolis territory all offer new visual treats for the intrepid explorer.
Into these realms you go, guiding one or more heroes down pathways littered with free-standing creatures, resources, artifacts, and buildings. Though there are only four types of resources (wood, coal, crystal, gold), the variety of artifacts and buildings continues to provide new sights, even hours into the game. Buildings can offer temporary or permanent attribute boosts for your hero, resource-producing mines, challenging arena fights, and a glimpse of distant lands, to name a few. These places can be visited by any hero, and mines can be claimed by a faction. However, rather than simply walking in and flagging a mine as you could previously, you must now control the surrounding area, which requires capturing the town or the fort that controls the region. Defending regions rather than individual mines is a much more logical and viable strategy, though your enemies can still disrupt your production by occupying or sabotaging your mines.
Sabotage requires a special skill, however, which you can find in the expansive and revamped hero ability tree. Rather than making abilities dependent on skills, as in Heroes of Might and Magic V, the ability tree is divided into magic abilities, might abilities, and heroic abilities. Magic abilities (divided into six schools of magic) consist almost entirely of spells that you cast in combat to buff your allies, damage your enemies, or summon new creatures. Might abilities (divided into five categories) include war cries that can be used similarly to spells, as well a broad swath of noncombat abilities that let you, for example, walk farther in a turn, find more resources, confer the benefit of your experience to fellow heroes, or increase many hero attributes. Both might and magic abilities are unlocked with skill points that your heroes earn with each level, and the abilities are divided into three tiers that unlock when your heroes reach a certain level.
The vast majority of abilities are available to all heroes, and choosing one never locks out another. This system gives you more freedom to develop your hero than in past games, allowing you to specialize or generalize at any point along the way. There are restrictions, however. Heroes have an affinity--either might or magic--and they can only access the powerful third-tier abilities within their given affinity (some artifacts are also restricted by affinity). Furthermore, certain factions don't have access to certain schools of magic, and each faction has a unique faction ability that can be periodically used during combat to buff allies (Sanctuary), summon new creatures (Inferno), or resurrect the dead (Necropolis). Heroes can also earn a reputation through their actions (what spells you cast, how you treat fleeing armies) to eventually become aligned with the path of blood or tears. Progress down these paths grants new abilities that are unique to each faction as well.
All of these varying abilities can be daunting, initially. When you add the abilities conferred by dynasty traits and weapons (more on your dynasty shortly), as well as the potential to equip up to 13 artifacts, there is a lot going on with your hero. Though every ability will tell you what it does when you mouse over the icon, some abilities mention status effects or other consequences that are only explained elsewhere. The case with creatures is similar; you can find out about a creature by right-clicking on it, but if you're trying to decide which creature to upgrade first, even the bestiary (accessible only from the main menu) won't tell you the upgraded stats unless you've encountered that creature before. Most of the information you need to make smart decisions in Might & Magic Heroes VI is somewhere in the game, but it's a shame it isn't more easily and universally accessible.
Though the strategic nuances may take some time to discover and master, it's easy to enjoy the game right from the start. A tutorial campaign gets you started with the basics, providing pop-up hints that ease newcomers into the mechanics of exploring, fighting, and building. The town interface has received a visual overhaul but retains the simple tiered structure that makes it easy to learn about each building, evaluate your construction priorities, and plan your future developments. You can drag small buttons from the town menu into the bottom-right corner of the screen to create some helpful shortcuts, but the most helpful streamlining comes in the form of creature recruitment. In previous games, you had to caravan creatures from your various towns to a single point or simply go on a tour of your whole kingdom if you wanted a strong army. In Might & Magic Heroes VI, you can recruit a given type of creature from your kingdom-wide production pool in any town that produces that type of creature. This is an immense time-saver, and it makes the aforementioned forts even more valuable as strategic outposts.
By
Chris Watters, Editor
With his Apple IIGS as the spark and his neighbor's NES the fuel, Chris Watters' passion for gaming caught fire early. Years later, you can find him aiming down virtual sights, traipsing through fantastical lands, and striving to be grossly incandescent while desperately avoiding sunburns.
25 comments
I feel proud as a newcomer to the series to now be in control of mission 4 of the Haven Campaign on normal difficulty. It was tough on mission 1 and so unforgiving in mission 2 I had to restart it twice, but then I toughened up and ran the enemy to the ground! :D
I have played 135 hours so far, it's challenging and a great game.
This is not a bad game, at first I HATED IT, but as I kept playing, it got a lot better, this game is just as good as the 5th, it's really hard to start but once you get it, it's a great game.
@vagner995 Changed my mind, IT IS F***ING HARD, can't get past the first necro mission, got both the first towns, and then it gets REALLY HARD, two heroes always come with giant armies, it's just unfair, they have made this game really crappy, the only good strategy in this game is to rush everything, I really stopped liking it after the tutorial...
2 Like I am new at this. This is my first time to say any thing. I have played 3 games all the way to the end and then I bought this one. I HATE IT. Have played for 2 weeks and all ways get killed in easy mode . I have the gold Edition mmh6. I am in Haven fair is Foul and no mater what I do they always have more army than what I have and I get killed. the game has great graphic's. But games are to be fun. THIS ONE IS NOT! and that is such a shame the rest of the game is great that is what I have seen of it.
I feel bad that I just wasted my money.
1 Like The game feels unbalanced: on easy, the neutral enemies are too easy, but the AI "boss" heroes are still too tough. On normal, I just can't get enough troops compared to the huuuuge armies of enemy heroes.
It actually forces me not to explore the map (which i love), but to go straight at the enemy (which i hate).
So:
-too difficult for the casual player (I do have a real life, too, i apologize for that)
- not as good as H5, not to talk about H4 or the great H3.
I am glad that Black Hole Games is dead. Oh, they can blame the big-names alright:
http://www.geekscape.net/black-hole-entertainment-goes-bankrupt-heroes-vi-creators-blame-ubisoft
But I know their track record - they are not very good at achieving their lofty visions.
it sounds like there are some solid gameplay improvements here but my interest in this installment was severely deflated when i saw my faction, sylvan, get the axe. And with a franchise as deep as this that's dozens/hundreds of hours of specific battle tactics flushed down the drain. I played HoMM II for 10+ years before i played HoMM V, guess i'll get cozy with HoMM V for a while.
So I'm a little late to the party. Picked this up yesterday, and while I was waiting for it to install I was reading through a whole host of complaints about graphical glitches, bugs, constant drop-out from the conflux, and many others. I've played through the first 2 maps of the tutorial campaign & experienced none of these problems. Has it been all sorted with a patch? Or have I been lucky? Because as far as I can see so far, this game has been carefully crafted and beautifully designed. I also loved Heroes II and III.
1 Like It's strange how the majority of people seem not to like HoMM 4 which was the best in the series (3 is just way too old, unfortunately); & also accept the new ones. I guess the development went in the right direction as far as making money goes. Here, same as in 5, I get to a computer opponent that's impossible to beat (really, 110% not possible). Hopefully I'll have the time to figure it out and start playing it again, one of these days. :$
1 Like I'm a little bit dissapointed, but it's a good game. HOMM V was almost perfect, not to mention the legendary HOMM III.
I love the HOMM series! This one is no exception. (I've played them all 1-6). The best was 3, but with the exception of 4 they were all great! In 6 there is a lot of new stuff, I like most of it. The graphics are great. I haven?t played all of the campaigns and scenarios but the ones I?ve played so far are varied and interesting. A bit too easy in the normal mode. I am not overly fond of the new ability tree. It seems to be overly complex and if you don?t fully understand it, you can really limit your character by choosing the wrong abilities early on. Outside of that I would highly recommend this game. It is very fun!!
2 Like This game is in the middle .Not so bad , not so good . I don't like that since H3(H4) , the maps are a piece of crap . Where is the liberty to go wherever you want and explore ? I think they think we are stupid and they make a simple map , with only one road , not to trouble us . But I like the combat and the spell effects . The design of the wall and gate in the combat mode is also a plus . I also like the conversion of the castle , but I think that for the game it's not so good . In H3 ,you are obligated to combine units to have a stronger army and the feeling of it was great . I still hope that in the next Heroes , the maps will be like in H3 (campaign-solo play).
"Paid review clearly"??? OK! Here's a "not paid" revew- the lowest score based on a review is 5/10 by a guy who starts the review with: "the only people I know who've played it (The Heroes of Might & Magic series) without me introducing them to it are women". Seriously?!? It's all about an opinion on something, and yes, I know the reviewer MUST be objective, but everyone has a taste in something. I LOVE ALL of the HoM&M series- 1,2,3,4,5,6!!! The RPG genre is dead as so many others, not because of consoles, but because they are completely dried out of ideas and reused soooo many times! And thank God for Bioware, Bethesda and few others for trying to do something different!!!
This game is a mess. This game is almost as buggy as Heroes 4 and 5 but what makes it worse is the stupid always online crap. The online component is completely unnecessary and very annoying. A bunch of the so called new features are just old features that were already in previous games. Not to mention the fact that Ubisoft's servers are crap. There are connection problems all the time and their servers were down again just last weekend. At least Heroes 4's problems are somewhat excusable due to 3DO's bankruptcy. They had plenty of time to work on this game but Ubisoft clearly wasn't willing to put up the effort.
1 Like Paid review clearly, the game should not be able to get more then 5. Both strtegic and tactical aspect of the game are not streamlined but dumbed down beyond recognition for any long time series fan. AI is non existant. And BUGS. The thechnical aspect of the game is bareley above SoS II just with worst patching I have ever seen in a game. By the time of this review luck was not even working and it was not mentioned here. For first major patch to be released it took close to 3 months. And it fixed around 20 bugs out of 75 pages of buglist thread. Multiplayer is broken and dead. Do not buy it at this state.
1 Like My stomach turns and my face gets green just when i see the words "streamlined" and "accesible" . It means in many cases that the game has been stripped of all depth and dumbed down for the stupidest person they could imagine. Exactly what is happening in the RPG genre which doesnt even exist cause Bioware is ruining everything into a consolized shooter or stupid button masher. And eveyrone else is following to milk the brainless masses cow. Consoles are responsible for most of this crappiness today cause their audience needs just to PRESS X. Thats it for gameplay depth
@edinko Well said, i totally agree. Also: why, oh why does this game have to be multiplayer? Or other good games that had fantastic solo campains???
Good review. Some bugs and lack of few factions and some visuals doesn't make this game a bad game. Campaign is interesting and most of the units too. Also I'm one of those who prefer Heroes IV to Heroes III :)
1 Like Why don't these reviews come up on the main page? I'm happy for To The Moon, but what about all the other games?
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Game Emblems
The Good
Heroes VI is a good game for both fans and newcomers, but it still needs some polishing.
Might & Magic Heroes VI
Not Following
- Publisher(s): Ubisoft
- Developer(s): Black Hole Games
- Genre: Strategy
- Release:
- MDA:
Might & Magic Heroes VI Navigation
