Gaming Might and Magic Heroes VI Preview

Heroes VI is released to coincide with the series' 25th birthday. Is there life in the old dog?

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2011/08/05/might-and-magic-heroes-vi-preview/1

 

Its been this way with the last few in the series. Holding on to the name and not delivering.

Cant say im surprised. However it would be nice to play a good Heroes game again.

Shame. Ah, well. We shall see what the final product delivers. But expectations arent what they once were.

Nice write up Clive

 

Try the King's Bounty series. Just as good, if not better, and it seems little-known in many places.

 

I'm really looking forward to it
King's Bounty is a bit different, with the main movement being realtime, thereby making local multiplayer impossible (the best bit about heroes for me)

 

Hmm...

I'm disappointed, though not overly surprised. Heroes 3 was by far the best of the series. The issues you have with the game (needless animations and critical cut scenes) were present in the last title, and were part of the reason it put me off. I've read that they have put your hero in the background again, ordering the troops and casting spells, rather than being a controllable unit (which didn't work very well, as they made normal troops insignificant half way through a match).

I'm still looking forward to this, and I'll still pick this up, but I imagine that a few hours in I'll just be pining for number 3 again. Here's hoping that it ends up being a good game though.

As for the Kings bounty games, the original kings bounty (on the Megadrive) was simply brilliant, and it is where the Heroes games came from. They are great fun to play, but they are much more of a single player campaign, killing scripted bosses as you go along, rather than having competing AI with armies like your own, fighting over resource points and castles etc like the Heroes games do.

 

I'm still baffled by how HoMM has never managed to better or equal HoMM3.

 

Any word on the campaign difficulty? That's the only negative thing I can say about HoMM3; the unbalanced campaign difficulty. Some campaigns were too easy but in the end it got so hard I, sadly, never managed to finish the game. I know, I know, I suck...

 

Yep, heroes are back where they should be.

Tricky to tell at this point as it's preview code and just getting to grips with all the spells/traits/abilities etc takes ages! I had to use cheat mode to gift myself more troops a few times just to get through some bits, but i put that partially down to n00bish mistakes with micro-managing town upgrades and so on.

I'd tentatively say that Normal difficulty is fairly challenging, but only because of army attrition rather than amazing AI tactics in battles or on the map.

 

I agree with them resting on their laurels for a long time. I will stick to AOW2: Shadow Magic until something better comes along. I am quite excited about King Arthur Roleplaying Wargame 2.

 

I'll second Age of Wonders, best game of this genre

 

That was indeed the pinnacle, and still a great game now.

 

I just called to say I love you
I just called to say I care.....

Sing it with me!!!

 

I'll second that. Bought King's Bounty: The Legend and Armored Princess on a whim and have enjoyed it immensly!

 

Doubt I will get this. Got just about every thing up to HoMMV. And I wasn't overly impressed with 4 or 5.

I have been enjoying a romp through my Heroes Chronicles collection recently though.

 

4 was what got me into the series, since got 5, which I've really enjoyed (got it post expansions, which added a lot)
Me and my brother are looking forward to this one

 

Good timing! GOG have a Might and Magic Universe promotion on (40% off individual titles, 50% off if you get the whole shebang) so anyone wanting to relive the classics can pick up a bargain.

As for HoMM VI itself, it sounds like it shares some problems with HoMM V (naff voice-overs, overly-complex skill trees) and adds a few more (online message boards in a map, gah! - v1&gr& adverts ahoy!). Did Nival write this one too?

With Ubisoft publishing, they'll presumably stick in their always-online-DRM just to mess things up.

I'd add a thumbs up for King's Bounty The Legend (also available on GOG) and the sequel Armored Princess (DRM-free DVD) though the real-time movement on the strategic map does change the gameplay a bit (the Crossworlds followup requires online activation though). RockPaperShotgun has a great review highlighting some of the craziness in KB The Legend.

 

Been playing heroes of might and magic 6 since the beta started and even after since the game runs anyway strait from the install folder in my steam common folder. It's quite good. The only other Heroes game I've played was 5 and I did not like it at all. This one is a lot more fun. The armies you build are more fun to use and I like the new Talent System for your hero. It helps me to flesh out what I want before I go into a game. I too was also a big fan of all 3 king's bounty games on steam but I've gotta say, since heroes 6 is open to play, I haven't gone back and touched that series.

Plus the music in Heroes 6 (which is a lot of heroes 2 + 3 music from what my friends tell me) is god-like!

 

Heroes 4 had the potential to be great but because 3DO was going bankrupt, a lot of the game's developers were moved on to other projects, and the game was released long before it was completed.

 

I am looking forward to this.

To be begin with, the presentation is very crisp and I like the smooth animations. Although it is in 3D you can't rotate the camera, which I think is preferable to the free camera in V, which was fiddly and just an extra burden. I like the wealth of options while leveling, but 2 things I am apprehensive about is the reduced resources (now only 4) and reduced factions. Also, no true town screen! A real wasted opportunity there.

 

Turn-based strategy is slow? You actually have to remember things and master the game mechanics to play well? Gasp! What's next, does it not even feature any mole-popping cover-based shooting action? No iron sights? FFFFFFFFFFF