Might & Magic Heroes VI Review
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First, in the interest of full disclosure, I need to let you in on who exactly is writing this review. I would consider myself a (heroes fan); I have been playing heroes games since I was young, beginning with the Heroes of Might and Magic 2 demo. I am a member of the (VIP) group, a handful of fans that have been working with Ubisoft behind the scenes for almost 2 years giving feedback and advice during the development cycle of Might and Magic: Heroes VI. I am writing this review based on a review version that is a couple of months older than the retail version. Ok now that that's out of the way, on with the review!
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One of the biggest changes you'll immediately notice, the resource pool has dropped from seven resources to four. Gems, sulfur, and mercury are gone, leaving gold, wood, ore, and crystal (now (Dragon Blood Crystal)). This change was made to decrease the learning curve and increase the stratergery. According to the developers, having fewer resources increased strategic depth because now every mine and resource matters to every faction; in previous games if you're a faction that doesn't need much sulfur for your buildings, you would tend to not care if one of your sulfur mines was taken by the enemy. In contrast, if all factions need crystal equally, it will both help you as well as hurt your enemy if you capture an extra crystal mine. In practice, I find that fewer resources has had a negative impact on the pacing of the game. To compensate for the fewer resources, dwelling upgrades and upper tier building prices have been raised to the point where you are facing a painfully slow building progression. This forces the player to make the economy the foremost important part of their strategy, somewhat limiting strategic options you had in the previous games. It isn't a bad system, but as a player I would prefer in any future iterations of the game that they revert to a more varied and robust resource system.
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Overall as a Heroes fan, I would say that Heroes VI is one of the top three Heroes games ever made. We will see what comes of any expansions, but if they can get a few of the looser details nailed down, I wouldn't hesitate to call Might and Magic: Heroes VI this generation's Heroes 3. If you're a longtime fan of the series I completely understand some of your reservations about (dumbing down) or oversimplifying the game. To you I say: give it a try. Black Hole Entertainment is comprised of Heroes fans as well, and they have not only treated this title with the utmost respect, they have captured the soul of what it means to be a Heroes game. Without fail, every time I sit down to play Heroes VI it is like digital crack, that (just one more turn) syndrome is ever present here, resulting in many a late night adventure in Ashan. To those of you new to the series, you couldn't find a better place to start. Heroes VI is accessible and easy to learn, but hard to master. If you take your time you'll easily spend 40+ hours on the campaign alone, not even touching the skirmish maps, multiplayer, or the robust map editor. I am giving this a 4/5. Ubi and Black Hole have done a great job pushing innovation while maintaining the core of what made us all fall in love with heroes in the first place. If it wasn't for some of the issues with the AI and various bugs, I would have rated this a 4.5; if it had fixed town screens and a bit more polish I could have gone as high as a 5. What I'm saying is, this is a very fun game, and after a few patches should be even better be able to live up to its potential. I have thoroughly enjoyed playing Heroes VI thus far, and won't be stopping any time soon. well maybe. after just one more turn.
