Might And Magic: Heroes 6 Review
January 4, 2012 by Tom Kerkhof
The Heroes of Might and Magic series has been a series of slow but gradual development in terms of gameplay. It dates back to 1995 when Heroes of Might and Magic was first released. Though it shares a name with the RPG series Might and Magic from the same creators, it combines light RPG elements with empire management and tactical combat, and is as such much more a strategy game than an RPG of any kind. Since real-time strategy game were still in their infancy back then, Heroes of Might and Magic was a turn-based strategy game. This form of gameplay is by many today considered to be archaic, but it still has it’s fair share of fans. It is therefore not a surprise that during the years, the Heroes of Might and Magic series never really tampered with this concept. And whenever the developers did try something new, it was met with a lot of criticism. Case in point: Heroes of Might and Magic 4. It was still turn-based, but the full inclusion of Heroes in battle, the fusion of many factions into fewer new ones, limited and forced unit choices and the ability for units to walk around the world map without a hero wasn’t really well-received by a lot of fans. It’s predecessor, Heroes 3, was very popular and so Nival Interactive decided to mold the 5th installment much after the third one when Ubisoft gave them the greenlight to get busy creating a new Heroes installment. Heroes of Might and Magic 5 was a great turn-based strategy game, and once again captured the spirit of Heroes.
For the inevitable sixth installment, Ubisoft got Black Hole Entertainment in the developer’s chair, and they must’ve thought: ‘why don’t we start with what Heroes of Might and Magic 5 offered, and build from there?’ In itself a sensible thought, since Heroes 5 was a great game. The end-result, however, turned out to be a game a tad to similar to Heroes 5 without a feeling really ‘new’ or exciting. In fact, it may well offer less than Heroes 5 did.
Was it really necessary to cut all the way back to the original vanilla Heroes 5 to start expanding on? Heroes 5 had two expansions, both increasing the number of playable factions, greatly expanding the game’s variety. The second expansion added upgrade trees that allowed players to freely choose between two different unit-variations, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Since all of these could be freely mixed within one’s army, even two groups of different upgrades, the possibilities were endless. Playing the game with friends using Hot-seat never got boring either, since a feature to create a random map was included. Players never needed to run out of maps without having to create them themselves. Upgrading a city was a fun process since the beautiful 3d city-model expanded each and every time you built a new structure. Heroes 5 was oozing with style and content.
None of the above is in Heroes 6. There are only 5 factions as opposed to 8, there are no upgrade choices, there’s no random map options and only a handful of different maps and there’s no city model. There’s not even a city screen other than the bland minimized window you get when you click your capitol. Never do you feel you’re expanding your city; instead, you are directly building new troops. The game says you build a ‘Coral Reef’, but it is merely a name, accompanied by the portrait of a Coral Priestess, the unit that this building allows you to recruit. As a player, you no longer have any idea you’re building a Coral Reef. You don’t even know what it looks like. It may not be vital to gameplay technically, but it is vital to the overall feel and enjoyment of the game. It feels empty, meaningless and above all incredibly lazy.
Why are there only 5 factions? Even Heroes 5 without expansions had 6. Cutting content in such a way can only be justified by substituting it with a whole lot of new options and features, but there are none. Each of these factions has fewer units than before too, since the different upgrade-trees have been removed as well. Building an army offers a whole lot less variety and possibilities now. Also, what happened to the racial abilities? They were truly unique and could really change the way you played a certain faction in Heroes 5, but here, they are all downplayed a lot. They are, admittedly, used much more frequently and all equally effective, but they also feel a whole lot less interesting and much, much blander. And the exclusion of a random map creator is something that really, really hurts the game. If you enjoy playing the game with friends, you’ll quickly deplete the available map pool. Sure, there is a map editor so you can build your own maps, but this is a time consuming process that many won’t want to waste their time on. They just want a new map to play on. This problem was already solved in Heroes 5; do we really need to wait for expansions to solve this problem?
Might and Magic: Heroes 6 (why they changed the name around, I have no clue) has a lot of flaws. It would be unfair to deny the strengths of the game, however. Leveling up your hero has certainly improved. There are clear techtrees to freely choose from this time around, and this is surely an improvement over the illogical and highly random (and luck-based) level-up system of Heroes 5. It is also really cool that the developers decided to bring back different hero classes, much like Heroes 3. This adds some extra diversity to each hero other than their personal traits. The balance between each unit is also pretty well done. Each unit feels useful and each one has their own strengths earning them the right to be on any army. None of them ultimately seem too strong or weak. The single-player campaign is also pretty entertaining, but time-c0nsuming. There is a campaign for each faction, and the player can freely choose which ones to tackles first. Add to this the achievements and reward system and you have some solid fun right there.
These achievements and rewards can only be activated by logging in with an Ubisoft account, also needed to install the game. Although it is a tedious process, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. The game doesn’t require an active internet connection to run.
Might and Magic: Heroes 6 isn’t a bad game, its just not as good as its predecessor. It took out a whole lot of perfectly good features, features that should’ve been in this one as well, and gives us next to nothing in return. It doesn’t really improve all that much graphically, it doesn’t add interesting new gameplay and it doesn’t distinguish itself with its artstyle. It all feels a bit soulless. Rushed, maybe. I am sure some fans of the series will enjoy it, and it sure isn’t as much a dissappointment as Heroes 4, but I was quickly done with it. For those thinking about a purchase, I’d recommend they wait for the inevitable expansions to pick up the game when some of the issues are hopefully resolved. For now, it is average at best.
67% out of 100%
