Might & Magic Heroes VI Preview

Player Affinity has whipped up a preview of the upcoming Might & Magic Heroes VI, penned by a fan of the franchise who ponders the changes made in the latest installment.

Might and Magic: Heroes VI shares some elements with The Creative Assembly’s recent Total War: Shogun 2. Much like Shogun 2, Heroes VI has been subject to a name change from the series’ previous entries and both games feature two layers of strategic gameplay. The first of these is the overworld map in which you control hero characters which level-up, spend skill points and collect items and equipment — much like an RPG. Your heroes recruit units as they travel around the board game style overworld and these make up your armies.

The second layer of gameplay in Heroes VI takes place when your heroes enter combat. You command the units your hero has recruited in a grid-based battlefield and there are dozens of units available for the game’s five factions. While the game features less factions than previous Heroes games have offered, more factions are likely to be added via expansions as they have been in previous Heroes games.

The weakest elements of the Heroes games have been their single-player. While the story and lore of the Heroes world is rich and vast, the story has unfortunately been rather generic in previous games and Ubisoft is looking to fix that in the latest installment. Previous games have presented a single-player that consists of a set of matches with arbitrary objectives, but in Heroes VI there will be boss fights, a reputation system and a conversation system that adds much more to the single-player than the previous games have had to offer gamers.