Might & Magic Heroes VI Preview

We have yet another preview for Ubisoft’s oddly-titled sixth installment in the Heroes of Might & Magic franchise, caveat being that this one comes from the good folks at RPGWatch and is written by Elvin from the Heroes community, who had the chance to advise the team on some of the design choices taken. Here’s a snippet:

There were a number of decisions that received criticism, the most vocal of which being the reduction of rare resources, the town screens being windowed, interface lacking in aesthetics and a lack of random map generator or simultaneous turns. Unfortunately, we were not called upon early enough to advise against the resource reduction, however, the rest are in a much better fate than one would think. Irina Kassina, the community developer, has confirmed that town screens and interface are on their improve list -though not their top priorities and thus not feasible in time for the release. Likewise, Erwan Le Breton the game’s producer has confirmed that random map generator and simultaneous turns will be added as soon as possible, perhaps in a patch. As much as I dislike the notion, the latter two have always been expansion additions so I cannot really complain. All things considered, Ubisoft has proven to listen to the fans and if the recent release delay and extended beta phase are any indication, they are not planning on delivering a rushed product. Worth noting that part of the reason for the delay was to incorporate a better AI, which I personally found much needed.

With that out of the way, here come the good parts! And Heroes 6 has plenty of worthwhile additions and improvements over its predecessor, this cannot be denied. Despite its success, Heroes 5 was not without its issues – including a highly abusable and sluggish early game, battle outcome largely tied to chance, hero build being more decisive than your tactical skill, first turn slaughters being a very real possibility, certain factions dominating in early or late game, a non user-friendly editor, poor campaigns, even worse AI, poor optimization and problematic camera rotation. Heroes 6 is free of those issues.