(WARNING: I've an irrational hatred for Heroes V -this may be important to understand my assessments)
I've tried the Beta. Unfortunately, my 560GTX passed away recently, so now I'm playing with a Intel HD 4600, sic. There are many graphic options to adjust so I'm able to play it at lowest, with some framerate drops, but playable. But even then I don't think this justifies the looooong time the AI takes to play its turn. I hope we don't need another Quantomas once the game is released. About graphics, many models are reused, but they fit well, overall it looks nice and could even be charming if I got a decent card.
I've played just about two hours, but at the very beginning I found my first surprise: it was the week of tempest, so ranged attacks were disabled -I've never seen something like this before, so be prepared for notorious special conditions. Playing with Castle, I felt overpowered. I don't know if I chose a special game mode or something, but the bonus effects of my hero were massive, constantly giving me double turns, lucky strikes and such being just level 7 or so -even odder for a magic hero!
About the skill wheel. I played with a single hero, so I guess there are variations on this structure for warrior heroes. Here I had to choose among tactics, economics, scouting, rectitude (what before was the leadership branch of tactics) and some magic schools. Of course I chose non magic abilities, and the result was, as I said, too effective. The skill wheel is uninspired, its structure is over simplistic. There are no prerequisites for abilities but to unlock (buying with the point you receive each time you level-up) the 'step' (the visual equivalent of the classic formula basic-advance-expert, etc.) containing it. As I still have to play with other classes and towns, I can't say yet you'll always end up with the same hero build. But for now it looks that way.
The townscreen looks like a cheap representation of medieval Europe by a korean slave, but it's nice. The building tree is interesting, recovering the Heroes 4 exclusion system but reduced to secondary buildings (you can build all dwellings), and thankfully there is a bunch of them (buildings granting resource production, unit production bonuses and special benefits) -although functional, that building screen is bloody ugly. For now I'm satisfied with the town design, I think the tree is more complex than ever before on a HoMM -a well done complexity, I mean.
The magic guild also implies an election: you must school which school (plus the one tied to your faction) you want to learn. Now the spells you can use in the adventure map are more varied and interesting; v.gr. you can cast a blessing for the next battle or reveal a location covered by fog. Nice addition. Town portal now is cheaper to get than in H6 but has more prerequisites for building it. The map I played didn't had neutral dwellings nor castles besides the owned by the two players, so I hadn't chance to try caravans -it certainly looks like there are caravans for there's a button depicting one in the townscreen, but it was locked (probably for the previous reasons).
In battle, the flank system works fine, I think. There aren't as much special characteristics for units as in H6 (i.e unfair things like overpowered elemental shields when hit or blasts when dying are removed), but still they behave with sufficient differences. The relation between damage, health and unit tier is correct for what I've seen. The death camera for ranged attacks is quite cinematographic, very cool; for melee attacks it isn't as spectacular (perhaps this is just due to my limited hardware). Neutral enemies seem enough varied.
I think that's all I can say from what I've played, Heroes VII may be the best iteration since Ubi owns it.
