Heroes of Might & Magic 7

[curry]

No I'm not trolling. The game looks and feels much like HoMM3.

 

[theSavant]

Just noticed: the website shows 8 creatures per faction, but the beta only has 7 creatures.
So do we get 7 or 8 creatures in the end? Doesn't look like there's much screenspace left for an additional slot though...

 

[Bubbles]

The two Champion dwellings are mutually exclusive in a city. So you can only build 7 dwellings per city, though there are 8 per faction.

 

[theSavant]

Oh I see (didn't play long enough to find out myself). Meh... but what kind of weird design decision is that anyways? 2 possible creature types - but only for the champion creature, and not for the others. Naaah... either give any of them an alternative or none.

 

[Bubbles]

It's up! It's up!

http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=10056

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

I was really really hoping they would sell the franchise after Heroes 6. It seemed so likely too. Heroes 7 will be a disaster that's 100% sure, is there a precedent of big corporations selling rights without being bankrupt? Will they just keep the intellectual property in a vault instead of getting rid of it?

 

[Archibald]

Standard procedure is to keep it in a vault and release cheap cash grabs like mobile F2P showelware once in a while.

 

[dibens]

Interesting, I played AoW and HoMM4 a lot but never really made the connection. Why do you find them similar?

Yeah, I don't get it. They play and feel completely differently. And honestly I'll take HoMM4 over AoW1 any day. The latter just seems to get old really fast, it's a small game, whereas building a sprawling metropolis and a godlike hero in Heroes is always fun, especially in a map filled to brim with shinies and powerups.

I think they are simply milking it. They probably didn't pay much for the franchise and every little profit they make is "good enough" in their book. Turn based strategy games aren't very hip at the moment so they probably do not expect this franchise to be big money maker anyway.

1,3 million to be exact, a sandwich basically. They made that money back, and then some.

No I'm not trolling. The game looks and feels much like HoMM3.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Nothing like HoMM 3 but I have to say that the game indeed looks pretty nice. Especially compared to HoMM 5 filth.

 

[Bubbles]

Nothing like HoMM 3 but I have to say that the game indeed looks pretty nice. Especially compared to HoMM 5 filth.

 

[Grinolf]

The Sylvan faction appealed to “female mainstream” gamers who “liked unicorns”, while the gritty Dungeon faction was aimed at the hardcore crowd. These hardcore players – the remaining 20% of the HoMM 7 audience – were people who had stayed with the series “for 20 years”,

I could possibly see someone play Sylvan just because of "cuteness" (altrough speed, magic resistance and chance to blind provided just enough reasons to like them without it), but I fail to see why they think that simple faction aesthetic and not it's gameplay would appeal to "hardcore" part of the players. And I'm remembring new dungeon to have even more fanservise than Sylvan, so I don't think they are going to unpopular with casual crowd.

 

[Bubbles]

Inferno would have been a much better example than Dungeon, especially for the old school crowd who despises the new version of that faction. But alas...

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

But you casuals don't understand. BDSM dungeon is gritty.

 

[Archibald]

Yea, I also got the impression that by "hardcore" they meant basement nerds who fap to BDSM models.

 

[theSavant]

I agree with the HOMM4 thing. It's not Heroes 3 but had its own charm. And the graphics are so nice and detailed...

And then comes this... the graphics on this map are really "bleh". The trees here are ugly, bulky blobs. Also the Sylvan Town looks like shit in the map (not on the picture though). This map I actually checked on the Beta myself, and it looks the same even with highest graphics settings. Imo it's worse than Heroes 5.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

I'm currently playing the beta, will give detailed impressions with screenshits. So far I have to admit it seems worse than I expected.

 

[dibens]

FFS. The adventure map is an abstraction. Why do they feel the need to scale shit realistically? Make the fuckdamn objects on adventure map big enough to see without squinting. Nobody fucking plays HoMM zoomed in you cuntrags!

 

[Bubbles]

FFS. The adventure map is an abstraction. Why do they feel the need to scale shit realistically?

Saves money on graphic design.

 

[Grinolf]

Inferno would have been a much better example than Dungeon, especially for the old school crowd who despises the new version of that faction. But alas...

Personally, I'm glad that they went with Dungeon over Inferno, as I liked to play as the first in bonth 3 and 5 and don't remember even using second outside of campaign missions. And I don't concern that much about how the faction looks like (Altrough that abomination that they are calling "Black Shadow Dragon" on their site is triggering me as it doesn't do any justice to the best creature in the game).
But it's very strange to see PR guy trying to pander to the fans of the old games but failing that miserably at that. I expected better skills with words from someone of their kind. And the fact that he thinks "BDSM" faction would be far less popular than "Girly" one.

 

[dibens]

Saves money on graphic design.

You mean for producing cutscenes on adventure map (if you could call two heroes sitting on horses talking a cutscene)? Yeah, those are an utter waste of design time. Just use the combat mode for cutscenes if you really need them and opt for portraits with speech bubbles on the top of the screen on adventure map. There, everyone's happy.

 

[theSavant]

Altrough that abomination that they are calling "Black Shadow Dragon" on their site is triggering me as it doesn't do any justice to the best creature in the game

Each time I see more gameplay videos I like this game less. And yeah... this thing with the black dragon is a shame. The black dragon is a lapdog and looks like shit. But they messed up other factions as well. Uninspired wherever you look (e.g. cum-face as entity, or Dryad+Pixie almost looking the same, boring Haven entities etc.). Worse than in Heroes 5. Not all is bad, but there is just too much shit in it...

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Let's start with the Menu screen.

This is in full high resolution. Motion image of course. Gives you a good taste of what's to come doesnt it?

Ok so I heard Sylvan was for little girls and Dungeon was TOO HARDCORE. I'm going with my old favorite, Academy, a faction that used to mix old Arthurian mages with 1001 nights. Of course nothing like that this time.

This is what higher difficulty entails. They couldn't come up with different AIs, obviously.



I maxed all my graphics settings. And this is how it looks like.

Even with Unreal engine 3 and a bland set of 8 year outdated graphics, it has the audacity to occasionally have a low framerate.

It manages to look worse than Heroes 6 on the campaign map. This has got to be the ugliest overworld map I've seen in a while, emptiness filled with low res turds spread across the map.

You can choose between 4 caricatures in the tavern. Don't worry about inclusiveness, they overdid themselves her. You get a half/half ratio between masculine looking and feminine looking creatures. With some neutrals thrown in good measures. Hope you're into modern fantasy grotesque female warriors concept because that's basically what they all are.

The combat. Units don't look as bad as Heroes 6 ones, certainly less detailed though. They're even a bit better than heroes 5. Needless to say I think they all look terrible.
Heroes do not count as a creature during turns, you can play them anytime during your turn and the game does a bad job at reminding you that. There is no manual end turn button. The turn ends automatically as you make your last move with your last creature. Which means you will quite often miss your hero's action by accident especially in redundant fights. I frequently got stuck in spell mode too. Once you've elected to use spell, there doesn't appear to be a way to cancel the decision for a standard attack, only to switch between spells. You hero acts quite often due to your creatures often having separate turns. Heroes spells look like shit, but at low level at least they are effective.

Your hero's screen. Self explanatory. The fist is damage : how much damage your hero does. Sword is might, unit attack bonus, Shield is Defense, unit attack defense. The flame is magik : power of your spells. The weird cloud thing is mana. The thing next to it that looks like an old cardboard box is arcane power : what kind of spells you can use. Then Morale, luck and movement. There's another weird stat called metamagic for mages at least. I think as the battle goes on you get more metamagics and that gives several bonuses.

The AI is dumbshit retarded as always. Maybe worse this time. Here they decided to charge my golem in melee with archers.

You can probably turn that off but by default you get these cinematic cams during the AI's turn. Hard to keep track of what's happening for the sake of trying to impress the masses with their 2005 animations.

At the end of each combat your assigned meme mascot gets to do his little dance. It's neither cute nor funny. Absurd clowns.

Why did I screenshot this?

When you level up it looks like that. You go toward the center. FireMagic and MetaMagics are presets for mage it seems, or at least this particular hero. Spending a skill point on one of these containers unlock a small bonus, then you can spend skill points to unlock the circle bonuses. The skill tree is BALANCED in that magic classes just have their own creature boosting passive that scale on the metamagic accumulated in batlle. The might and magic polarity is fading.

Battlefields tend to have a certain level of variety. Nothing too fancy but it's more than usual in the franchise.

The only redeeming feature is the building tree. When it's split, it means you have to choose between the two, substantial enough to encourage a degree of specialization early on.

The mage takes 4 squares for some reason. Pretty dumb.

You can build magic schools. You get to pick what kind of magic you specialize in, which guarantees you at least one spell of this magic in the random spell selection process. There's something called preference as well for higher levels.

The soundtrack, a hallmark of the franchise until Heroes 6, is nothing horrifying, you don't notice it all all. Ambient at best, even in the town screens. It's really sad because he used to be quite ballsy with them, throwing classical music and opera singers in a fantasy video game is notable. They reuse and mix old soundtrack in distasteful ways, like an amateur teen enhancing a toopak bit with random noises thinking he accomplished something. Doesn't help that they're also too slow to start, though this may be for the best given how bad they get.

The town screens look like what you would see in a Korean Browser MMO. The cheap MMO aesthetic is present omnipresent in this game. I understand what he meant when he said Sylvan was directed at women. Their creatures do indeed look like the feminine fantasy drawings my sisters were making in highschool. That they are trying to appeal to a different audience with each factions is pathetic.

AI turns take forever, game freezes, loses massive framerate when that happens. I crashed after a few dozens turns.

And I can't. I just can't go on. This game doesn't have any charm. I feel noxious about everything in this game. It looks like puke, it's unstable, it's badly optimized, the maps are empty and the AI is retarded. My Heroes 2 and 3 cds are back in Canada but thanks to this happy bundle I bought I'm gonna enjoy some of them right now.
If this was a book I would throw it in the garbage bin. I hope they fail and they stop insulting this franchise.

Played the beta for a few hours and sure feels like a lot like HoMM 3.

What the fuck are you talking about, are you getting paid to say stupid shit like this or just an imbecile?

 

[Jaedar]

Which means you will quite often miss your hero's action by accident especially in redundant fights.

No you won't: The game throws up a popup when its your last chance to act with the hero. How could you miss it?

There's another weird stat called metamagic for mages at least. I think as the battle goes on you get more metamagics and that gives several bonuses.

Metamagiz is the academy unique mechanic, every faction gets one.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

The game doesn't throw a pop up it sneaks a tiny message on the sides that you will miss.

 

[Grinolf]

Each time I see more gameplay videos I like this game less. And yeah... this thing with the black dragon is a shame. The black dragon is a lapdog and looks like shit. But they messed up other factions as well. Uninspired wherever you look (e.g. cum-face as entity, or Dryad+Pixie almost looking the same, boring Haven entities etc.). Worse than in Heroes 5. Not all is bad, but there is just too much shit in it...

As I sai, creatures design isn't the main concern of mine and I could live with some bland and fanservise units. But when the unit is outright ugly and poorly done, and it's not some random tier 1 creature, but one of the most iconic units in the game, it's inexcusable.

Tried Beta a bit. Pretty hard to play as it takes long enough time to load or AI to make turn to kill game pacing. Lack of optimisation isn't something that should be blamed on Beta version, but it still not something I enjoy play currently, so I rather give it a proper try after release.
Don't feel particulary strong about flanking in a good or a bad way, but return of separate turns is rather nice. This way initiative still very strong, but not completely overshadow morale. Don't see any problem with Hero's actions. It's exact the same as in 3, so it shouldn't be unaccustomed. And the big panel in the middle of the screen make it obvious when each turn ends. Cancelation of spells are very very clunky, but possible with Esc.
Just one guaranteed spell for primary school per level look like a very bad idea to me. I got the exact same mediocre spell that my hero start with, which made early investement of levels in that school completely wasted. And I don't think there evel should be a case, when investing in your primary school is useless.
And overall, otside of some changes in combat, it doesn't seems like the game is moving series anywhere. And in some areas it setting things back from 5 and even 3. It's not only lack of alternative upgrades and complex abilities requirements, that could depend on entirely different skills, but around half of the heroes have an "unique" trait, that just add additional skill and ability at the start. It even worse than 3, which had it's own share of bland heroes. The idea was probably to make each her iniq by locking them with preselected number of skills avaiable, but I don't see anything good in the reducing players optons aside from eliminating of some potential broken builds. Return os non linear city progression is the only notable "new" thing that I noticed. And it's hard to see a future of the series, when 7th instalment of the series don't even have full features of 5th one without providing any alternatives.