My review of homm6

[PyroPat85]

I have ben a fan of the homm and mm series for a long time and since homm 5 came out i have ben looking forwards to playing homm 6 as i have always loved the gameplay; gathering resources, capturing mines, doing quests and exploring. I was disapointed at homm 4 but i enjoyed the game anyway, but much of my interest in homm was lost then. When homm 5 came out my faith and enjoyment in the homm series was restored and burning anew and i loved every second of the game and i remember even felling a tear when i first played it and saw how it was restored back on track with the combat system, skill system, the building of towns and upgrading of troops. It was AWESOME!
However when i started playing homm 6 i didnt quite get the same feeling, i got a feeling that there was something wrong, but i got used to it and started enjoying myself. homm 6 is not a great game thogh, much of the game play that is assosiated to the homm games are gone and it has left me with a kind of empty feeling innside.



Originaly there were 7 resources that has now ben reduced to 4. I liked having to run around and capture all kinds of mines and having to use the marketplace if all else failed.

I do not like the area of influence thing as some of the things i liked to do the mosst was to steal the enemies resources and make a blockade if you will.

There is too much pressure on time. The old games you could enjoy the campaign, take your time exploring and do everything, but here the creaturegrowth exceeds the growth of your towns, wich means if you take too long, you are f***ed.

The skilltree is messed up; too many choices from the start, but at the same time there is no choice. You simply take the best skills with every charracter and so all your charracters will be the same(homm 5 was awesome at this point). it kinda seems like the devs thought: Screw this and lets make it easy so we can release this game as quickly as possible.

And lastly i do not understand how the spells in this game works. My spells have grown weaker as i leveled up and put points into my focused magics. On top of that my manacost for those spells increase at a retarded rate which makes increased manapoints per level useless and since my spells are weak as hell ther is no point leveling up. Wtf is the point with lvling up anyway? Bugs? if so there are too damn many bugs in the game that the developers use too long to fix (shame on you ubisoft)



The game has some good points thogh.

I love the dynasty items that you can level up and keep from campaign to next wich makes me want tu explore more (and this is where the time problem messes up things).

And i love the reward system where you gain levels and reward points throughout the game to unlock stuff in the altar of wishes and in uplay.

And finaly i love the combat terrain features that give you bonuses and penalties wich makes sure that you might have to change combat tactics from encounter to encounter depending on what terrain features you get.



When I started playing this game i thought it was a bit wird, however there were a lot of new features that i liked alot. However because of some major bugs i stoped playing this game after my 3rd or 4th day of playing - mainly the bugs where my spells decrease in power and my mana cost increases. No point in leveling up if you get weaker, and no point playing this game if you sont level up.

To summarise: I like the game, but i would not call it heroes of might and magic 6 as to me this is a different game. I think homm 3 was the best game and homm 5 is a good second, but homm 6 does not even come close to them. Homm 6 is a step backwards from 5 and in a way a step towords homm 4 wich is a terrible step in the wrong direction.
This is not a complete game. Too many bugs and too much missing.
The more i think about it, the more disapointed i get over homm 6.

[PyroPat85]

I agree with you on some of your points and i understand the others :P This is just based on my personal experiences and what i expected. Im open to new things and i like a lot of the new things, however while i was writing this text i kept thinking of many of the bugs in the game that just tasted fouler and fouler and i started remembering how long they have ben there wich is quite upsetting to me (I dont get how it can take so long to fix atleast a few of the bigger problems)
My experience was this: Wow cool - then: dafuq? - and then: I think i can like this. A bitt different and new ideas, good. And then i got to the necro campaign (I alwaysed loved necropolis with my army growing after each combat) and i discovered: Necromancy is a combat ability that charges with the amount of damage you do and recieve. I thought: "ok, this probably ballances things out." But it seemed to me that the necromancy ability is much weaker than the immortality ability from the campaign before that, and that was when i first started tasting the bitterness of the game. In this campaign i figgured: "Hey, lets go with dark magic" and it seemed a good idea at the time as it seemed at first that my spells got better and better. But after level 7 or something i noticed that my spells - especially my mass spells had gotten weaker and that gave me a realy ♥♥♥♥♥♥ taste in my mouth. And then all the other bugs in the game just piled up and i could feel rage seething within me so i had to do something. Thats when i wrote this :P

If the bugs in this game had ben fixed I think it would be a good game, but as it stands now I do not think it is any good at all. I have ben waiting a long time for some fixes but nothing has happened and im starting to get the feeling that i wasted my money on this game.

I can see the god things with the skill tree, but it still feels a bit hurried. They could have made the skills of the next tier secret untill you put a point in the previous tier to unlock it and then some choices out from this. (A hybrid between homm 5 and 6 skill systems) I thought it was ok at first, but i started thinking it over and in the end, players will chose the best skills, and those skills will always be he same for every hero in every faction. In homm 2, 3, 4 and 5 one of the things i loved the most was the variety of heroes, how everyone had unique abilities and everyone would get different skills. This is no more.

Thanks for your reply to my post thogh :) Good to haave different points of view ;)

[maxboldt]

Hi folks,

I wonder, why nobody points out the biggest weakness of the game!

The AI sucks like no other in the series ever did with the possible exception of Heroes IV.

I usually play a scenario map either alone or with friends in hot seat.

And I like very large maps with as many AI opponents as possible, that is 7.

These days I played such a large map - Brave New World - together with my lady and we set the 6 remaining AI-slots on "hard".

What shall I say: We conquered 5 of the 6 enemy castles in no time, because they were left undefended by the AI. Their respectively strongest heroes wandered senselessly and aimlessly across the map for seven more turns, never even attempting to conquer their only castle back and then..........they vanished into nothing with the message "..."colour"..player XYZ is defeated"

That is not a strategy game - this is s bad joke, if you ask me.

II am really pissed; no comparison with HOMM III or V, let alone a gem like Civilization V.

For me that´s it with what Ubisoft did to my favourite TBS series!

Max

[flagyl2]

Dan, that was a great review.

To all the posters in this thread:which version do you think a beginner should start with? I own HOMM 3,5 and 6 (I skipped 4 and I haven't bought the latest DLC for 6 because I have heard it was buggy).

Graphics don't matter to me...gameplay does.

Thanks in advance.

[PyroPat85]

A beginner should go back to Homm 5 :P Right now the game is too buggy to be fully enjoyed by a beginner. Althogh I havent tried it yet, Fallen Enchantress looks promissing.
And there is a game that i cant remember the game of that a friend of mine sugested. He said the gameplay is very similar to homm

[flagyl2]

Thank you Dan. I do own Fallen Enchantress, which I enjoy but the magic within the story doesn't seem as 'loreful' (if I can make up a word). I don't get the sense that I am in a world of magic in FE; I do enjoy playing it though.

If you recall the name of the game your friend was referring to, I would love to hear about it.

Thanks again.

[grumpyoldwizard]

danpatrick16 původně napsal:

Originaly there were 7 resources that has now ben reduced to 4. I liked having to run around and capture all kinds of mines and having to use the marketplace if all else failed.

I do not like the area of influence thing as some of the things i liked to do the mosst was to steal the enemies resources and make a blockade if you will.

.......

The skilltree is messed up; too many choices from the start, but at the same time there is no choice. You simply take the best skills with every charracter and so all your charracters will be the same(homm 5 was awesome at this point). it kinda seems like the devs thought: Screw this and lets make it easy so we can release this game as quickly as possible.

Smply put the game was dumbed down to increase multiplayer game speed and because of the incessant whining of "competative" multiplayers. Randomness of skills/spells was a very important element of replayability for single player HOMM fans (the vast majority of the fanbase) and that was thrown out. Having only one "special resource" (crystal) was another dumb down move that makes it easy to chose what you want to build instead of having to make hard choices and explore for more resources. The market place exchage rate also seems to be very favorable and it is quite easy to hire another hero and immediately give him skills to create ore and wood and make market places even more efficient.

There is too much pressure on time. The old games you could enjoy the campaign, take your time exploring and do everything, but here the creaturegrowth exceeds the growth of your towns, wich means if you take too long, you are f***ed.

I can't say that has been a probem I've had. Although I'm always very agressive in my expansion. Also, as your dynasty rises in levels you can unlock a new dynasty perk slot for every ten levels and new dynasty perks become available to buy with your dynasty points. Some of those dynasty perks can help out a lot.

And lastly i do not understand how the spells in this game works. My spells have grown weaker as i leveled up and put points into my focused magics. On top of that my manacost for those spells increase at a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ rate which makes increased manapoints per level useless and since my spells are weak as hell ther is no point leveling up. Wtf is the point with lvling up anyway? Bugs? if so there are too damn many bugs in the game that the developers use too long to fix (shame on you ubisoft)

Sadly all staffs that are supposed to reduce mana costs end up raising mana costs every time you load a game and possibly in other situations. This bug was introduced in Ubisofts latest patch. I'm hoping a hot fix will fix it soon.

If you have the Asha Eighfold staff that is a great staff for magic heroes. The extra mana and mana regenration can really help out lower level heroes. Of course once you can get meditation at level 15 those bonues become less important. But the level 5 bonus of increasing the power of your first spell cast in a battle helps out a lot.

Earth Elemental, Time Stasis, and Meditation are good picks to get as soon as you reach level 15. Save up a few points beforehand.

Which brings up a flaw in the skill/spell system. For the most part every might heroe will be built the same, regardless of faction, and every magic heroe will be built the same, regardless of faction. That was a decision bowing to the wishes of competitive multipayers as well as a reflection of the poor balance in power between the different skills/spells.

The game has some good points thogh.

I love the dynasty items that you can level up and keep from campaign to next wich makes me want tu explore more (and this is where the time problem messes up things).

I like the concept of the dynasty weapons though some seem overpowered.

I DON'T like there being no weapon artifacts except for dynast weapons. That decision was a decision made to try to force everyone to play online while still being able to technically claim the game is playable off-line.

Something that will help your main heroe move faster is if you have a heroe tagging along behind him who has the job of picking up all the resources and flagging structures once the main heroe kills the monster stacks guarding them. That saves LOTS of movement points. And of course you should always pick up logistics and pathfinding on your main heroe though that is not an immediate necessity. Get some skills to fight with first then get logistics/pathfinding.

And i love the reward system where you gain levels and reward points throughout the game to unlock stuff in the altar of wishes and in uplay.

Be careful not to buy all the heroes. You are limited to a total of 44 heroes and if you reach that limit you can never make another custom heroe, according to what I have read. So if you start to approach that limit you want to delete a few heroes that you never intend to use.

[PyroPat85]

"Be careful not to buy all the heroes. You are limited to a total of 44 heroes and if you reach that limit you can never make another custom heroe, according to what I have read. So if you start to approach that limit you want to delete a few heroes that you never intend to use."

Thats messed up...

Thanks for all the great info grumpy :)

[Phoenix Rises]

hum hum