MArcomage

My all time favorite games and what i have played most.
Heroes and Magic 3, starcraft broodwars, civil 3, league of legends, quake3

Sierra, legendary gaming company, comeback.

I have just completed the Heroes of Might and Magic 7. It took me almost a year to complete since I did not play it very frequently. Here's my review of the game:

Development

It came out in a very alpha-like state, suffering from too many bugs. Only after 6 months of patching the game entered a state which I would call release ready. The game received many patches after that and eventually and expansion pack had been released. Sadly, shorty after that the publisher (Ubisoft) announced that they would discontinue the contract with the developer (Limbic entertainment) and thus no more patches would be made. This is not very good since the game has still lot of minor bugs. It's definitely playable, but it's a really questionable decision to release an expainsion pack and discontinue support shortly after that. There was also a lot of potential for future expansions since not all factions were included in the game.

Gameplay

I have played all of the Heroes of Might and Magic games (1 to 7) with all of their expansion packs. Here is a brief overview:

Heroes 1: the first game, lot of unrefined ideas
Heroes 2: more refinement, added new ideas
Heroes 3: much more focus on refinement, minimum new ideas
Heroes 4: tried something completely new, almost no refinement of the previous ideas
Heroes 5: tried something completely new, some refinement of the previous ideas
Heroes 6: tried something completely new, some refinement of the previous ideas
Heroes 7: heavy focus on refinement of previous ideas, minimum new ideas

As you can see Heroes 7 doesn't try to be original, instead it tries to put together a good implementation of previous games. Many critics gave negative ratings for that, but this is what you get from people who barely scratch the surface of the game. As you can see from the brief history the Heroes series actually desperately needed just that - a game entry that takes all the good ideas from previous games and makes them actually work. Core gameplay from Heroes 1 to 3, governour system from Heroes 4, skillweels from Heroes 5, areas of control from Heroes 6. There are also some new things. For example they were actually able to make garrisons work (garrisons now have their own troops that grow each day and can't be transferred away).

I tried very hard to find gameplay mechanics that were faulty or poorly designed and I couldn't find any. If I really had to pick at least one thing I disliked in terms of mechanics, it would be the fact that you can only assign governour to the town by visiting hero. I would much prefer to have the option to change governour of the town at any time, but only once per week to keep it balanced.

Campaign

Overall scenario design is very good, but I have to say that I'm disappointed with overall campaign design. The main reason why we play campaign (aside from story) is the ability to customise your hero and use him during the campaign. This is something Heroes 5 has achieved and made it almost perfect. The formula was very simple: You would have one main hero and one secondary hero who would be present during the most of the campaign. Heroes 7 on other hand has lot of campaigns that actually let you control much larger number of heroes that are not retained during the whole campaign. As a result the long term customisation aspect is lost. Additionally, Heroes 5 featured the ability to develop heroes which will become enemies in the future campaigns. This feature was not retained in Heroes 7, even though there are couple of heroes who you have to fight after developing them (you will fight a hero with the same name, but different skill set).

Another great thing about Heroes 5 campaign design was that each faction campaign developed one main hero and there was one final campaign where all these heroes would team up against the common enemy. Story of the campaign was also connected to some extend and the final campaign offered a climax and resolution to many arcs that were set up during the factions campaigns. When I heard that Heroes 7 has similar campaign structure (one campaign per faction and one final campaign) I was very excited that they embraced the Heroes 5 campaign design to the fullest. Well, they did not.

The factions campaigns are stories that are mostly self contained and disconnected to the events happening in the present. The final campaign is also a letdown, because even though one hero is retained from previous campaigns, it's customisation is not, so it's really just a hero with the same name, but with completely different skill set. Final boss is also a letdown since he doesn't seem that threatening and mostly because you don't really know much about this guy. This is mostly because previous campaigns are completely unrelated to him. On Heroes 5 the main boss was partially present in all of the campaigns and he had to be beaten multiple times by all of your heroes.

Conclusion

It's a good game, but so much potential was left untouched. What would I consider an ultimate Heroes game? Take Heroes 7 and import Heroes 5 campaign into it. I would definitely buy that.