Heroes of might and magic 6 plot. Might and Magic: Heroes VI - with a sword in his hands, but sadness in his heart. Dancing with orcs
As sad as it may sound, major publishers today do not believe in the success of turn-based strategy games on PC. Once popular on personal computers, the genre has migrated to phones and other mobile devices. In our area, only three-kopeck crafts and a couple of mastodons survived, like Civilization and Heroes. Yes, and those are born in agony, because attracting new fans without scaring away the veterans, oh, how hard.
Heroes for dummies
To be honest, the games in the series Heroes of Might and Magic were never very smart. Unlike the creators of other fantasy TBS, be it ancient Birthright or young elemental, tearing their navels in an attempt to embrace the immensity, the developers of "Heroes" knew where to stop. Attractive, moderately smart and affordable projects under a well-known license Might & Magic have become cult, and competitors ... What is with them now?However, to a modern audience, accustomed to the fact that dumplings themselves jump into their mouths, even the classic one would seem complicated, so the Hungarians from Black Hole Entertainment decided to simplify everything and everyone. At the same time they did Heroes 6 very beautiful - the artists of Nival Interactive never dreamed of such a stylish picture. Only the city screen is bad, but these are trifles, because the buildings are now visible directly on the global map.
First things first, scissors went through the resource system. Farewell, precious stones, mercury and sulfur! And in order to extract wood, ore, crystals and gold, you no longer need to hang flags on the mines. After capturing a settlement, neighboring sources of raw materials automatically begin to work for you. As a result, the cuts turned out to be beneficial - the war turned into a struggle for territories, and the battles for key castles became even sharper.
Other experiments are sad. Having hoisted a banner over someone else's fortress, you do not have to think about where to attach its inhabitants. Throw in some coins and the stinking savages' tents will transform into sinister necromancer ziggurats. There is no need to carry reinforcements to the front line with the help of minor heroes or caravans either. By clicking on the “buy all” button, you will actually recruit all soldiers in the kingdom, and they will instantly fall into the chosen stronghold. FROM light hand Black hole out Heroes an entire strategic layer has disappeared.
Step back
The number of participants in the conflict has been reduced to five (there were only fewer in the first HoMM): the familiar imperials, demons, undead and orcs were joined by nagas - snake people with a Japanese squint. Alas, besides the collection of Asian stamps, the new race has nothing to boast of, and wizards with elves will appear no earlier than in the addon.
The set of units was redrawn more radically. The developers abandoned the usual division into seven levels, in which the next type of troops is always stronger than the previous one. Like Clash of Heroes, fighters belong to one of three classes: basic, advanced and elite. For example, spearmen, crossbowmen and healers are initially available to people. It is impossible to determine which of them is better - they are applied simultaneously.
To prevent clashes of armies with similar parameters from turning into a stupid exchange of blows, the authors endowed them with a bunch of special moves and unique features (which King's Bounty yet more). But the complex mechanics of the "initiative" was abolished - they say, there is nothing to embarrass fragile minds. AT Heroes 6 the traditional change of moves returned, from Active Time Battle there was only a priority scale. Of course, such subtleties excite only the most seasoned fans. The main thing is that the fights are still interesting and make you break your head.
You can't say the same about "pumping". Despite the abundance of skills, bright personalities cannot be grown from wards. We freely walk through the skill tree, and the bonuses are ridiculous (which is worth "+3% ranged damage"!). But any of the parties again give characters of two types - a warrior and a sorcerer. Not like in the fifth part.
Young griffins
The campaign has also been controversial. Missions, no doubt, are good: they often drag out non-standard tasks, and even throw a serious challenge (albeit due to cheat scripts and machinations with free resources for AI). The plot let us down - it's not bad for a prequel (fans will be happy to see what happened several centuries before Heroes 5 and Clash of Heroes), but not good for getting to know the universe.
The Griffin Dynasty, which will rule in the era Heroes 5, does not yet dream of the imperial throne - she has become a pawn in the confrontation between angels and faceless ones. The creators are in no hurry to explain what's what, and the confused presentation makes it difficult to understand the essence of the struggle of higher forces. Heroes, mired in family troubles, just want peace. Meanwhile, somewhere in the background, an invasion of demons unfolded again - it is not mentioned at all in passing. Narration Heroes 5, albeit more banal, much more exciting than the local tangle of intrigues.
The prologue dedicated to Duke Slava Pavlovich is followed by five campaigns dedicated to his offspring. After the tragic death of his father, the heirs were scattered throughout Eshan. Having led someone's troops, each descendant acts according to a well-established scheme: 2-3 scenarios eliminates the dissatisfied in their camp, gathers an army and dashingly takes revenge on the offenders.
Growing up, the children of Glory determine the path of life. Two reputation meters, "tears" and "blood", grow independently of each other. The first way to fill them up is by frequently using suitable spells (like healing allies or roasting enemies). The second is a merciful or cruel treatment of neutral units fleeing the battlefield. Although most points are brought by "moral" forks in quests.
A couple of additional talents and shapeshifting are tied to alignment. In addition, the "good people" and "tyrants" have different versions of the epilogue. Not God knows what, but still in turn-based strategies, and this is rare.
network fusion
Of course, simplifications are not the only way to fit Heroes to modern trends. To fully taste the sixth part, you can not do without a permanent connection to the Internet. Conflux's online system offers exciting prospects, but imposes draconian copy protection measures. Crashes in the menu due to second disconnections and synchronization of saves for 3-5 minutes is an ordinary phenomenon.
The man-hours spent on this paranoid crap would be worth spending on thorough testing. Heroes 6“falls” regularly, objects disappear from the backpack, the skills of some units do not work at all. But you can complain about problems or get advice on the passage right in the game. The cards have magic spheres for comments a la Demon's Souls. Ratings help to highlight the most useful notes.
Further more. Each piece of experience earned by a player in any mode raises the level of his dynasty. The higher it is, the richer the assortment of the virtual store: from purely cosmetic things like portraits and titles, to bonuses that are allowed to be selected at the beginning of the game. Currency for the purchase of goods is issued for achievements such as "25 wins in a row" and "killed the boss in three rounds."
You also need to “pump” family weapons - special artifacts that wander from mission to mission. Experienced owners have more powerful superweapons. And most importantly, the legendary blades and staves are also used in multiplayer. After all, whatever one may say, fights with live opponents are the soul " Heroes". All the reforms of the sixth part, ambiguously perceived by the adherents of the "single", are appropriate in friendly gatherings. With accelerated mechanics, a superior interface, and polished netcode, Heroes 6 fits them even better than its predecessors.
However, there is room for improvement here as well. Unlike Nival, Black Hole hasn't come up with any activities for the players during those 2-3 minutes while they are waiting for their turn. You can’t even study the situation in the castles, let alone walks of ghosts and synchronized moves from the “five”! Yes, and tactical duels were a success for the Hungarians worse - too monotonous.
* * *
Heroes 6 still worthy of a glorious name. By exchanging depth for unheard-of friendliness to beginners, the authors have preserved the spirit of the series and branded gameplay. When familiar sounds come from the speakers Heroes of Might and Magic 2 harpsichord sounds, we seem to open the door to a fairy tale again ...
The change of developers, and even more so the name of the next game from the popular series, is an alarming sign for its fans. This time the cause for excitement was the renaming of the sixth part Heroes of Might and Magic in . By and large, a small rearrangement of words, and the fans are already sleeping with valerian. As it turned out, there is no need to worry - the continuation turned out to be quite interesting and exciting. However, the new brand name was chosen for a reason - the players seemed to be hinted from the very beginning that the new "Heroes" will be a slightly different game.
A hero is needed to fight
Nominally, everything, in general, is in its place. The player is given a tactical map, his own castle and a hero on horseback. Around there are many orphan resources, mines and sawmills that can be captured for profit. And a dozen neutral units are languishing in place, waiting for a good knight's kick in the ass. During movements on the map, moves are spent, and after their completion, the baton is passed to the enemy. The size of the locations will certainly please those who like to "hang out" in front of the monitor - in order to bypass the entire area on a medium-sized map, it will take more than one hour. But galloping towards the enemy is also, of course, an option.
Developers from Budapest have moved the series even further away from strategy, bringing it closer to RPG. Hero classes now have a conditional value. One way or another, the player can upgrade his character, choosing from dozens of skills. Those, in turn, are divided into the elements of air, fire, light, earth and others. Among them are both combat and passive skills. Healing, for example, will help you last longer on the battlefield, fire arrows relieve the enemy of unnecessary forces, and the rise in morale will spur their troops to fight better.
Dynasty advantage is also a fun way to make your hero stand out from the rest. Before the start of the game, the user can choose an additional bonus, albeit not much, but affecting the outcome of the battle. For example, it can be an increase in gold, +2 to luck, or some number of free units. During the battles themselves, racial skills will help - a unique ability of each hero. Now people can protect their soldier from any type of attack for one turn, demons can call for reinforcements, and necromancers revive fallen comrades.
AT Might & Magic Heroes VI there was a conditional scale of good and evil - tears and blood. Often, in the process of passing the campaign, the hero will face a choice: let go of the fleeing enemies or finish off the deserters; negotiate or attack; help the needy or spit on the slobbers. In addition, the scales overflow due to combat/non-combat skills. Let's say if the user chooses to heal a friendly unit instead of killing the enemy, tears are credited to him. Unfortunately, the pacifists, as always, got the lesser of evils - passing on the side of "tears" is much more difficult, because it does not give as many experience points as blood. In the end, the thermometer tilted in a certain direction before the credits will determine the appropriate fork in the plot.
Fight to the last
At high settings, Might & Magic Heroes VI is able to demonstrate
cute picture.
black hole removed the game from strategy and at the expense of resources - now instead of seven, there are only four of them left. But they have also lost their value. For gold, new units and some upgrades for the building are purchased. The problem is that even after a few minutes of playing gold, there is some uncountable amount, and there is absolutely nowhere to spend it. Stones, wood and ore are also in constant abundance, since they are used mainly for the construction of structures.
But the buildings themselves have become much more convenient to erect. The minimum menu is "ok", "cancel" and price per purchase. It is a pity that the castle itself now evokes associations with some cheap browser game. After the breathtakingly beautiful fortresses in, which visually displayed all the player's purchases, local castles look faded, and you can only see them in a small window. Thus, the developers wanted to distract the player from boring micromanagement.
This makes sense, but tactics also partly fell under the knife. In today's "Heroes" in battles, you rarely have to think about the placement of units (especially since such an opportunity is now pumped separately) and their types - everything is decided by the number. Of course, giants like Griffins or Earth Elementals (walking boulders) will bury your soldiers in no time, even if they outnumber them. Yes, and on the maps during the battle there were special places that help adjust your tactics. For example, you can hide behind a log or stone, thereby imposing a penalty on the attack of an enemy archer, and magic cells will heal or protect. But otherwise, it is enough to estimate the number of enemy units in order to predetermine the outcome of the battle.
Heroes of magic or sword?
Even now, a few weeks after the release of Might & Magic Heroes VI big imbalances. In a single player campaign, for example, the enemies do not sit still and build up an army along with the player. This is good exactly until the understanding comes that the process does not go in the opposite direction. That is, if the user has lost a decent number of units in battle, the next enemy will have as many of them as they were. Therefore, situations are not rare when the hero, along with a small group of archers and spearmen, will have to survive against hundreds of ghouls and demons. Moreover, switching to easy mode changes the situation slightly - the enemy is almost equally stupid at all difficulty levels. In multiplayer, the official cheating is the choice of the race of necromancers, who have the ability to almost endlessly resurrect their soldiers.
Those who downloaded the "pirates" this time were seriously "broken off". Despite the fact that the game appeared on the torrents almost immediately, freebie lovers did not receive dynastic items. From the plot it becomes clear that these are special family artifacts that the hero finds while traveling through all sorts of burials and tombs. Honest buyers also got - Ubisoft requires a constant connection to the Internet, and in return offers only underservice Conflux and integration with Skype.
A rare player will launch the next part Heroes of Might and Magic for the sake of the plot - the story has long spun into a tight spiral, accessible only to real fans. The rest will only be scratching their heads in thought and suddenly scrolling through the videos. Or, as an option, listen to a story about another betrayal, witchcraft and attempts to seize power in half an ear. The main thing here is the process.
However, no matter how sad it is to admit it, it is unlikely that the world will see the usual for us in the near future. "Heroes". New game kept interesting process, a nice atmosphere, remained beautiful and addictive, but simplified and, if you will, turned out to be a lot. Moving forward is good, but the old school is already resenting.
P.S.: On the maps Might & Magic Heroes VI special Conflux objects can be found. Feel free to press - right in the game a dialog box will open where you can ask a question to developers or players. True, the Russians, as usual, distinguished themselves and arranged a real chat there with greetings and wishes. Just like in sms-chats on night TV channels.
Single player game: 3.6
Graphic arts: 4.0
Multiplayer: 3.8
Sound and music: 4.0
Plot: 3.5
It’s customary to whine about the new “Heroes” that everything should be exactly as it was in the third part: any change that is insignificant at first glance is shock, drama, devastation and haze. We have been engaged in such whining throughout all our previews, and not without reason. It seemed that four resources instead of seven is a cross between fraud and stupidity, the seizure of territories is ladies' entertainment for Dawn of War fans, and in general - please return 2D. After eighty hate-filled pages of fan discussions on any gaming forum that followed each official press release, even calm and sane people agreed on one thing: there is no soul and spirit of the old school, everything needs to be changed urgently.
That is, for some reason everyone decided that black hole- rebels, whose hands are itching to break something. But in fact it turned out quite the opposite. Hungarians are sober, skilled performers without a single thought of their own, who are helped by cold calculation to hide their own cowardice and mediocrity. To cope with such a complex genre and such a difficult series, this, to put it mildly, is not enough.
Hero of socialist labor
Actually, all the fears that the authors are pointwise, jewelry, directed explosions are destroying the invented new world Computing mechanics, turned out to be completely groundless. Yes, you can’t capture the mines adjacent to the castle or fort, you need to go to storm the bastion - thus, in Might and Magic Heroes 6 the classic situation is simply impossible, when hordes of undeveloped heroes in torn shirts run around the map just to take possession of enemy resources for a move or two. This is where the big changes end. If you don’t understand what we are talking about at all, then it’s even better.
The hero can now walk around without any troops at all, but it is still impossible to fight in splendid isolation.
Just in case, let's explain. In "Heroes" two strategies coexist more or less organically: global and tactical. The first is a turn-based wargame where we equip the castle, capture the mines and collect artifacts. The second is the battles on the lined field, where the bought (or enticed) armies, indicated by modest figures, exchange courtesies. The hero himself at this time modestly stands on the sidelines and, if necessary, can send some kind of spell. The goal is to capture all enemy castles: a knight without permanent residence can only last seven moves.
Twenty-two years ago, at the time of the release of the original King's Bounty(and a dozen years after), it seemed like the smartest and most elegant way to combine romantic wanderings through fairy lands and large-scale battles into one game. But the mechanics transferred to the third millennium no longer gives the impression of a cozy fairy tale. This is rather a rash attempt to resemble everything in everything. Heroes of Might and Magic 3, naively believing that it is enough just to write off without any special mistakes, and success - it will definitely come after. We have new Heroes here, damn it!
The queue for a kick, as before, is built in accordance with the morale of the squad.
The desire to literally repeat the third part, of course, is understandable - everyone, we remind you, is about what they asked for. Only here is the HD remake old game should cost at least fifteen dollars, be called something like HoMM 3 Turbo Remix and, for convenience, be sold somewhere on PSN and Xbox Live. But the strategy of Black Hole is exactly the sixth part, it lies on the shelves in 2011 and completely ignores all the evolution that video games have done in an effort to turn from a stingy set of rules into full-fledged works.
mother heroine
Strictly speaking, Might and Magic Heroes 6 is a set of rules, neatly rewritten from one very good, but old game. Heroes, battles, castles - all this is driven into the narrow framework of stereotyped, poor, boring maps and, according to the authors' idea, should somehow entertain in itself. In the story campaign, this is all complemented by merciless Russian fantasy, and all the cut-scenes resemble a YouTube parody of the film Mortal Kombat , where everyone at first angrily squints at each other for three minutes, and then they run to the righteous slaughter.
This is the city development screen. Seriously.
Even “non-linear editing” (we played a couple of missions for one faction, then for another, then for another, then returned to the old one) does not save the situation: not a single level tries to be anything more than a burdensome tutorial. You have to do the same thing all the time. We capture the nearest mines, save up funds for barracks of all types, wait three weeks and go to a serious conversation with an enemy hero. Just like ten or fifteen years ago. For some reason, the authors of the revived, domestic King's Bounty were smart enough to build a magnificent role-playing adventure based on the old mechanics. In the sixth "Heroes" there is no intelligible story, no interesting tasks, no characters, no world. Only endless collection of resources for speed. It looks especially strange against the backdrop of a mature RPG system. You can, for example, grow a power hero who does not use spells at all, and magic itself, firstly, is divided into branches, without any unnecessary schools (as well as all other skills), and secondly, it is divided into classes and two subclasses - blood magic and tear magic. That is, there are really a lot of development options, and the outcome of the battle often depends on whether you can call on some deadly winds or not.
Hero from Hell
But in the campaign, there is no place and no reason to use all this - the main tests are placed on the shoulders of the multiplayer, especially since Heroes has always been mostly a social game. Only here and there instead of tactics - boring runs from mine to mine. Although the first two or three matches there is at least something to stare at. New race underwater monsters, for example, is very funny - there are even anthropomorphic sharks. And in general, all the most pleasant impressions from Heroes 6 are when you first try something that was not in the series. Of course, it will not be very clear to a person from the outside why the ability to hire all the creatures from one castle or rebuild an enemy fortress for your own faction (so that you can replenish your native army) is curious, but against the background of all self-repetitions and general creative impotence, it really seems a bold decision.
Heroes 6 is a bright but poor game.
But neither castles, nor the capture of territories, nor the abilities of the characters (and almost every type of troops now have them), nor even the impoverished set of resources make the weather. All tactical schemes, balance and pumping methods are from the evil one, and whether you win or lose depends mainly on whether you have time to collect blue crystals in time. Long years fans were arguing what is their favorite game - strategy or RPG? The sixth part puts an end to the differences: it is neither one nor the other.
Heroes of Might and Magic should not have survived to this day, if only for humanitarian reasons. This is a clumsy, overweight, slow, completely unnecessary dinosaur strategy, unable to adapt to modern realities. At least under the supervision of Black Hole. Ubisoft should have looked at another Hungarian studio neocore, where people make absolutely magical wargames for mere pennies. Or entrust the development to the authors Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes- at heart, this is a modest puzzle on the scenery of Heroes 5, but for some reason it is played a hundred times more fun.
A large part of the army of fans of the Heroes of Might & Magic series lives in the post-Soviet space - this fact is largely due to the Russian studio Nival Interactive, which released the fifth part of HoMM in 2006.
We were first introduced to the sequel a year and a half ago at Gamescom. The sixth part defiantly changed some of the traditions of the series: if earlier there was complexity, fuss with micro-management and a polished network balance, now there is an unusual friendliness for “Heroes” to novice strategists and a willingness to please a new audience.
Along with the shift in emphasis, the placement of words in the title has also changed, and even the developer - cult game moved to Hungary under the wing of Black Hole and became known as Might & Magic: Heroes VI. Thus, the turn-based strategy was actually returned to the original source that gave birth to it in 1995.
Sometimes you have to fight on water lilies. How can you not remember Soviet game Perestroika…
As you know, the first part of the Heroes dearly loved by the people was a genre offshoot from the M & M role-playing series. The first parts of Heroes used the characters of Might and Magic, as well as the universe itself of the then popular RPG. Over the next 25 years of the game's history, like a slave, she changed developers and went from hand to hand, sometimes even across continents.
During these ordeals, the series experienced two fundamental shocks - experiments with gameplay in the failed fourth part and adaptation to the mass player in the sixth by simplifying various aspects of the gameplay. Let's talk about these innovations.
At first, the sixth part of Heroes gives the impression of a product with redundant resources: too much of everything. Lots of actors. Tons of game settings. Lots of skills for heroes, like we're playing a classic RPG. "It will be too much!" - by no means a claim, but rather a deceptive image, successfully created by the Hungarians at the start of the story campaign.
In fact, the game offers only three forms of leisure: a set of 7 story campaigns, a duel with a computer or friends sitting next to you on single maps, and finally, network game in the game service Conflux. For the last two map modes, by the way, the same ones are used.
"Rabid Bunny Week" - a joke from the series "developers tease colleagues"!
Periodically, CONFLUX spheres come across on the maps, allowing you to talk in an online chat with other fans of the "Heroes"
First of all, the new developers changed the old principle: for the "Heroes" the plot has never been such an important advantage. Despite this practice, a monumental story was written for the sixth part with the participation of the Griffin dynasty, which, at the behest of the scriptwriters, was in the most terrible troubles.
It's interesting to watch the plot twists and turns. The introductory educational campaign tells about the beginning of the conflict that affected the father-Duke Vyacheslav and his children. Each of the next five campaigns continues the story of the Griffins' misadventures, constantly changing storytellers and factions, periodically throwing us new heroes. For the most diligent, there is even an epilogue campaign, in which the developers have thrown a bridge to the history of Heroes V.
Oh yes! The action of the game takes place in Askhan, the traditions and world order of which are told to us by mini-rollers on the game engine. This happens throughout the campaigns, but most of these scenes still occur in the starting missions. Meanwhile, Ashan himself is a world created specifically for the fifth part of Heroes, with the help of which the developers moved away from the canonical principalities of Erathia and Enroth, gaining the freedom to make history from scratch. Later, at the request of Ubisoft, the authors of the 6th part finalized the theme of Askhan. "It's decided!" - they said and designed Heroes VI in the format of a prologue to the events of Heroes V.
In the sixth part of the series, the necromancers became relatively kind. With a discount, of course, that they are already dead and not very happy about it
The game mechanics of the oldest strategy has changed little: at the beginning of each mission, we still get to explore a large map with hostile creatures, castles and heroes, who gradually need to be conquered, enslaved or annexed to our empire. Almost the entire map is initially hidden by the "fog of war", which does not allow you to track the actions of enemies. Figures of heroes ride horses, scouting the territory and capturing mines, and at the same time they are accumulating armies from fantasy creatures - this is the strategic part.
It was worked out in a step-by-step mode, that is, each side takes turns, after which the next “game day” begins. These days add up to 7-day weeks, and each of the weeks gives all parties to the conflict some kind of bonus or unusual effect. When confronted with the enemy, the game switches to tactical mode, where two armies in all their splendor are located on the left and right sides of the screen, and exterminate each other in turn-based mode. Only creatures fight, while the commanders themselves use spells, special abilities and other trump cards. In this sense, it was decided not to repeat the sad experience of the fourth HoMM, which allowed the personal participation of heroes in hostilities.
In the in-game store, it is allowed to buy upgrades for both "single" and for use in online duels
Perhaps the process of battles is the bait that makes you return to the game again and again. Thanks to colorful animation and fantasy when creating creatures, the artists have achieved a unique atmosphere of fantasy battles. In terms of fascination, the battles turned out to be at a high level. domestic game King's Bounty, although over time the local skirmishes can become boring due to the lack of variety of landscapes and the restrictions on mixing creatures from the armies of different castles.
Of the five nations involved in the conflict, Black Hole brought back four factions and added one new one. Many players must be already familiar with the "oldies" from previous games: the castles of people (Haven), demons (Inferno), the dead (Necropolis) and barbarians (Stronghold) have retained their places. The fifth side of the conflict was created from scratch: the castle of marine life called "Sanctuary" (Sanctuary) shamelessly similar to the result of a brainstorming session of the crisis management department. Judge for yourself: an attempt to diversify the game with alien creatures has already been made in the past, during the release of HoMM III, but then the fans managed to dissuade the developers from using “goblins with blasters”.
At first, these marine reptiles are annoying, looking in "Heroes" no more appropriate than mechanical unicorns, but all because of an excessive passion for eclecticism. When creating the image of new amphibious creatures, the developers studied the Hagakure warrior code and eventually mixed Japanese samurai with snakes, toads and tadpoles. To remove suspicions of plagiarism, the Japanese theme was diluted with pseudo-Hindu architecture and Chinese pagodas.
The fusion of Asians turned out to be outlandish, you can’t argue with that, but it’s quite viable - the same applies to the game as a whole, for which, after the first hours of distrust, you are imbued with sympathy.
Some loading screen illustrations are quite drawn to miniature masterpieces
Even on the highest difficulty level, losing is hard.
The initiator of innovations such as nagas (amphibians) is the publisher Ubisoft. It was by his will that, as part of the development of the series, some resources were abolished (there were seven before, now there are four), the technology for capturing secondary buildings was simplified, and the conversion of captured palaces into buildings of their race appeared. Indeed, after a radical simplification, the game became more accessible and, in our opinion, the rejection of mathematical calculations with seven resources and leapfrog with constant weaning of the same sawmills benefited the updated Heroes.
The storyline campaign was also replenished with a system of moral choice: each of the children of the Duke of Glory has the right to take the path of good (Tears) or evil (Blood), depending on which the ending of the game changes slightly. More importantly, Tears and Blood correspond to special combat skills, the effect of which improves when you move to one area or another. "Bloody" skills enhance offensive spells, while "tearful" ones heal and improve the defensive qualities of troops. Periodically, the campaign forces you to make a choice: for example, whether to take the artifact from the Water Elementals by force or agree and kill the Fire Elementals on their tip, thereby earning the right to take the artifact without a fight. Another example of a choice: the execution of a traitor or mercy with aggravating consequences for us.
There are no complaints about the graphic performance. And it's not even that it manages not to distract with a bright palette from the game process, the point is different - the sixth Heroes turned out to be the prettiest game in the series. The developers completed the task of creating generously decorated, but at the same time familiar to the perception of maps, and the main bet was made, perhaps, on the detailing of creatures in combat battles. Not only the graphics, but also the visual style of the game is on par with its main competitor, King's Bounty: Crossroads of the Worlds. On the highest level!
With sound design, the situation is worse. To be honest, the melodies quickly become boring, in some videos the pathos of the compositions does not correspond to the events reigning on the screen, and the music library is criminally limited to fifteen melodies. Fans will be pleased to know that a couple of the themes from the previous installments have received a second wind in the form of improved arrangements.
However, focusing on story stories, Black Hole slipped into the "heart" of the series - off-plot battles on arbitrary maps. There are too few cards; some of them rethink the story campaign maps.
Many players that we know about still play the old parts of HoMM due to the inexhaustible potential and thoughtfulness of the maps. Although the sixth installment is fine with its variety of modes, the game lacks depth to become a serious online discipline of the caliber of StarCraft II or TW: Shogun 2.
