ZbojLamignat said:
For years the HoM&M community knew that town portal breaks the game completely and must be banned in official matches so now we get it as an easily accessible feature for all the castles and heroes, get the fuck in there, this is so next gen that I will make an X360 port myself if they won't do it.
I think they got TP right (or as close to "right" as I remember). TP is not overpowered if you don't have Earth magic skill and don't exploit blocking TP with heroes. The way it works in Heroes 6 is that you get the spell on all heroes by making a TP building in one (or more) towns. There are 2 levels of TP building. The first level allows you to TP from a town to any other town you own. Advanced version allows you to TP to the closest town with the Level 2 TP building (so a somewhat nerfed Basic TP from Heroes3). TP spend movement points (I think 15 basic and 20 advanced, out of 30ish your heroes usually have) and you can't use it more than once with the same hero in the same day (it takes 2 turns to TP to any town form any place, with reduced movement and mana). The TP buildings themselves are rather expensive, but you can get them rather early (in the first week even) if you absolutely want/need them at the cost of 2nd tier (elite creature) buildings (4,5,6 level units form H3).
I finished the Tutorial and Necro campaign on hard. I think I won't be playing again any time soon.
IMPRESSIONS (DISCLAIMER: may contain some errors, language and factual):
Unit design (visual) is very nice and mostly not overdone. Individual combat animations are great, although units just swing in the air when attacking. There are even idle animations (I literally laughed out loud when the Fate weaver started juggling while I was pondering my next move).
Only 5 factions + neutral units (mostly elementals, wolves and phoenix).
Factions are unique and have their own playstyle you need to implement in order to do well in the game. While good, I find it makes you use only the troops of your own faction. No more mixing and matching different troops. This is enhanced by the ability to convert other faction towns to your type (it's not cheap, but converts all but a few unique buildings in the town).
Inferno melee units all look alike. Seriously, except the two ranged units, Brood mother(?) and Succubus(?), they all look like redish demons. Although they do vary in size and looks, it's hard to tell which one is which at a glance. The orc melee units also look very similar on the field. Maybe it's just me.
Cyclops (orc Champion unit) is, in a word, awesome. While not original in any case, it is designed well visually and has some great abilities. No more throwing rocks, but a laser ray attack (think X-Men Cyclops) and pain resistance (it only registers suffered damage at the begining of its turn). This often leads to multiple Cyclops unit stacks falling like dominos. Yes, I'm easily amused.
Speaking of cool abilities, Vampires can "draw a line in the sand with the sword" (don't know the exact name) and be invulnerable to the first attack if they defend.
Necro faction is awesome with great abilities that make you never lose units (if you have enough money and mana). Necromancy has been revorked in a heal/rise dead effect in combat + unique building that lets you buy lost units at a 50% price premium for 3 days after the fight (price goes down, time up, with multiple buildings). So no more thousands of skeletons in a stack, but greater numbers of all units.
Towns have area of control and mines can't be taken permanently if you don't control the nearby town. There are skills that help you steal/stop production. No once-weekly resource giving map buildings (like windmill in H3). Only 4 resources: wood, ore, gold and crystals(?).
There is a setting for auto combat with the option to "replay" manually if not satisfied with results. You can enable/disable mana usage. Great option for trash encounters, as auto combat does a good job of simulating the losses (you can always do better manually, but it saves a lot of time and reduces dull fights to a minimum). It does use a lot of mana in the battles, though.
You can't replenish mana in the town (at least I think you can't). It regenerates about 5% per day (as far as I can tell) and there are skills to improve this. There are map sites that replenish/double your mana, usable once weekly by type (you can't use it, spend some mana then come back or find another building of same type the same week and use it again).
All of his does reduce tediousness, speeds up and balances the game, but also takes most of the charm of Heroes (2 and 3) away. It could be a fun MP game I guess.
New skill/magic system is well done. There are 3 levels of passive and active skills in both might and magic trees (I'd say about 200-300 skills to choose from). Magic heroes get first 2 levels of might skills and all 3 levels of magic (every faction has one magic school excluded). Might heroes 3 levels of might skills, 2 of magic. Active skills have a cooldown (2-3 turns) or 1 charge per combat. Might active skills don't consume mana, while the magic skills (spells) are generally more powerful. There are support skills like allowing hero to build 2 building in a town the same turn, pillage mines, increase creature production...
Spells and skills are useful and emphasis has been put on support spells rather then on spamming the same damage dealing spell (all spells have cooldown). I found the damage has also been toned down (Implosion dealing about 3k damage on a level 30 magic hero). I may be misremembering H3 numbers, though. I particularly like Life leech, the Puppet spell (like Hypnosis), but works on everything living + is dispelled if the unit takes damage, Time stasis (unit can't do anything for a couple of turns, but you can only use it once per combat) and Petrify (makes a unit invulnerable to damage, but unable to do anything, can be used on both enemy and friendly units).
New mechanic: way of tears/blood. You gather points for using tear/blood skills/spells (there are tear, blood and neutral skills/spells) in combat and for some quest decisions (mostly cosmetic) and other actions (letting units flee when outnumbered or chasing them down). Each spell used is 1 point and letting enemies flee is 10, IIRC. You get first extra ability at 250 points and a second at 1000 (you start with one ability at 0). If you chose one way at 250, you can't go back later, even if you have more of other points (I think). Abilities vary by might/magic hero and faction, so there are quite a few. They are pretty useful and are a nice addition to the game, enabling you to further customize the hero to your playstyle (or make the hero reflect your playstyle).
I think you can change the hero type (might/magic) in town, but I played only the campaign, so I'm not sure about this.
Heal, regeneration and similar spells resurrect dead units from the stack (up to max stack size at the beginning of the combat).
There are two main type of units, living and undead (even elementals are living or undead, IIRC). That seems a little weird.
Haste and slow have been toned down, especially mass versions.
No more weak tier 1 units. I think all units have more than 20 HP. Although you still get 7 units(+upgraded versions) per faction, there are now only 3 tiers (3 Core, 3 Elite, 1 Champion) with similar stats for units in the same tier.
Most battlefields are smallish (about 13x11, or something like that) and I don't remember seeing units that move less than 4 squares and more than 7. Slow is -2 effect and doesn't stack with other movement debuffs.
All units have multiple unique abilities. I would say even too many unique abilities. You have to spend a couple of minutes studying a new unit type you encounter (and you can't see descriptions before you engage in combat). I think this makes things unnecessarily complicated.
You can always resurrect heroes and fleeing from combat doesn't cost you all of your troops (I think only 25%). Also, I think you can only have heroes of your faction under your command. There are game setting and skills (Mentor gives 75% exp of main hero to other hero) that make your other heroes closer to the level of the primary hero. Useful for scouting, support, pillaging roles.
Maps look shitty and bland, towns look shitty, town animation you get when clicking on a town is stupid and pointless. I don't really mind removing town screens as such, but it's just lazy design. Instead of streamlining the interface, they made it convoluted and unintuitive. There are some nice features (like slots that you can customize by dragging various often used icons), but what good is that when there is no clear indicator of what hero I have selected, how many movement points I have left, how many MPs I will expend or how many turns/MP it takes to reach something. I can't find a single well designed piece of interface in the whole game. They tried to make it "fancy" and "modern", but made it fiddly and unusable. It's really a huge clusterfuck.
Hero screen follows the design of everything else (it's garbage). There are item sets, in fact most of the items belong to a set. sets usually consist of 6 items and give extra bonuses for equipping 2, 4 and all 6.
The new hero stats and formulas used to calculate the potency of spells/skills/creatures are unnecessarily complicated (I have seen the formulas), unintuitive, hidden from the player and never explained in the game. King's Bounty used a rather simple system and did it well, as far as I could tell. Heroes 3 used a simple system that needed just some tweaking (spell duration directly tied to spell power and knowledge to mana being the primary targets, IIRC). You really can't tell what skill/stat will make your hero better in the way you want him to be or by how much. And if you're not optimizing in a strategy game, what's the point of playing? Although, truth be told, story, writing and the characters aren't the worst shit ever. I think they do a decent job for a Heroes game (I still dislike the new lore).
Performance is good, everything maxed at Full HD resolution on Athlon II X3 and Radeon 3870 (a low end system). There are a few minor bugs after the 500 MB 0-day patch (cursor blinking being the most annoying one).
Overall, it's a streamlined version of Heroes, with faster (and at times less tedious and grindy) gameplay, but without the essence, charm and depth of the old games. Much like Civ 5 (improved combat, nice visual design, everything else streamlined, soulless garbage), Heroes 6, while making some improvements, manages to fuck (more or less) most of the good things Heroes franchise traditionally was based on. I'm convinced bugs will get ironed pretty fast, new factions and options added in expansions, interface improved, but the un-Heroes-like design of core elements will remain.
It really isn't a bad game, or even a soulless one, but it's not a good Heroes game (a frequent theme these days, isn't it). I recommend trying before buying, you might like it (especially if playing MP).
There is a fan manual floating on the net. It's mostly well done and you can find almost everything about the game in there. Here's the link:
Manual (download & open with pdf viewer).
