Might & Magic Heroes VI Catch-All

Switchbreak wrote:
Sinatar wrote:
Tkyl wrote:

Just picked this up and started playing. Is any one else having an issue with a flashing mouse pointer? The game isn't unplayable, but it forces me to slow down when performing actions. If I move the mouse too quickly, it blinks in and out of existence.

It's a known issue, devs already have a fix for it coming in the first patch.

Yeah, I'm having the same thing, it's a bit annoying.

Also annoying: that opening mission. It felt a lot like a Facebook game, with the way it guides you down a tunnel and gives you just a constant stream of rewards to click on and collect without giving you a sense of why you need those things first. Not to mention the silly quests and achievements. I'm hoping the actual core game picks up and takes over from these things as I progress, because right now it feels really condescending.

Pretty landscapes, though. Especially the waterfalls.

I just finished the first campaign (The Necromancer one, not the tutorial). I'm not sure about the handholding, I mean that's the tutorial, after all. Here are some things I've noticed...

1. I haven't had any bugs after quite a few hours of playthrough. I take that back, I've had one where my game did lock up during a battle, but that was quickly remedied. I've also had problems at times getting on to Ubisoft loader, but I also just had those same problems with Assassin's Creed II, so I'd have a hard time pinning that to HOMMVI

2. At first I thought magic wasn't as powerful as it was in the last two games. I was completely wrong. Unfortunately, in the late part of the necro campaign, I've run into the isse that my hero is SO powerful that I can go into virtually any battle without fear of losing (even a single troop). Some of the spells become quickly outdated and some spells are particularly useless, like weakness and mass weakness. For the necro, I used a variety of life leech spells and regeneration to keep my troops up. Perhaps in another playthrough with a different group will change this, but I don't know if it will.

3. I do greatly enjoy the necromancer units and abilities. Except for the Lamasa and the Spider thingies that are tantamount to dragons. With the way that the necro plays, having a crapton of skeletons, ghouls, liches, and spectres makes for one powerful army once you get rolling and simply rezzing them in and out of battle. What's cool about the main city is that the level 2 special building you have the opportunity to build (there are two and you have to choose one) there is one that allows you to buy back troops lost in battle for a higher cost. Pretty awesome addition.

4. Buying heroes in the campaign is a bit different than before. At the last level of the necro campaign, the heroes you can recruit are level 25, not level 1 as before. Be sure to allocate their ability points. I didn't realize this until much later. They're pretty darn expensive too, so you can't really glut heroes until there isn't really a point to doing it anyway.

5. I like the addition of the 'forts' that control mines and some secondary buildings. Makes it nice that the management section of this is easier and you can put up 'chokepoints' for the enemies so you don't have to chase them as much as you had to in the other games.

6. Ugh, who wrote the dialogue? 4th graders? The plots are simply terrible. One of the nice things I actually liked about V was the interplay between the groups, particulary during the demon vs. elf campaign where the dialogue actually made me laugh. Here? It makes me simply groan.

If you liked V, this is quite similar. Some of the doodads are new and improved and the character creation is pretty wide open, which I actually like. No more hoping that the three random ones that pop up at levels were one of the ones I was interested in. To me, the warcries section seems a bit underpowered and I'm not really sure why they're wedded to this idea apparently. They're 'ok,' but too often there's a better spell or attack or special ability I'd rather be using for more tactical advantage.

Enjoying it quite a bit. The only bug I have run into is the flashy mouse pointer. Otherwise the game is a solid addition to the series.

Just picked this up and have only played through the tutorial. I kind of miss the big rotating town scenes when managing a city. The dialogue is horrible, including an unexplained talking bird (maybe talking birds are normal). I haven't really gotten into the meat of it, but it seems like a pretty standard Heroes experience which I am fine with.

The art and graphics are pretty good. When I tried to force 4xAnti-Aliasing in my Catalyst driver (Radeon 6970) it caused massive flickering on the map, so I guess no AA. I get an occasional mouse cursor flicker when it changes pointers, but it is only for a brief second.

Oh and one more note. This is my first Ubisoft purchase for a few years and all this UBI online stuff is totally unnecessary. Ubisoft must have invested big into something that almost no customer wants.

The Haven faction ability is borked (the building which is supposed to fill it upon combat), SLI, AA, and V-Sync doesn't work correctly, and the AI on normal is weak. Harder AIs just cheat with additional unit production and the ability to defeat neutral armies with zero losses. The AI retreats at terrible times. Instead of weakening human opponents by fighting to the last man, it'll retreat when it's outgunned. Still having a good time with it, but I'd wait for these things to get patched before dropping quid on it.

dramarent wrote:

the AI on normal is weak. Harder AIs just cheat with additional unit production and the ability to defeat neutral armies with zero losses. The AI retreats at terrible times. Instead of weakening human opponents by fighting to the last man, it'll retreat when it's outgunned.

So...the AI is exactly the same?

Man, I'm not liking the haven troops at all.. The upgraded crossbowmen are useful about half the time because they might shoot one (or more) of my own troops, the griffins are great, except that the Imperial ones are either bugged or I'm just doing it wrong to do their special attack, and the sun riders AND the sentinels are the same except the sun riders are bigger.

The radiant thingies are nice and the vestals are ok, especially when split into groups to mass heal everything. Slogging through the haven campaign is going to make me cry.

I just created a thread for us to keep track of our friends lists in game here:

http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/110060

I figure if we keep our talk of the game here and only friends list name there it will be much cleaner.

On the offchance that anyone who played this isn't following the Steam Sale thread: any strong opinions on the game?

I only tried the demo, so my opinion isn't well informed, but it didn't seem that different than HoMM 5, so for one tenth the price (today only) I'd go with 5, if you haven't played either.

Running Man wrote:

I only tried the demo, so my opinion isn't well informed, but it didn't seem that different than HoMM 5, so for one tenth the price (today only) I'd go with 5, if you haven't played either.

Thanks, had forgotten there was a demo.

It does seem very like 5.

Sonicator wrote:
Running Man wrote:

I only tried the demo, so my opinion isn't well informed, but it didn't seem that different than HoMM 5, so for one tenth the price (today only) I'd go with 5, if you haven't played either.

Thanks, had forgotten there was a demo.

It does seem very like 5.

That's what Elysium said on the Conference Call, but he meant it in a kind of good way.

garion333 wrote:
Sonicator wrote:
Running Man wrote:

I only tried the demo, so my opinion isn't well informed, but it didn't seem that different than HoMM 5, so for one tenth the price (today only) I'd go with 5, if you haven't played either.

Thanks, had forgotten there was a demo.

It does seem very like 5.

That's what Elysium said on the Conference Call, but he meant it in a kind of good way.

Plenty of people liked 5, and I'm sure they'd like 6. It just never quite clicked for me somehow, and the demo for 6 had that same intangible wrongness for me too. I must be a subconscious 2D purist or something.

Don't know what happened with Black Hole & Ubisoft but it looks like they're committed to releasing a spat of patches until sometime this summer.

http://www.facebook.com/notes/might-...

Well, if you're still on the fence about this one, I have 3 Steam coupons for 50% off of this game, expires 4/1/12.

Thanks Sinkwater.

This has an expansion pack (they're calling it an "adventure pack") releasing 7/12 for about 10 euros (no idea what the USD price is). Details here.

In addition, patch 1.5 is coming out the same day which brings back the iconic town screens which was a disappointing omission from the original release.

The change to the town screens is nice, but it's taking me a long time to work through the full campaign. Some of the adventure maps are absolutely huge. At this pace I'll be ready for the expansion around Christmas. MMH6 has been my favorite entry in the series, the art is sweet and the storyline pace feels right.

so now that it's been out for a while and had a few patches, have people's opinions changed at all? I was a huge fan of the original 3 Heroes game and though I own V, I never got around to it. I've heard several people (including guys like TotalBiscuit) say they really like this and other people say they don't, either because they think the formula is stale or because they screwed too much up in VI. I'm guessing it will get a steep discount in the upcoming sale and was thinking of biting. Should I bother as someone who really liked the old titles or is this too different?

I got hooked on the franchise with HoMM 3. Heroes 4 and 5 never quite gelled with me (though I thought 5 was a decent attempt), but Heroes 6 has been a lot of fun, and feels the closest to a true follow-up to Heroes 3. I'd strongly recommend it if you felt the same as I did about 3, 4, and 5.

I have been playing this as I work through my backlog. I am finding it pretty compelling. I Can't imagine playing it muti, and I think the thing I liked about the single was that the campaigns were kind of like puzzles, but so far this one has been too duh obvious.

This will likely be the last heroes game I buy.

garion333 wrote:

We talked a little bit about it here. Personally I think I'm over this formula, it looks too much like older titles.

Doesn't mean I won't buy it at some point, I still bought Disciples III even though the reviews (from trusted sources) said it was pretty terrible. And it was, but pretty.

Looks like I'm out $10. Oh well. Should've stuck with my gut.

This series just doesn't do enough new to remain interesting to me. If this was my introduction to the series I'm sure I'd be blown away (IGN.com) but I've seen and done this before. Damn. Talked myself into thinking it would be a refreshing jaunt, but I started letting the AI handle battles on the first map.

Bugs everywhere are making this really difficult for me to get through the Necromancer campaign which was my goal to reach before uninstall.

Aside from the bugs the very slow accumulation of units seems to make the best strategy loading up one hero with everything and engaging the steamroller. I can't say I'm in love with that and would like to hear if there's a better way to play. The writing isn't great, combat tends to be brutally one sided, and I just don't feel like the mechanics are all that interesting.