Might and Magic Heroes VII

The second closed beta was the one I got to play, and I enlisted for the wait with mixed feelings. Like most of you, I had seen the images, the clips, nearly all the media. It felt familiar and somehow new at the same time but since you can’t appreciate it until you play it, I waited until I got the chance to do just that.

After some solid hours with it, I’ve reached the mildly disappointing verdict I was hoping to avoid. Nonetheless, there is a lot of great stuff to Might and Magic Heroes VII that makes the game worth it, but I think that will apply for the newer generations that have not had the chance to play Heroes III and the next two installments. Not that the latter two were exceptional in any way, but it shows how little the game has evolved in terms of offering a captivating experience.

Right off the bat, the design in Might and Magic Heroes VII has its ups and downs. The first great thing about it is that the artwork for the castles is superb. It has that right kind of fantasy look; it’s not in 3D, and I’m glad for that. A fully built castle regardless of faction looks excellent.

Another step up for the game is that finally I can enjoy looking at the creature designs when in a battle. For the first time since they moved the series to 3D I can agree that they look great. Some animations and attacks seem a tad silly but hey, it’s easy to look the other way.

I still get annoyed by the useless mini-cinematics that appear when one group of units attacks another, and the worst part is that you can’t switch them off from the settings. I mean seriously, combat in Heroes has always been like chess. How would the game’s developers like it when they play chess, and something constantly distracts their attention from the board. That can mess with your focus and strategy. All players get bored out of their minds after seeing the same animations over and over again. We get it; it looks nice, you did well on the graphics but spare us the uselessness of the interruptions.

One thing I just can’t and probably won’t get over is how empty the maps feel. The first few minutes of gameplay I kept thinking about how well things looked in Disciples III when it came to exploring the map. It’s even more annoying when a Sylvan hero loses two days on desert terrain to get from one lonely structure to another lonely structure. Empty is the word that’s best used to describe map exploration.

It’s nice to have variety when you want to shape a hero in a certain way. There are plenty of them to choose from, tons of ways they can be crafted into fierce commanders and yet, you have to waste a skill point to unlock the next level of a mastery.

I don’t see how that makes sense. If I had four to five battles a turn, then yes, experience would pile up, levels would come faster and spending one out of four points in a useless manner wouldn't bother. Unfortunately, as far as I can see in the beta, you’ll rarely have the chance to fight that much in one turn.

I was expecting a lot more from Might and Magic Heroes VII, from the team behind it. It’s the little things that bother me, and surely thousands of others. Minute design and logic flaws that tell you how inexperienced some of those people were and probably still are. As someone who has started from Heroes II and literally missed a summer with Heroes III, I would expect that when I go to the “Recruit new creatures” I can actually right-click, or simply click and have a permanent details sheet of a creature I select. Instead, I have to wait until I throw a group into battle to get a chance on seeing what special talents they have.

From one installment to another, this series has kept detaching itself from the atmosphere of the 2D version. Nearly nothing in this release inspires the feeling of a fantasy turn-based strategy game. It’s very dull. It just is.

Might and Magic Heroes VIII would be better off in 2D, and it might be a gigantic success. Ubisoft, starts a Kickstarter campaign for a 2D release of your next Heroes title if you don’t want to invest your own money. For once, give the thousands upon thousands of fans what they want to play, not what a few people think would be ‘cool’.

Bottom line? Might and Magic Heroes VII is in most part unappealing, and it might remain this way if it leaves the beta looking and feeling like this. There’s no charm to the music, the audio effects are tasteless in most of the cases, and everything seems to point to the conclusion that they’ve simply made a 7th game in a series, not that they’ve made Might and Magic Heroes VII!