The 3D character models simply sit dead still around the table like lifeless mannequins. That isn't always the case in MMH7, where some creatures slap each other like drunken brawlers and poor audio cues sometimes fail to reveal that something important has happened. Might and Magic Heroes VI gets a lot of flak these days, but at least its animations and combat sounds were fun to listen to. At one point, in fact, I found myself looking up a wiki from a previous Heroes game to gain some insight into MMH7's gameplay.Īgain, I had plenty of fun with MMH7’s exploration and battles, but the presentation seems a step down from what I’ve come to expect from this series.
It's almost as though there's an assumption in play here that new players who've never tried the series wouldn't be interested. MMH7 was clearly designed as a fan's game, but in this regard Limbic pushes the concept to a fault.
By far the most annoying one was the way clicking on one part of the map would sometimes send my hero right where I wanted them to go, but for the next turn I'd have to click multiple times to get them to move.The biggest problem is that there's a lot of nuance interwoven through the gameplay's fabric that goes unexplained, such as stacking a bunch of weaker ranged troops together to make a formidable force or how turns are limited by abstract increments known as "days" and "weeks." No tutorials introduce those ideas, and with no significant formal manual and much of the interface lacking tooltips, there’s a lot of potential to confuse rookies that could’ve easily been avoided. It all works well enough, save for several bugs, such as heroes vanishing into towns never to return, or a camera that seems to have a mind of its own, and performance issues that sometimes seem to stem from running Ubisoft’s Uplay overlay at the same time as Steam’s, and sometimes are unrelated. MMH7 simplifies the business of hero progression as well, while still providing many options, chiefly through the introduction of a skill wheel that lets you put points in everything from Leadership for troop boosts to bonuses for actual combat attacks. They're drab at first, but rather impressive to behold once everything's in place.
Gone, for instance, are the 3D towns in their place, Limbic introduces 2D town maps where you can create and upgrade new troops and buildings through an intuitive progression tree. There's also a drive for simplification at work here - one that's aimed at bringing the series back to its roots and stripping away the chaff that's worked its way in since the late '90s. It's a shame, then, that Limbic's efforts at prettifying the world and characters sometimes backfire, as in the ways that the seven resources (like wood and ore) sometimes get lost in the busy details of the otherwise-attractive maps. The few other additions to the old formula chiefly amount to eye candy, as in the dynamic events that sometimes pop up on the overworld map, such as when an ogre smashes a key bridge in two with a boulder.
Caravans also make a comeback in MMH7 (after a disappointing absence in MMH6), allowing the hire and placement of new units in town without the need for them to travel with the hero, keeping the pace of exploration steadily entertaining. That's all here, and there's virtually nothing here that hasn't been seen before aside from a welcome addition in the ability to deal additional damage to enemies by flanking them with multiple soldiers. Finding one of the latter means jumping into strategic battles that superficially resemble Holochess from Star Wars, and where your named heroes dish out damage and protect their minions for the sidelines.
True to the series, this is a turn-based game about sending heroes out to explore a world shrouded in a fog of war, where they find resources, allies, and foes hidden throughout.
To its credit, MMH7 generally gets the broad strokes right.