Impressions of Heroes of Might and Magic VI - Old in all the right ways

I was 17 years old when the first ”Heroes of Might & Magic” came out in 1999. I immediately fell in love with the turn based fantasy game that mixed running your little kingdom and managing your castles with very entertaining and tactical turn based combat.

This week I've been playing the latest installment in the “Heroes” series, “Heroes of Might & Magic VI”, and I'm ready to give you my initial opinion on whether this latest in turn based fantasy kingdom management is still able to entertain.

Now, I stopped playing games in this series after the third game, which I felt was perhaps the best of them all. I played a little bit of Heroes IV and enough of Heroes V to know that I didn't care for that at all. So I was not completely thrilled about the prospect of jumping into Heroes VI.

The basic formula of Heroes VI is exactly like the five games that have come before it. You control one or several heroes traveling across a world map finding treasure, capturing resource nodes and visiting magical shrines.
The world is crammed full of stuff to find, so it's impossible to swing a dead Orc without hitting an ancient magical monolith or a gold mine.

A world of treasure and trinkets await!

Of course, most of these things are protected by some form of hideous monster or another, meaning you'll have to do a bit of wholesale slaughter before you can lay your grubby hands on your chosen prize.
Combat is again following the classic Heroes formula of taking you into a grid based field where your army is lined up on one side and the enemy army on the other. Your units then take turns trying to brutally murder each other until only one army is left standing.
Additional spice is added by your hero, who is not directly available on the board, but can cast spells from the sidelines which acts as buffs to your units, heals or just throwing large flaming balls of destruction down onto the heads of your foes.

As you roam through the countryside, butchering enemies and grabbing phat loot, you'll also come across enemy castles that you can attack and add to your kingdom.
Managing your castles is its own little game where you have to figure out what buildings you want to build and making a nice little bastion of doom. You'll have to build buildings that produce units as well as think of creating fortifications to repel enemy heroes trying to take over your castle, so it becomes a balancing act of focusing on the right type of buildings at the right time.

Like chess, only with demons, crossbows and magic

So far it's all sounding like any other Heroes game. Where Heroes VI differs just a little from the previous games is the increased focus on storytelling during the missions, which is conveyed partly through voiced over dialogue that pops up as you play through a mission, and partly through cut scenes.
This may sound like a not so great thing, especially considering that this exact increased weight on storytelling is why I disliked ANNO 2070, which is another strategy game that I have enjoyed immensely in the past.
But I think that the story parts are actually pretty well done in Heroes VI. That's not to say that the story is good, but it's certainly presented in a manner that makes it not an affront to humanity and does not immediately make you want to Alt+F4 out of the game.

So it's a Heroes game that follows closely all the traditions of the series with an extra helping of story? But is it any fun to play?

For me the answer to that is a definite “Yes”. There's something about the way that Heroes VI plays that made it immediately click with me in a way that I haven't clicked with a Heroes game since Heroes III.

"Open wide and I'll use my giant toothpick to get that piece of chicken for you"

Controlling your heroes on the world map feels snappy, as does controlling your army in combat.
There's also a lot of side quests to do during your missions and that helps to encourage you to explore every nook and cranny of the map and not just burn out on fighting monster armies for some random loot.

I'm also very pleased with the graphical design of the game, which is more simple and “flat” than what was in Heroes V and I think that the simplicity works very well for the game. There's a very clean aesthetic to the game that makes it really enjoyable to look at, though it certainly won't impress you with its graphical prowess in any way.

So far I've only played through the initial tutorial campaign and the first mission of the first proper campaign, so there's still a very long way for me to go before I can definitely say that this is a great Heroes game, but so far it's been pushing all the right buttons for me and I'm looking forward to getting back into the game and plowing through more of the game, and that's always a good sign!




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