Heroes VI Demo Now Available

[rdeford]

Regarding corrupted file download: I thought I had this problem because my built-in XP archive utility said that the archive was corrupted. On a hunch, I tried WinRar and it was able to open and extract the files.



Regarding the buy all creatures from all castles and forts from any castle or fort: I think the old caravans were far, far superior. I don't like the way it works now, especially with a town portal in every castle, the strategic element in the game degenerates to just load up a super hero and skip around to each castle that's in danger. Brain dead.



The non-rotating map bugs me too, especially when I can't see an enemy creature during a battle.



The use a level-up point to buy a weak spell is the worst idea in the whole game. That silliness combined with the weakness of the spells and the silly cool-down implementation effectively removes the Magic from this Might & Magic game.



OVERALL IMPRESSION: I am having fun playing the demo. I give it a 7 out of 10. With a few patches and an expansion this game could easily get a 8 or even a 9.

[CloudRiderX]

I really enjoyed the demo. The graphics, music, skill/spell system, and units are all brilliantly conceived and executed. Of course, issues abound, but they didn't hamper the experience too much.



Don't know if anyone else encountered this bug, but when you are fighting the AI with the Haven faction and you use Guardian Angel on your last stack, it tricks the computer opponent into thinking they cannot win, causing the computer opponent to automatically retreat. I did it twice in a row even though I had no chance of winning either battle.

[ywhtptgtfo]

Try Broken Alliances again with Necro's:

- Am I the only one to find vampire lords, ghosts, and ghouls to be exceptionally weak? FYI, VL's have only 20% life drain and can be retaliated against.

- Necromancy doesn't allow the raising of new undead?!

[Avonu]

Necropolis is IMO (and not only mine) the most overpowered faction in game for now. Vampires are not so strong as in previous games but together with ghouls, ghosts' healing and necromancy enough force to wipe out most armies. I found only lamasu to be weak point of this army (on the other habd, they are more like support unit then damage dealer).

[ywhtptgtfo]

More powerful than Haven?! Haven has like 3 units with ranged attack and 2 healers. Then there's the Praetorian that soaks up damage and Paladins that can quickly dive into enemy range units.

[CloudRiderX]

I heard that the Necromancy skill works differently in the demo than in past games, something to the effect of 'it only revives undead units lost in the battle on your side, it doesnt raise slain enemies as undead.'



Haven definitely is not the strongest, but they seem to have a strong early game because of their third level unit. In my meager play experience, the Sanctuary units put up the least resistance.

[Sir Alock]

Wanted to chime back. I'm on board now with Homm VI. I'm starting to appreciate the battlefield. Works really well. As expected, it's a Demo so it needs some more polish. I'm still bummed out about the town screen window, but maybe they'll do something with it before it's release. On my computer it moves along very fast (3.5 Ghz AMD X4 970/4 GB RAM & 6870 VC) Playing stronghold faction on Medium AI in Skrimish. It's a blast. Looks like I'll be picking up a copy on the day of it's release!

[Lord_Haart]

I've played a bit, and like some others here I'm sold. Whether it's the graphics, music or gameplay I'm not sure, but I definitely have the feeling that "This is Heroes".



I'm short on time these days but I'll definitely pick this up if my schedule frees up.

[Variol]

The torrent site seemed to download a bunch of crap. The mirror site is running now (about 7 hours)

It will be interesting to see if the processor will run it, and how well....

[Panda Tar]

Fileplanet file downloaded fast here yesterday. It took something like 40 minutes to download the file and I got it alright at home at night. It crashed the first time when I pressed the key after loading the map (which took something like 10 seconds), although my PC is not very good.

If you give it a try, please share your impressions with us.

If I must.

GRAPHICS

I kept the config at Medium, because the movement of the units and animation seemed a bit glitchy. Someday I'll have a PC worth of standing these high-requirement games. Given that I increased the battle animation of the units, some creatures seemed to waddle fast while attacking or celebrating, specially the Kirin dragon, who flips in the air so fast that I can glimpse only a blur. As stated before, some adventure maps took longer to load than others.

VISUALS

All in all, I was pleased with the game. Units look ok, map and terrain are pretty much well designed, there are some stuff that made me rather curious and amused to see, like when I played the first map for the Tutorial (some stone winding stairs in the middle of the mountains). The adventure map objects are well made, although I didn't actually fancy those obelisk-like stuff on the skirmisher map which looked like marks to show where a FORT domain starts and ends - I think it messes up with the natural feeling of the map and it gets rather repetitive having them all around.

I think the icons and places to click are too small, too subtle. A bad-sight player would have some time adjusting to that (or perhaps it's just my screen resolution); however that does not apply to sounds which are good and very distinguished one from the other, so you know exactly what's surrounding you and what you're picking. I still think that back on old Heroes, when placing your mouse cursor upon an object you can interact/pick, the horse would stand. Having now feets to show where to move, a hand to pick, a door to enter/visit - doesn't feel nice, specially that twitching hand. Perhaps because the hand looks smaller or weaker than the feet, so you have the feeling that you're NOT picking, but passing through it - dunno how to explain.

I don't like much these windows layouts they used on the game much. When clicking on a unit during a battle, for instance, a window appear with their stats, but it only closes when you click on the close buttom. I mean, it could close when you clicked anywhere else, so you can simply play faster when you forget to close the goddamn window, could even be a sliding pop up window coming from the side of the screen.

Due that things look very small, from buttom to items, you are too dependable of zoom if you have some eye-sight problems. I don't have sight problems, but it looked troublesome. You must have precision while choosing where to go on the map or when trying to click on those small V and X for buying, building, skill picking, not mentioning what people said earlier, tha you cannot rotate the map/battlefield, so you cannot see some units, don't see hidden items (perhaps not even able to click on them due lack of a proper position) and must be zooning in and out to find better ways to move/see.

ADVENTURE MAP OBJECTS

Some new stuff - really new - I couldn't really find. Eveyrthing looks like they came from the other Heroes. Given it's just a demo, I expect more diversity in due course. For instance, the new arena provides a fight where your slain units are not slain in exchange of might attack/defense. The other objects are like increasing your primary points as usual, the resources and units. The complexity of graphics might make us click here and there wondering if that's an interactive place when it's not. And those...obelisks.

BATTLE

Too long all the time. As people said, units are too tough. Same issues people said, so I won't repeat.

There's a really small issue here: given that there are many numbers popping up when you attack someone, I think the icon displaying the KILLED UNITS and the number should be bigger. It shows damage, then initiative, then kills, or vice-versa, and everything has the same size. Sometimes I got attacked and thought I lost many units, then I got no killed units (plus that imba heal), because that was initiative. Ok, there's a skull, but the number could be bigger. It's way more important knowing that than the other numbers.

I often forgot to use the hero in battle at first, then I started using the abilities more often. But it feels that your hero is more like watching. I don't know how to put this - perhaps it's the layout or the icons. I don't have the hero catching my eyes.

Some objects and obstacles look completely apart from the local terrain. They make it look strange to look upon, like a shining pool in the middle of the grass. It looks like adventure objects coming into battle, but they have no use at all.

SKILLS

A bit too easy to get a promotion. And somewhat boring when you choose the Tears path. You have so many passive stuff stacking that you must know them all by heart to have some success in skill picking. And you must not go in rampage killing foes to be Tears, so all this passive stance might make your hero not tough enough to face stronger foes: what I mean is: if you place a Blood Player against a Tear Player with an army alike, it just sounds like the Blood will win, probably because he'll be more leveled up after fighting so much, more experienced. I just can't picture that the skills are balanced.

Mentoring is imba.

The units abilities looked ok, afaik, but can be refined.

SPELLS

Only cast lightning bolt. ^^ The visual effect of the Tidal Wave is nice (and finally now I know what a soaked unit suffers ). While reading about them, I agree with other people here that it lacks variation and the damage is too low, while the healing effects are too high. Also missed more adventure spells and more fine/intelligent effects.

Having cooldown in addition to spell point casting looked a bit odd to me.

TOWN

On the adventure map, it looks gorgeous, no doubt. Now...that window... Please, townscreen, be back soon.

The small (crumpled) city you own has no interactions, but the icons (always those f-ing small icons everywhere!) that start popping up on the window. When you build something, it's hard to know where it's positioned on the townwindow. It's easier to find the building on the adventure map! What the blue f*** is that?

You can buy ALL heroes from the hall of heroes (ex-tavern, be back soon too). The town tree is plain and simple. I prefer more stuff (useful stuff, of course). Town portal feature is too powerful to be so easily used, and hiring all units from all castles and carrying them from a single town is not enjoyable. At late game, you can almost rally everything with a single hero and set sail, because you'll actually be able to travel back at any time and hire everything if an enemy approaches - I don't like this in the slightest. There was a time when the fog-of-war was feared...

In resume, I really would like seeing those LOADING arts to be applied to town screens, even not moving, abut at least something whole, visual, with an in depth feeling of grandeur.

Regarding the way we conquer mines (also agree with those who say that only crystal as luxury good is a bottle neck issue), I think this area domain might be a bit rearranged. If you conquer a fort, all flagged mines are conquered and only stationary heroes can guarantee it to keep hold its loyaty - me thinks that automatic flagging could happen only when conquering a fort. After that, if other player take the mine, it wouldn't return to the owner if the hero moved away. Perhaps halving production would suffice, for the invading player...but that auto-return feature doesn't sound fair.

SOUND AND SONGS

I was throughly pleased with this. :tup: Sounds are ok, well designed on the map, very distinct so you know what's next to you, what you are picking. The battle sounds also seem ok.

And this is where it brings such a strong Heroes feeling, given that there are so many old songs brought back, and the new ones are a perfect match.

I think the battle songs are not very impactant (there's one exception), so I would add one or two new songs there, stronger or more dramatic, so to speak.

FACTIONS

Can't say much on that, because I played only with the Sanctuary (as a matter of fact, my enemies got hold of Sanctuary towns too and then I was only battling against the same foes in the end). And they do suck at sieges, forchrissake. It's just me or Sanctuary really have no flying unit? The Kirin only flips happily helpeless and useless.

Curtly speaking, I liked it a bit, but it's not so enjoyable. Perhaps because all those battle-imbas people are talking about, so best not to repeat them here. Some units have pretty nasty abilities, like the Kenshin's waves of attacks, the Kirin's cloud mist, that overpowered cure. The Kappa's splash leap attack didn't splash at all though.

I think the spellcasting units should be the ones with cooldown, having unlimited casting (not only 2-3 as they have), but a balanced cooldown. It's so damn annoying having 500 million mages that can cast only 2 spells, for instance. At this point, I'd rather prefer Heroes 5 when they had spellpoints and you could do something about it - but of course, having that cure so strong is bad if you could cast infinite times. So, nerfing cure would make it better.

TUTORIAL & GAMEPLAY

For some reason, my mouse and my keypad stopped scrolling the map, only the mouse roller pressed (a pain) would make me move my view on the map. I didn't played the game again yet, so I don't know if it was a bug or what bugger that might be.

I played only the first map. I liked it in a general way. Voice acting was modest, better than the previous one, but again, when it's a cutting scene, there's this dead feeling about it. Only the main characters are heard: they are surrounded by a wild-killing-monstrous-ominous-grumpy-completely-silent host of monster and a nature that does not sound a single draft of wind. So, it seems their voices are floating in mid air so you can catch it to roast with marshmallows.

The story sounded ok, a bit too fast at the beginning (the mess was all already done), but might be promissing. I don't like Inferno appeal, but since they mingled it with the Orcs, it was a relief.

The map and interactions of elements are well done, they look alive, the heroes walking on the map, the things appearing, moving, shining, burning. I specially like the trees on fire (oh, I love green trees! ), because they give so much of a corrupted feeling to the green valley, making the atmosphere change subtly.

The underground is awesome. I prefer it over Heroes 5, which looked always a bit messy.

I found the game easy to play, pretty much like Heroes 5, although I feel more like playing Heroes this time.

THINGS I JUST DIDN'T FIGURE OUT

1. Why can we move the pic of the HELM on our hero window? There's a utility to this? The hint says we can move the icon to any customizable icon on our hero window, and that, ladies and gentlemen, I couldn't really find.

2. Where can we see the weekly creature growth of our towns? Since you don't have a townscreen with your buildings standing for you to click or the citadel with a list, I didn't find where it shows the current number.

That's all I remember. Only played 3 hours or so. Sorry about the long-winded stuff. Don't ban me, Kalah.

[Angelspit]

Good post Tar!

[world_pacifier]

Thank you for the post Tar. That was awesome. Well thought out and almost what I wanted to say, if I bothered to pen them down. I also like the humour of it and the sign of frustration or wishfulness.



I think it is fair to say that what you have highlighted is what we all feeling and many have already voiced these points. I will buy Heroes VI regardless but somehow, I actually feel that Heroes V is not so bad at all! I do hope Ubisoft will consider what's being said here because I want desperately for Heroes VI to be a success (and obviously for Ubi as well)._pacifier
Edited on Fri, Aug 26 2011, 01:16 by world_pacifier

[Pitsu]

Agree that Tar has made a very good summary. Many of the problems could be predicted from screenshots and other pre-demo info, thus there wasn't really any surprise when playing. Regarding bad sight i can add that played it on a 37'' HD screen with all graphics maxed and still felt stress on my eyes when looking at icons and buttons and also there was the need to zoom in and out.

[Panda Tar]

Thank you, guys.

@world_pacifier

Well, if it makes any difference, I liked Heroes 5. I only got bored too soon playing it, in comparison to the older ones. Even Heroes 4 got me playing more.

*****

Yesterday night I played the second tutorial map (more songs that I really liked. The Mausoleum/Haven theme is really adorable. There's one Heroes 5 track there too).

This time I was a "victim" of that buy-all-creatures-hell-yeah scheme, when the AI went to and fro gathering troops to a single town all of a sudden, however losing the battle all the same. But it just showed me more that this feature in special does not please me (caravans were so good).

For example, if the AI gets most of the map and you're struggling to keep one castle of yours. Say that the AI has a deadly army and came to fetch your castle, you evade the castle in the hope to survive longer, take a castle from him(ai), etc. If the AI wanted, it was only a matter of just staying at any castle until 7 days was past and your hero would lose when time expired (if this 7-day-without-a-castle-loss feature still exists, that is...). Because staying there would prevent you from getting near any of AI's castle, since that AI could simply appear out of the blue when you were near, PLUS having the means to hire ALL goddamn units to really finish you off.

Anyway, playing with Haven a bit more was enough to see that it's a bit powerful, more powerful than Sanctuary (comparing the core units, at least). Oh yes, while playing the skirmisher map, I noticed the AI traveled over waters mounted on their horses after visiting the boat house. There was supposed to have a ship under their feet, no?

I must say that I liked the Siege Battleground visuals. Now you can actually see the entrance of the castle beyond the boundaries of the walls (like the gardens of Haven or a stone bridge over a lava moat of Inferno), giving the feeling that you are really invading it.

And about the Conflux, when playing the Tutorial, you win a certain blade that's actually a Dynasty Weapon. You carry this thing while playing the campaign and the game states that you are not logged in to use it (or to use Dynasty Treaties), which gives the idea that you can actually use Conflux features while playing the Campaigns (however we are talking about the Tutorial. Perhaps it's only here you can use, go figure .May that be it's a demo of Conflux as well). It was predicable that I wanted to be online to have these features unlocked, but that's just what they want us to feel, eh? They got me.

I will buy the game. I just hope the alarming oddity of some still-to-fix stuff will come fixed upon the release.

*************** *panda running back*

Ah! Almost forgot:

CONVERTION

As many people already said, it's too easy to do; too fast; in late game it may make you bored; too cheap... I think when you convert a thing to another (so different!), you should come to zero again, having to rebuild things. Having this in mind, convertion would take longer and longer (and more expensive, of course) depending on which buildings are built there. You can convert dwellings as well.

DWELLINGS
The dwellings (as we knew) just vanished. Now you have creature boost places (ok, you get them once the first time you get there), gathered by tier: one 'dwelling' for core units, another for elite and one for champion. Don't know if there's mercenary camp as the preview games or hireable places (like the dwellings we know).

ARTIFACTS
They seem nice to me so far. Have some broad range of use and you can carry a good number of those. Given that I'm not familiar with the use of this and that yet, some objects might be more important (or less) than they appear by now. One got my attention while playing the campaign that was an armor that would render ALL YOUR UNITS immune to the first 3 attacks on them...adding that imba cure of the sisters, it was hard losing anyone.

WAR MACHINES?
About this, I have no idea. Your shooters seem to be able to shoot as their heart desires (some units could do that, when using energy, power of that sort, boomerang), even those which uses projectiles like the marskmen. So, afaik, no ammo cart. Ballistae also doesn't appear anywhere afaics.

[rdeford]

Played one campaign map and two skirmish maps so far. I LOVE the wide open hero leveling up tree. I can really create a unique, custom hero without having luck-of-the-draw interfere.

[jerseys]

"- Secondary heroes are more useful"

How?

[rdeford]

I like this game more and more as I figure out more and more about how to play it.



BTW, despite the complaints I am seeing on the forums, I am finding that the town portal in every town works just fine since there are enough limitations to keep it balanced. Same thing goes for recruiting all creatures from any town or fort. As you'll find out, neither is at all quite as good as they first seem. They simply speed the game up, which is a good thing.



Although my first impression that magic heroes are too weak still stands, I am getting an advanced magic hero built up, and I can see that I might have to change that opinion. Maybe they are just slow starters.



@ Jerseys: Secondary heroes come in at half or even full of the main hero's level. I like this feature. Too bad your enemies have the same advantage, but that's life.

[jerseys]

You just buy them at the tavern and they're like level 5? I only played a little and haven't checked it all out.

[rdeford]

@Jerseys-- Yup. There is a switch available on the map creation screen to set how recruitment works during game play. What is cool about it is that if, for example, you get a new level 4 hero, you get to immediately "spend" the four points any way you desire to create a truly custom hero that matches your play style.



The more I learn about H6 the more I like it, but there is a LOT to learn. This game is not H3 on steroids like H5. I could play H5 with the same old strategy I used in H2, H3, H4, and H5, but I am having to change my strategies in H6. Good!

[jeff]

Thanks Panda a very informative and useful post.

This game is not H3 on steroids like H5.

I've seen other posts stating the same thing and it is one of the more hopeful pieces of info. Don't misunderstand I have stated before I loved H-3 in its day, but those days are long gone for me. Now if they will just do a good campaign editor and I may come back on board.