Heroes 7 Review v1.7 and campaign walkthroughs

[hellegennes]

It would be highly unlikely that he would be the only person in the globe experiencing conflict-based crashes. That doesn't mean it's not probably due to a hardware conflict. The bad thing with PCs is the huge number of different setups, some of which may not make sense to begin with. Add to that the fact that most PC users change some of their hardware every now and then and you get the whole picture.

Now, does this happen more frequently today than 20 years ago? Possibly. Modern games are way more complicated, especially in terms of graphics and scripting, which means that much more time must be allocated for code optimisation and cross-platform testing.

Another thing to consider is that back in 1995 most of us didn't have Internet access and those of us who did have access didn't have a lot of places to vent. Today a single user is dissatisfied and suddenly the whole world knows it, via social media, fora, blogs and what have you. My point is that it is likely these problems existed before in not so lesser numbers, but other people were unaware. You can easily find 20 people today, in a sample size of 20.000 with which you'd share similar experiences and it would seem to you that the problem is widespread. That's confirmation and small-sample statistics bias.

It's not just a theory, too. I happen to have seen ridiculous things happening to systems because of a single game, when other games ran just perfectly and both the press and other gamers were oblivious to the fact that these problems existed. Had we had widespread use of the Internet and social media back in the early 90's, these gamers would find other people experiencing the same problems and the whole wide world would know in a heartbeat.

[BB Shockwave]

To think that we have come to THIS. If I went back in time and told my university-student self who was playing HOMMIII and later IV all day for months that a time will come when three new Heroes games will be out and I would want to play with them less and less every edition, until a total disinterest hits in at VII, I would not have believed myself, probably.

I played with the 1.4 edition and that had bugs like sideways running, a weird "unmentioned" skill for the Haven hero where after winning battles, he got back all his movement points - meaning I could basically go from neutral army to neutral army in one day - and a final battle with a superior Haven hero who had some incredibly bugged spell that reflected DOUBLE the damage I inflicted on his units to mine, to the point that my 400-something marksmen one-shotted themselves when shooting at their gryphons. I think threw down the keyboard and hit uninstall then. And this was after playing the Beta already, expecting changes...

[Erwinner]

It would be highly unlikely that he would be the only person in the globe experiencing conflict-based crashes. That doesn't mean it's not probably due to a hardware conflict. The bad thing with PCs is the huge number of different setups, some of which may not make sense to begin with. Add to that the fact that most PC users change some of their hardware every now and then and you get the whole picture.

Now, does this happen more frequently today than 20 years ago? Possibly. Modern games are way more complicated, especially in terms of graphics and scripting, which means that much more time must be allocated for code optimisation and cross-platform testing.

Another thing to consider is that back in 1995 most of us didn't have Internet access and those of us who did have access didn't have a lot of places to vent. Today a single user is dissatisfied and suddenly the whole world knows it, via social media, fora, blogs and what have you. My point is that it is likely these problems existed before in not so lesser numbers, but other people were unaware. You can easily find 20 people today, in a sample size of 20.000 with which you'd share similar experiences and it would seem to you that the problem is widespread. That's confirmation and small-sample statistics bias.

It's not just a theory, too. I happen to have seen ridiculous things happening to systems because of a single game, when other games ran just perfectly and both the press and other gamers were oblivious to the fact that these problems existed. Had we had widespread use of the Internet and social media back in the early 90's, these gamers would find other people experiencing the same problems and the whole wide world would know in a heartbeat.

I can agree with all of that, it's definitely sensible in vague terms, except back to specific terms there is the crucial point here, ∞), this is a Ubilimb product, by which token it is the less reasonable course to begin with any assumption that the user or their system are at fault just based on their horrible track record lol

[hellegennes]

Well, MMX, which was developed my Limbic and published by Ubisoft had no real issues. I don't remember if I had purchased it right away, but by the time I started playing I only encountered a music-related bug and nothing more (and I have played it since several times). H7 certainly is another story. When I first bought the game I couldn't even enter it! I had to download a pirated copy to play it, until the second patch resolved the issue I was having. And still after that there were lots of game crashing bugs, but all serious ones had been resolved by the next patches, not long after that. If Ubisoft had postponed the release by two months, none of this would have happened. H7 still is buggy, but by no means did I encounter game-breaking or system-crashing bugs after the first few patches came along. So I would be hesitant to simply call that a bad track record. I don't trust Ubisoft but Limbic did a great job debugging H6* and in creating MMX.


* which, as any programmer knows, is a hellish task. Going through the work of another programmer, especially if they did a messy job, is ultra-super-guber-godly difficult. That's why I had high hopes that they would create a good H7. I was greatly disappointed by the outcome, though.

[Alfalken]

Well after reading that indepth review, I actually feel like coming back and playing H7 again.. call me masochistic or whatever, but still..

Seeing the bugs that cjlee had to deal with, I guess I can be thankful that my experience wasn't as bad as he is (as in, it could and prolly should have been worse), even though it's still pretty effed up when you compare to other, more stable games out there. If I recall correctly, I had games suddenly deciding that I lost the said map, constantly crashing to desktop after finishing cutscenes that I had to use a cheat code just to get through that stage, the artifact transfer glitch that seriously messed up my game (and again, causing crashes that I had to restart the said map), and the mess with uplay update that causes almost all of my savegames to get deleted...

In a word, yeah, it's pretty bad. I had no major problems so far with 1.7 and 1.8, but I always have this feeling that the bugs are just lurking somewhere in the shadows, waiting to pounce and break the game at the most inopportune moment.

I would not advise you to upgrade the Minotaurs, because then they get no retaliation. At least one unit needs to soak up retaliation, because you can’t always depend on your hero to suppress the enemy retaliation or for the Medusas to mesmerize the enemy for your side. Minotaurs move last, so you should always wait with everybody, send the Minotaurs in and get hit, before everyone attacking the no-retaliation opponent. This is the way of Dungeon – hitting enemies who can’t hit back, using Shrouded abilities to flank, etc.

Definitely need to try this. It makes too much sense that I almost can't believe why I didn't think of this in the first place.

[Panda Tar]

...but still..

*clings to the air expecting meaning*

[cjlee]

Just a heads up

I was not expecting to get such a warm reception for my contribution. Thank you all!

I just finished playing the Lost Tales addon campaign, so I wrote a simple walkthrough.

As for bugs, Heroes has not hung my computer for about 48 hours now. This is the longest period ever without a hang, and it was later that I realized we are now at patch 1.8.

There are still many bugs - eg my Lost Tales final battles were played under patch 1.8, and a bug prevented me from seeing or fielding my Cabirs although they were returned to my army after the battle. But hopefully the blue screen of death is now history and that I will suffer much less hanging in future.

I would probably go back and try to finish the barbarian and haven campaigns, so that I can complete this game before the inevitable uninstall.

[hellegennes]

I can only infer that you're enjoying this game, otherwise I would find no explanation as to why someone who has that many problems with a game and finds it frustrating, terrible and tedious would want to finish it. In my head that's plainly weird, to say the least. I have played games that were buggy and a pain in the ass. Some I liked -I mentioned Daggerfall already- and I continued to play and some I didn't like that much, so frustration won over any good aspect of them and I left them.

[Galaad]

I was not expecting to get such a warm reception for my contribution. Thank you all!.

Glad to see you back Cjlee!

[cjlee]

Update

I noticed that the game breaking bugs I ran into for the Orc and Haven campaigns have disappeared. I finished the Haven Campaign and will finish the Orc campaign in another 2 days, after which I'll update the walkthrough again.

[Alfalken]

I still haven't gathered the courage to go back to H7, after all that I said. That, and other games are taking up my free time (looking at you, Civilization V).

I can only infer that you're enjoying this game, otherwise I would find no explanation as to why someone who has that many problems with a game and finds it frustrating, terrible and tedious would want to finish it.

Gotta agree on this point, for me at least. Beneath all the issues and bugs, the gameplay is pretty decently fun and engaging. Sure, it's not very balanced. But being able to beat down much larger enemies marked as 'Deadly' with tactics (read: Summon Elemental, Entangle, Implosion,...) makes my day anytime.

[cjlee]

I can only infer that you're enjoying this game, otherwise I would find no explanation as to why someone who has that many problems with a game and finds it frustrating, terrible and tedious would want to finish it.

So, Hellesgennes, let me assume you are Greek, live in Greece, and are used to the Greek way of life.

Supposing you joined a research team in the Antarctic. You spent the next few years living in the Antarctic. No Greek sun. Nobody speaks Greek. Everyone eats canned rations donated by Heinz, so you sup on beans from morning to night.

One day someone bought a can of half-spoiled olives, stale pita bread, the worst quality goat cheese and olive oil contaminated with engine oil. He turns on Greek music from the most unpopular and booed band in the Peloponneses.

You eat the food and dance to the music like a madman.

I can only infer that you like to eat garbage that even starving pensioners in Athens won't touch, and that you enjoy music that nearly all Greeks despise.

[hellegennes]

The thing is that you suppose that I would eat that because it's Greek food and I would dance to music I despise. No, I wouldn't. I lived in Britain for over 4 years and despite hating the non-food Britain produces, I still refused to eat bad Greek food. In fact, in my third year, a Greek souvlaki establishment opened in my town (Guildford). The price was steep but I had missed the taste of souvlaki, so I went to the restaurant the moment I learned about it and happily purchased my takeaway meal. I managed to eat one or two bites; the rest was thrown away, despite having paid £6 for something that would cost me less than £2 in Greece.

Now, I understand your simile. I too happen to be a long time fan of both TBS games and the MM universe. I was introduced to it when Heroes 1 was released and I have since played all of the Heroes and MM games. But I would not play a game in the series that I did not find interesting enough, especially if my experience playing it was so bad in terms of crashes and bugs. In fact, that's what I did. I didn't finish the H7 campaigns and I didn't even experience crashes and severe bugs. It's not that I didn't find the game decent, it's that I didn't find anything remotely new and interesting to keep me hooked. And mind you I bought the game on day 1 (or 2), paying the full price. Not to mention that I hate leaving games unfinished. And no, I can't afford to pay for things I don't use. I don't have that luxury. But if I make a bad purchase, I am not going to use (or eat) the product "because I paid for it".

That's what I don't understand. I understand someone settling for less, if they feel hungry for that particular thing, but I don't understand how you would settle for something that -as you say- you don't like at all. At the very least, your level of enjoyment must be high enough to overcome the frustration of having to deal with the multitude of crashes and game-breaking bugs. Otherwise it would clearly be a chore. On top of that, iirc, you don't even like the lore and story of the Ubiverse, so I can't excuse you tolerating it all for the sake of it. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Please, correct me if I'm wrong in any other aspect as well. I am not judging you for anything, I just can't grasp your reasoning.


Edit: Let me add that, until Ubisoft releases a decent Heroes game that will keep me sleepless, I will continue to play Civ5, H2, H3, H4, no matter how dated they are.

[cjlee]

just a bump up to tell everyone that the game breaking bugs I experienced at 1.7 have been defeated. I have finished all campaigns except Ivan's final campaign, and updated the walkthrough accordingly. Once I finish Ivan's campaign I will post it.

Despite the generally mediocre quality of this game, it is engaging enough to play through. I just don't find it good or interesting enough to play the campaigns a second time through on Heroic, or to hang around CelestialHeavens hoping someone would make maps for it.

Heroes VII is like eating stale pita bread with olive oil contaminated with engine oil. If you are starving after years in the desert eating nothing but 1990s era canned food labelled Heroes III, you will gobble up this bread and olive oil. But once you have access to a proper food outlet - could even be Macdonald's or Pizza Hut - you no longer care about the stale pita bread with filthy olive oil.

[cjlee]

Walkthrough for Ivan Campaign (last campaign in Heroes VII vanilla)

This campaign is unlocked by winning all the missions in the other campaigns.

In this 2-map campaign your job is to make Ivan the emperor. You play Haven, and have access to several assistant heroes. Chief among them is Anastasia the necromancer. I find her by far the most promising assistant hero because she has incredible spell power and is able to keep increasing her army size thanks to necromancy.

Due to the other maps being too easy on hard, I played the campaign on Heroic. Difficulty level did go up, but not by a huge extent. I never worried that I would lose either of Ivan’s missions.

Ivan’s campaign reminds me a lot of Lysander’s H4 campaign. There you had to manage many heroes over a very big map. Ivan’s campaign is structured similarly.

Map 1

You start in the south and must visit all the other members of the shadow council who are just hanging around the map. Jorgen the Dark Elf, Laszir the Sylvan, Kente the Orc, etc. After you visit them the mission starts getting clearer. All of them offer you assistance in some way, but Anastasia is by far the most important because she joins you, can level up, and will carry over.

Your first mission is to visit the ruins to parlay with Seamus. It’s a trick of course. Figuring as much I conquered much of the map and leveled up before visiting the ruins. I am ambushed, but because I entered as a level 20 hero with lots of troops, my level 14 enemy Vayaron (with his meager army) was crushed easily. I suggest you follow the instructions and visit the ruins early, because otherwise there is not the slightest hint of challenge.

After that easy fight with Vayaron, it turns out Seamus has sacrificed his daughter to ambush you. Daughter was supposed to be your bride but instead now she’s dead and her soul can’t be found so angels can’t resurrect her. Your next job is to find her soul.

After that your job is to rescue your intended bride’s soul. I can’t remember how I did it – was visiting everything and killing everything, and somehow I got her back. I don't think you can make a mistake here even if you forget your objectives.

The most important thing to note is that the faction Green is being played by a neutral side. If you choose to attack them, map becomes harder. If you chose to be diplomatic, then don’t attack them. They won’t bother you. Get back your bride’s soul first, and you will be able to finish the map without a messy fight on your hands. Because they won’t attack your bride – just send her over to the Green castle, and her uncle acknowledges her, and all enmity is ended.

I am not against fighting as part of the challenge, but since your heroes max out their levels, if you attack Green you are just wasting time getting into unneeded battles.

At the end of this map you must decide between brides. One is a wizard, one is a haven hero. I don’t think either matters, because you didn’t get to develop them. Both are strong enough to help you explore, conquer resources, defeat subsidiary enemy heroes, but aren’t ever going to be powerful enough to really change history. That is still for either Ivan or Anastasia to do.

Map 2

The finale! And some finale it is! This is genuinely one of the best maps/ scenarios in the entire game. While not very difficult, at least the demands made on the player are substantially better than the other maps.

You start in a limited area to the Southwest. Castle Horncrest and Duke Seamus are to the far Northeast. You are geographically isolated from them. You have one unbuilt castle.

Apart from Ivan, you start out with your cousin (or relative?) this guy who is commanding orc creatures on the far eastern side of the map. I’ll call him Duke Raven since I really didn’t bother to remember this character. Limbic hadn’t bothered to introduce this character beforehand, and suddenly just inserted him in this map. You also have your bride, who may be a Haven hero or a Wizard hero depending on who you chose to marry at the end of the last map.

You will get Anastasia’s help this map, and believe me she is awesome. Since this is heroic, there are tons of enemy creatures everywhere. Every battle yields 100 skeletons and 40 ghosts, so in a few weeks you are unstoppable. Best of all, Anastasia has that mentoring perk and levels up real fast. She is soon churning out level 19 assistant heroes for you.

One interesting aspect of this map is that it showcases a spell I have never used so far- Sylanna’s Bounty. This increases the production of your Ore mines and Sawmills. During earlier maps when my heroes were weak, mana was too precious to waste on increasing Sawmill production. But on this map, you should get 3-4 assistant heroes, and every turn you should be casting Sylanna’s Bounty to max out your wood and ore production. Because there are many catapults lying around that require repairing using 20 wood and 20 ore each, and if you repair them, you can shoot down enemy garrisons and make your life easier!

Duke Raven’s job is to grab lots of mines. This is fairly straightforward. He will get reinforcements along the way. After that, his job is to operate 2 catapults twice each. They will blast enemy garrisons and reduce the garrison sizes. Then Duke Raven’s job is to invade Horncrest and lay the foundation for your invasion.

There are three official ways to complete this map. I attempted all 3 simultaneously, since they all involved the usual exploration and killing everything you can see.

1) Visiting Jorgen in the northwest of your starting castle will reveal a small passageway to the underground. If you traverse that underground you will be able to get to Horncrest.

2) There is an enemy castle to your north. Taking that castle, you will be able to gain access to the northern regions, where there is a bridge that you can repair. By interacting with that item you create a land bridge that helps you gain access to the other side of the river where Horncrest is on.

3) The Sylvans again give you a boat, but I’m not sure what that boat is supposed to do because I can’t land on the opposite side.

In the end, I did not use any of the official methods but something else I discovered on my own. The town portal spell Instant Recall will send you to the nearest unoccupied town. So just stick your newly hired assistant heroes in your towns, and take Horncrest (but leave it unoccupied, or put Duke Raven into the town garrison). Now when you cast Instant Recall, Anastasia and Ivan will just fly across the river! This sure beats all the other methods, which take so much time to complete!

For instance I took my Wizard bride and sent her to explore the underground. She wasted a lot of time moving around the winding passages and never even got halfway done by the time Ivan teleported to Horncrest and marched north to win the map by defeating Seamus in his capital.

Seamus is an inquisitor. He has excellent magic and might powers, and a large army. You are a knight and need an army to operate, so it is impossible for you to win this with your starting troops, or starting + modest sized reinforcements. Since I didn’t feel like shipping across troops from my two other castles to Horncrest, I sent Anastasia to take out Seamus instead. It was easy peasy.

Anastasia had over 2k skeletons, so it was one-chop-kill for any enemy. She also had tons of magical power.

In Heroes VII, Implosion is incredibly powerful because it doesn’t inflict damage by points. It inflicts damage by percentage of stack health. Also if you have Master Prime magic you can cast spells twice in a turn. So you can teleport skeletons over, giving them increased initiative at the same time because of your Teleport perk. Then you can clone the skeletons. Since I had that shadow perk, the shadow clones could survive the first 1 or 2 attacks. With 2 skeleton stacks per turn, killing the enemy in his own castle was easy.

Map finished in 5 weeks. I have no doubt that better players can do this in 3. You should aim to do it in 4 weeks or less, because otherwise there simply isn’t enough challenge on Heroic.

Campaign done! Now with most of the bugs fixed, it’s not too bad after all. Franchise will probably not die, and hopefully Limbic learns from this experience and gets a better job done with Heroes VIII.

[Alfalken]

Apart from Ivan, you start out with your cousin (or relative?) this guy who is commanding orc creatures on the far eastern side of the map. I’ll call him Duke Raven since I really didn’t bother to remember this character. Limbic hadn’t bothered to introduce this character beforehand, and suddenly just inserted him in this map.

Just wanna point out that Andras (yes, that's what he's called) is actually mentioned several times by name during the Orc Campaign. Kente (the Orc Advisor) brings him up and how he might want to help Ivan's cause because of his bloodline. Which causes quite an argument among your council.. then again, they argue about pretty much everything.

[Panda Tar]

Telepathically.

[cjlee]

I recently replayed the Dungeon campaign on Heroic, v2.2 patch (the last one).
Couldn't finish the campaign. Or at least, couldn't finish in the time I was willing to finish.

That's the problem.

The whole campaign was poorly designed, and after breezing through 3 maps without serious challenge (and no true boss opponent), suddenly you find yourself facing four boss opponents in this map. And each one is at level 30 with an army significantly bigger than yours.

With Dungeon versus neutrals, you get used to stupid behavior such as enemies advancing on you. That's awesome, because it allows you to use Dungeon's favorite tricks on them. Sometimes I would just run my Shrouded troops through the enemy, without even fighting them – they just died on their own thanks to Mephetic Scent. And of course when the enemy is in the middle of the battlefield, you can use your greater mobility and manuverability to do full flanking, and snowball that attack with multiple hits from everybody, since Dungeon can get no retaliation and no retaliation is rewarded with extra hits for your units.

But when there is a hero in charge of the enemy troops, the enemy plays differently. They don't even advance on you. Sometimes they even all defend with their backs to the wall, except for the ranged attackers. It is extremely difficult for Dungeon to fight an opponent like this. Even worse, the Shadow Image bug has worsened since I last played on version 1.7. I was at the point where I could summon a 2x stack, but computer seems to now regard that as a 2% stack. So what is the use of having a heap of spell points in Dark Magic? What is even the point of having Dark Magic? You think you can Agonize an enemy army with 40 Champion Units (and tons of other units) to death?

It is only when facing a high level opponent with plenty of troops that you realize how weak Dungeon really is. I really, really struggled.

The enemy had a very easy time killing my troops, since they had very low defense stats. I'd worked hard to improve the defense stats, but even so they were dropping like flies.

As I observed in my playthrough on Hard, the only way would have been to start fighting with an army that had enough hp to endure. But that would have meant waiting at least another few weeks.

This is the kind of poorly designed scenario where an experienced player can't make headway no matter how fast he is. It requires a certain amount of waiting for your creature generators to furnish you an army big enough to survive. That's boring.

I'm not finishing this scenario. I've always been against the 'press E nonstop' way of playing. (For those who don't understand, press E ends turn. Pressing E 28 times brings you to the next month.) Since in this scenario the boss opponents are static and you have two castles, press E enough times and you would always have an army that lets you beat the enemy easily.

OK, I'm done with H7 again. There are some Polish people trying to implement Conflux into the game, and I'm like, please no. I loved Conflux from H3, but you just can't have Conflux in H7. The balance would be even worse.

In H7 the elementals are at the level of an extra-strong Elite unit. Even being able to hire one air elemental, one water elemental, one earth and one fire elemental a week would be too much. Not to mention, you would not be able to field an entire lineup without tactics, since they are all big units.

[cjlee]

Deciding that I can't just leave things hanging, I went back and finished the scenario. It took me 2 more weeks, and I overran the enemy easily because...

It turns out you don't have to fight Wilhelm. I'd forgotten that from my first playthrough. Wilhelm has 50 Swordmasters and 250 Abbots and what not, but when you approach him, Malwen will attack you instead.

Malwen has 20 Black Dragons and 20 Hydras and similar other troops, but AI plays dungeon poorly against dungeon. She's magic, and my Vayaron is might. Magic works only when AI is capable of using it. I crushed her with a smaller army. Basically my Medusas went first, I teleported Hydras into the middle of her army, attacked twice with no retaliation, and won.

Fighting an enemy hero with a fully developed army is the real challenge. I didn't like being deprived of my climactic battle at all.

Maybe I'll come back to this website in another 6 months and see what some modders have done. At this point there is no way Heroes 8 will show up. Damage to fan goodwill is too severe already. Really don't think many people (apart from Hellegennes, whose command of logic eludes me) are going to put their money down to preorder Heroes 8.

[Steven Aus]

I play H4 Greatest Mod and Equilibris, and help test their maps and campaigns. I enjoy it, and that's all that matters to me. All the best to all.