Ubisoft's Latest Disaster for Me

[wimfrits]

We Dutch have a saying that roughly translates as 'done the French way' which means doing things quick and dirty with low quality.

French cars are definitely my favorite though

I'm still considering to try H7 one day, but reading your experiences so far is cooling that urge

[cjleeagain]

Wimfrits, your skill with the HOMM game is well known.

If a very average player like me can find Heroes 7 boring on heroic, I don't think you're going to get any challenge out of this game unless you play it a certain way.

I suggested that way of playing this game several years ago, and I still endorse it:

-Don't expect that much challenge from fighting enemy heroes.
-Treat every battle with the neutrals as a puzzle to be solved.
-Due to the lack of total-disabling spells like Blind, Hypnotize and Forgetfulness (the H7 equivalents like Fog Shroud and Stasis work very differently and cost a lot of mana), and the sheer weakness of spells like Regeneration and Resurrection which don't help conserve units that much, it's actually quite difficult to fight many battles without taking losses that mount up over time.

Also, the game throws in a bunch of challenges by having battlefields in different sizes and different mixes of neutrals.

So it is far from easy to fight neutrals that are rated Severe or Deadly. You may enter a battle as a might hero expecting to charge all the way and take out the enemy before they get their turn in, then to your horror the battlefield turns out to need 3 turns to cross. All the tricks you're used to using in H2, H3, H5 are useless.

That said, I am now on the last map of the Trial By Fire campaign. Ivan's campaign, map 2. The AI has not gotten any smarter, but the mapmakers (presumably) recognized their crappy AI will always lose to a human player, so instead the mission objective is to stop the enemy from destroying mines. If you look at Maltz's walkthrough, Maltz had a tough time. I am also finding it pretty hard because I have to run all over the place, there's no time or money to reinforce, the enemy heroes are destroying every mine they can find.

[Pol]

Well, the only thing which I can recommend is to playing it modded or with certain custom maps. This is most "up to date" what this game can offer at its best.

As your remarks about the spells, with TsoA you will have these back: Bless, Curse, Animate Dead. I would think that the main reason for spell supplements in this game are in weak AI.

[cjleeagain]

OK, just to update my progress with this game... (sharing my experiences which are different from Maltz's)

Human/ Ivan campaign, map 2.

just beat Svea, that level 43 Stormcaller with that mighty chain lightning. I couldn't help fighting her as she rushed me.

Maltz recommends in his walkthrough that you send Ivan West and Bart South. I did the opposite but it doesn't seem to make a difference in difficulty.

Maltz does recommend that you buy Shantri Titans, which are really awesome. There are actually many mercenary dwellings to choose from though, so even if you miss the Titan shop there are other mercenaries you could have bought when wandering around the landscape.

Since you start on the NE of the map, all your enemies will come from the SW or SSW anyway.

Svea comes from the SW, and she was about to take out my Bart. I hadn't been looking for the Shantri titan mercenary shop that Maltz recommended, but because Svea was chasing me, I fled West (so that she would chase me west and not go East to my starting town). So I chanced across the Shantri titan shop right at the end of Month 1 with Svea less than a day's ride away. There were 20 Titans for purchase! I bought the Titans and counterattacked.

And now the AI demonstrates its total stupidity! With my Titan-enhanced forces and Bart's impressive build (he could cast Prime, Air, Earth and Fire magic all at Master level), I would have won anyway. But what made winning a lot easier, was because Svea cast chain lighting on her own forces!

You see, the computer is obsessed with Valkyries and Black Bears. It always attacks them. And I know this. So there is no point keeping your Valkyries amongst your forces, boosting morale. They won't live very long anyway.

First lightning strike, Svea took out all my black bears. That was expected. During map 1 of the Ivan campaign (when the AI took control of the Fortress units in Ivan's army) I got to see firsthand the extent of the AI's obsession with black bears.

Knowing my Valkyries were next to die, I had sent my Valkyries straight into the middle of Svea's forces. Now I wasn't expecting the AI to cast chain lightning on my Valkyries. I was just going to invite the enemy to attack the Valkyries and therefore suffer fire damage from their fire shields. But Svea blasted my Valkyries with chain lightning right when they were in the middle of the enemy! Apart from the Valkyries, I didn't have any other units around - so all the other victims were Svea's own forces!

[cjleeagain]

OK, just great. Final battle of the campaign, and I can't win. Maltz's walkthrough said it was easy, and most Heroes 7 hero battles have indeed been easy. But this one is extreme. My Ivan is at level 38. He probably could reach level 42 if I killed everything on the map and levelled twice at the Dragon shrines. The enemy is at level 42 and seems to have a whole lot of perks and infinite scrolls of chain lightning, because even after reaching mana zero she still could cast chain lightning nonstop. Even with 40 Shantri titans I was getting decimated. (Her defence is 70).

And there seems to be various spell power reduction artifacts on this hero, so my spells are functioning at a third their normal power.

It's bizarre how many effects and perks could take effect on the same hero.

[wimfrits]

No Valkyries or Black Bears for this one?

[cjleeagain]

nope, last battle is between Ivan and that female dwarf (should be Aislaug). Ivan leads a human army. (My other battles had been fought by the dwarf Bart). Anyway Aislaug's stats are ridiculous. Way higher than H5's Demon Sovereign.

I feel irritated even typing this. For storyline purposes, I find it incredible that what is supposed to be the mentally ill criminal leader of a ragtag bunch of dwarven outlaws, is more powerful than any other final boss in Heroes of Might and Magic history.

When my entire stack of 30+ Shantri titans can only kill a few Kobold Pathfinders per shot... have no clue how Maltz won this battle. He played on Hard but it can't be that much easier than Heroic.

[cjleeagain]

Okayyy

just great. I went back in to fight that last battle vs Aslaug. This time I used instant reinforcement to get some more troops for my Ivan. But when I entered combat, I had a snail-like battle. Just can't explain, but everything moves ultra slow.

So I quit game and went back in yet again.

This time everything worked as expected. Won fairly easily and by a huge margin.

I hadn't even reinforced by that much. Maybe increased the size of my army by 20%. I don't think I actually played any better. Certainly didn't exactly use genius tactics or some ultra wonderful artifact that turned the battle. I have the feeling there was something buggy about the way the runes were working in my battle against Aslaug first time around, which I had found so impossible. No matter how awesome overlapping runes are and even if the enemy has 70 Defence, 19 Swordmasters should have been able to kill more than 3 Defenders in a single attack.

So this final battle was still kind of a let down. According to the storyline, Aslaug committed suicide rather than let Ivan defeat her. WTF, why do you set her up as some final boss then? Ubisoft has no clue how to make a story. And I feel pretty sure my first run-though of the final battle was bugged. Aslaug also did overlapping runes this time around, but I was able to kill her forces much more quickly. So it wasn't a great feeling to finish this game. I have no clue how much of my final victory was due to the game being buggy. If computer can over-calculated the power of Aslaug's defence and her runes in one run-through, computer can also under-calculate. So how did I win? Fairly, or unfairly?

I haven't deleted H7 yet. But I will definitely have this game permanently deleted pretty soon.

[Panda Tar]

Man, I believe you need a after valiantly facing this game.
And a , for the same reason.

[cjleeagain]

Maltz is the one who deserves praise!

If this game is boring to me on Heroic, it must be doubly boring to Maltz on Hard. And even more of an aggravation to revisit when writing a walkthrough.

And just think about what I was saying. It was a dull game, gameplay wise, until the final battle, which I couldn't win first time around because it was bugged.
Then on my second try, the battle got bugged differently (ultra slow movements where it took 5 seconds for the city's catapults to hit my units).
And then on my third try, I won easily as expected - with challenge level on par with previous hero battles. Only to find that the storyline was so stupid and anti-climactic. This is the FIRST TIME in my entire gaming life, that I've defeated a final boss who, as the storyline claims, wasn't actually killed by my hero but by her own hand.

In these pandemic times, Ubisoft should leverage on its awesome name to make sanitary products. They shouldn't be in the business of making games.

[BTW you may have noticed my qualification above that it was a 'dull game, gameplay wise'. This is because Ubisoft's mapmakers have hit upon a genius idea of upping the challenge - by using timers! They're not making the game more challenging by having better AI or more well scripted or designed heroes. This final map of this campaign was rated 5/7 in difficulty by Maltz for very good reason. The map is huge with many mines. You are far from the enemy, and they have 6 starting heroes in total with 5 moving heroes. Their mission is to destroy 25 mines, so you are under serious time pressure. Without this timer, I would rate the map 2/7 in difficulty. So now I've realized; you can do the same to all Ubisoft's products. Throw in artificial time limits to increase the challenge level, because the AI sucks too much otherwise.]

[cjleeagain]

OK, I decided to replay a few of the official campaigns. Now I am at the second map for Sylvan, that map with lots of islands and enemy orc heroes.

Unplayable.

Map kept having a strange error never encountered in H1-5 gaming. The mouse would slow down a lot. Yet when I did alt-tab and minimized the H7 window, mouse was instantly back to normal in my other, non-Heroes programs.

Restarted and restarted to no avail.

This game is really so full of bugs.

[Panda Tar]

There are "few" issues with performance.

[HodgePodge]

Hi wimfrits.

[cjleeagain]

There are "few" issues with performance.

Panda Tar, where did you get that quote? is it from some Ubisoft spokesman?

It's like you were attacking 'few' Titans with one week's production of troops, and they turned out to be Legions!

[wimfrits]

Hi dear HodgePodge

Ubisoft should leverage on its awesome name to make sanitary products

Wipe your ass with Ubisoft.

[jeff]

Wimfrits and HodgePodge on the forum on the same day; almost like old times. Hope you both have a great year.

[Panda Tar]

Panda Tar, where did you get that quote? is it from some Ubisoft spokesman?

And still, people will keep feeding them with pre-ordering frenesi and the lets-launch-half-a-product-because-we-can-try-and-fix-later policy.

[cjleeagain]

Has Ubisoft launched more half-baked products? I keep hearing that Assassin's Creed is good, but actually Ubisoft is hardly ever associated with quality products. I don't really hear rave reviews around.

[Panda Tar]

Not that I'm aware of, actually. Haven't really got my attention towards Ubi. But I often see good reviews from Assassin's Creed games; but all in all, with the frequency these games from this francise are being released, I wonder if they really feel refreshing, or just different scenery, but sort of the same all the time.

Although, one could say there's some convenient hush-hush these days, specially because some really anticipated games have been screwing around. The spotlight this time is reserved for Cyberbunk 2077! The fiasco is so adamant that other companies may even do some bad job with their products and still look marginally good in comparison.

[Pol]

Ubisoft cherish Assasin's Creed or Anno, these are (some of) their flagships. Not like MM which they simply bought, to complete portfolio.

Cyberbunk 2077? Hardly a fiasco out of console market. They sold over 13mil copies. That's something what Ubisoft must envy at least a little.