Might & Magic Heroes VI Preview

Games.on.net is the latest publication to offer some hands-on impressions of Black Hole Entertainment’s Might & Magic Heroes VI, and they do it with this brief piece. Here’s a sampling:

Skill choices and trees for heroes are almost painfully dense with options, which should put paid to anybody’s complaints about a potential (dumbing down) of the series. Even if you decide to focus your Hero around just Might, for example, that still offers him the choice of being a Might Hero who provides mass passive buffs, or a Might Hero who specialises in redeploying and rushing his units before the enemy can move, or even a Might hero who does nothing but demolish castle walls for fun and profit – and that barely scratches the surface of the combinations you could create. Yes, the amount of collectible resources has been slashed from seven to four (wood, gold, crystal and ore) but overall the game maintains a good level of strategy and isn’t the sort of game you can just spam your way through quickly (although an optional auto-resolve feature for combats lets you avoid some of the more tiresome and unnecessary ones, thankfully).

Let’s talk DRM: everybody’s favourite hot-button topic when it comes to Ubisoft lately, and one that has left its mark somewhat on this game. While you can play offline and the game won’t punish you (overtly) for doing so, the meta-game network called the (Conflux) will certainly make your game more enjoyable if you’re online to connect to it. The biggest way this will frustrate you is in the Dynasty Bonuses: the longer you play the more your Hero accumulates Dynasty bonuses including artifacts, weaponry and passive starting buffs, which unfortunately can only be used if you’re online and jacked into the Conflux. The game is still eminently playable without doing so, but being rewarded at the end of a mission with a sweet Dynasty artifact and then being told you can’t have it next mission because you’re playing offline is enough to elicit an exasperated sigh.