Heroes of Might and Magic Retrospective: Heroes 6
One last game before I close this series off. And don't worry, when I mentioned that there were problems with the writing in Heroes V, trust me, I'll be making an extra post for that.
The sixth Heroes game was released on October 13, 2011. Like with Heroes IV, this game made some changes to the series's core gameplay, and like with that game, some of them were fine on paper but not in execution, so in my mind, I tend to think of this game as "Heroes IV if it had a budget." Then again, it had a lot of problems that even I couldn't ignore or forgive, much like the rest of the fanbase.
First thing anyone will notice is that for whatever reason, Ubisoft decided it'd be a good idea for the Might and Magic name be more prominent, making it come before the main title, meaning this game is officially known as Might and Magic: Heroes VI rather than Heroes of Might and Magic VI. It's a minor annoyance with me, since I can't help but call it Heroes of Might and Magic VI by instinct, since I've grown up calling those games Heroes of Might and Magic. I believe there was even one occasion where a sticker on the bottom of the box referred to it as Heroes of Might and Magic VI instead of its proper title. That got a chuckle out of me.
Two positive things I can say right off the bat is that the music is great as it always is (though I couldn't help by notice that several of the tracks came from earlier games in an attempt to pander to nostalgia rather than trying to make original tunes), and this is indeed to prettiest Heroes game I've played to date. Now only the rest of the game was as polished.
The game's most publicized problem is the "always need to be online" requirement. I am a single-player gamer by nature, and I prefer to play Heroes games by myself or only with close friends and family, so I wasn't exactly amused when that was a requirement to play a game that I'd be playing by myself anyway. This causes the additional problem that, if the servers were down, the game would be unplayable, plain and simple. The next game may have some of the DRM requirement, but at least with that one you only have to do that once and then you'd be free to play it offline if you wished (at least that's the intention). Speaking of which, this was the first game made use of Ubisoft's own online game service, Uplay. When I started up the game for the first time, I had to scramble to make an account, with a rather silly name being used for the account, and like I said, I never played online so I have no idea how reliable it was. At least having it allows me access the Heroes VII voting system on its website and Ubisoft's online shop.
The biggest problem with this game are the bugs. I don't personally recall encountering very many bugs or issues while playing the game, but many more did, to the point that many more patches were released during the game's lifetime. I swear, almost every time I booted up the game, a new patch was required for me to download. And then when I recently tried to get the game to boot up (this is before I got my new machine; the reason I haven't reinstalled it is because it doesn't have a CD drive and I have the physical version of the game), the Uplay launcher would keep crashing. It's almost like the game didn't want me to go back to review it.
One of the big gameplay changes that this game introduced came from their puzzle spin-off, Clash of Heroes: namely, the creature hierarchy was now changed into Core (1-3), Elite (4-6), and Champion (7) tiers. I actually kind of liked this change, since it actually allowed for the normally very weak creatures in the first few tiers to actually toughen up a bit.
A different change that didn't sit so well with me was that the amount of resources was reduced from wood, ore, gold, mercury, gems, sulfur, and crystal to just wood, ore, gold, and gems. While this idea sounds nice in theory, it only causes problems when you're constantly short of a particular resource, namely gems in my experience, when you're trying to build up your town and recruit Champion creatures, especially since whenever I played, there were very few gem mines or even gems to find on the ground. As a result, I was usually ill-equipped to deal with enemies (though that could just be me being a suck player). It didn't help that the enemies usually had upgraded creatures or built towns in comparison to what I had, making it clear that the AI was clearly cheating, and this was when I played on the easy setting! With the other games, you could at least trade other resources you found to get what you needed, but that was much more difficult in this game. Thankfully with Heroes VII they're going back to having the normal number of resources, so maybe I wasn't the only one who had that problem.
A new mechanic I was neutral on was your towns now being the center to a radius in the surrounding area as the "area of control," which pretty much around for the reason that you don't have to claim or reclaim mines and dwellings if you capture the town in the area. While your enemy no longer has to go the effort of capturing your things if they capture your town, you also don't have to worry much about reclaiming your flagged locations if you get your town back, which was the likely intention. There are some town structures that have an effect based on the area of control, but the purpose behind it was mostly to save the player time that would otherwise be wasted.
Hero development was changed too. Not only is there a Blood and Tear mechanic, which influences your class depending on whether your in-game behaviour is more aggressive or defensive respectively, but spells are now considered skills that you learn from level up. The main idea behind that was that it would eliminate the need for mage guilds to be built into towns and the likelihood of not getting a certain spell from the mage guild, but it puts more emphasis on level ups than before if you want to get a particular spell, made worse by how some of them require a class that's available through Blood or Tears points, such as Implosion requiring Blood points or how one faction will have no access to a particular element (such as the Inferno not having access to Light magic). Much like with Heroes IV, your character changes classes based on their skills, but like in that game, you can't switch back to a previous class if you go from one side to the other. Given that some of the classes have abilities that are much more desirable than the other might have to offer, such as Confessors (Tears) having Resurrection over Inquisitors (Blood) getting Word of Light. Furthermore, racial abilities have changed to useable in combat only and require a gauge to be filled, generally providing a bonus to some aspect of the faction's fighting style, such as the Haven having a method of rendering damage to a target stack null and void, while the Inferno has Gating in reinforcements like the last game did.
Oddly enough, there were only five factions available in the vanilla game's release, and while four of them were the same as usual, the fifth was the first truly original faction since Heroes III: the aquatic Sanctuary, home of the Asian-based naga, who excell with water and one-on-one combat. As a result, it was the faction that I used the most when I still played the game, and I wouldn't mind them coming back in a future release. As expected from a game that had issues requiring patching, the balancing wasn't exactly great: the Inferno got the short end the stick in terms of creatures and creature abilities while the Necropolis had too many perks (such as their creatures, being undead in nature, having a lot of immunities from things like poison and mind control, and resistance to water). (I can't help but notice in the Ubisoft continuity, the necropolis seems to be getting too much attention and exposure: a prominent hero in the Heroes V expansion and in Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, them making it into the roster for V, VI, and VII when they weren't even around for the first game, and the overall protrayal as an anti-heroic faction when they're normally supposed to be evil, but that could just be my pet-peeve and annoyance at them getting the spotlight at the cost of everything else talking.)
The plot is centered around five royal siblings who separate thanks to circumstances and end up within the different factions. (I don't think the writers realized that since all of the siblings are from the Haven faction, the Mighty Whitey trope is in effect.) The scenarios can be played in any order before leading up to the final map, where the hero of your choice goes in to confront the final threat. The Blood and Tears mechanic changes some of the dialogue and even impacts what your final scenario will be, so there is at least an incentive to play the campaign again.
There was only one expansion pack made for VI, though there were two mini-expansions of sorts that just added unrelated storylines to play. The expansion itself, Shades of Darkness, covered the story of the Dark Elves' beginnings in the underground and what drove them to pacts with demon's to survive underground. As such, they're the faction that got added, as well as some new artifacts and a new neutral creature being added. I never got to play the expansion pack (namely that it was never at the Future Shop and I didn't have my credit card at the time), so I wouldn't know exactly how much it and the other additions added to the game.
As I said with Heroes IV, Heroes VI is not a bad game by any means, but it's dragged down by numerous issues. We know Ubisoft is willing to listen to its fanbase, especially with Heroes VII having had a voting system in place for several of its features. Let's hope they're willing to respond to whatever the fans will have to say once it comes out to help avoid a repeat of what happened with VI, because if that happens, the fans will lose their patience, and it'd be a shame to see the games end on that note.