Might and Magic: Heroes VI: An Honest Opinion

So, in my anticipation of all the big stuff releasing over the next little while: Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Soul Calibur V dropped yesterday, Kingdoms of Amalur next Tuesday, (February 7th, if you're keeping track), the Vita launch - you know, the big stuff - I decided to fill the time by playing smaller games. One of these smaller games happened to be Might and Magic: Heroes VI, a turn-based strategy game developed by Black Hole entertainment, that I downloaded off Steam. Now, like The Binding of Isaac, Heroes VI has been out for a while, but given my fixation on triple-A titles, it's not something I was really paying attention to when it came out. In fact, I'll tell you a secret: I've never played a Might and Magic game before. Yes, I've heard of them, but never actually delved into them. Here's another secret: I don't play a lot of turn-based strategy games. That makes this game a really odd choice for me to download, I know, but the reviews about it were mostly favourable, so I decided it might be worth giving it a whirl. And a whirl I gave it.


Since I was going into this series blind, the first thing I was curious about was how the game's story would play out. Was it a direct continuation of Heroes V, whose story I wouldn't understand because I'd never played its progenitor? Well, I can't say for sure. You see, since I'd never played a Might and Magic game before, I decided to judge the game's story based on itself, instead of how it fit into the wider lore of the series. That meant not looking up what had happened in the previous games, and simply playing this one. Now, at the time, that seemed a perfectly fine idea. What I didn't realize, though, was how much I was going to dislike the way the story is presented. There are elements of the story that are presented through cinematics: the opening, pre-menu cinematic was actually pretty cool, but there are other story elements that are presented in flat dialogue sections that simply feature a box of text and character portraits superimposed over the map you're about to play on. To me, that simply isn't good story telling. If the entire game was like that, it would be tolerable. Fancy cinematics aren't always needed to tell a good story. But the fact that they have some cinematics makes the text box thing additionally jarring. Couple that with the fact that the voice-acting in the game is somewhat flat, and it just doesn't make for an engaging tale. The content of the story could make for a very interesting game; something about a soul trapped in a sword, a war, archangels flying around trying to make everything right again, people dying, and what have you. But, again, it just wasn't presented in a way that managed to hook me, and I actually only have a very limited idea of what was going on while I was playing. And no, I didn't make it all the way through. There are several different campaigns to play through, and while that would probably be something fans of the series or turn-based strategy games would be fairly happy about, for me, it just meant there were parts of the game I wasn't going to see.

Above: A rearing horse upset with its lack of screen time.

What about the gameplay that supports this story that I wasn't really engaged by? Well, it's pretty standard turn-based strategy fare, from what I was able to tell. You start on a world map with a hero army and (sometimes), a friendly city, and then you proceed to build up your armies while exploring the world map, looking for enemy settlements, friendly units to recruit, resources to collect, etc., etc. It's all very top-downy, as anyone who has played a turn-based strategy game would expect, and anyone who hasn't could see by looking at screenshots. I think it's here that my biggest problem with the genre is: I just don't find this a particularly engaging mechanic of gameplay. If they were to ax that system, and opt for a more Final Fantasy Tactics-y system, I think I would have enjoyed the game a lot more. That doesn't actually make any sense to me, since real-time strategy games use a similar method, but I enjoy them a lot more than TBS games. Don't ask me why, I don't know. There's enough similarities between the two genres that enjoying one should, (in theory), equal at least a limited enjoyment of the other, but I found Heroes VI just too ... dense. There's a lot to be conscious of. You've got your hero's level, which directly affects the strength of the troops in his army, but not your other friendly armies, resources to watch, cities to manage, and a world map to navigate, and all this has to be dealt this before you even get to the meat of the game, which is, of course, the battles.

Here, go explore with your aforementioned neglected horse... I'm sure that's just a bit awkward.

Here, go explore with your aforementioned neglected horse. I'm sure that's just a bit awkward...
But then, you finally get to fight things, and like the world exploration, it's a fairly familiar system, even to someone with only limited exposure to TBS games in the past, like me. Your troops line up against the enemies troops, your hero stands at the back of the line, unable to move, but with some abilities to help in combat nonetheless, and you proceed to... well, be strategical. Enemies retaliate if you attack them with a melee unit and don't kill them, your ranged units can't move and attack in the same turn (at least not that I found), and your hero can only preform their actions before any of the other troops on your side. So the idea, I assume, is that you have to think about the conflicts you're in before you start moving around and hitting things, like a sort of chess match. The thing is, I found the game to be fairly lacking in the 'need strategy to advance' department. Yes, I admitted that I didn't get very far into the game, but the bit I did play, I got by just by shooting things with my crossbow units, and then running up and wailing on them with my sentry units, occasionally using a priest(ess?) to do a little healing, and make sure they didn't get clawed apart by the demons that they were fighting. Fairly limited, strategy-wise. Yes, it's perfectly acceptable for the game to get truly difficult later on, but give me some hint at the start as to where it's headed. Even at the start of the game, I shouldn't be able to win every battle using the TBS equivalent of the 'mash the confirm button in a turn-based RPG,' system of play. I can only assume that, with five different campaigns to progress through, the difficulty curve is fairly lax. Maybe the game gets really difficult as you near the end, but I don't want to play for 12 hours just to encounter a challenge. It doesn't have to be there from the get-go, but some indication of it should be there from the opening moment.

You can figure out the unit types by yourself. I gave up on that, too.

Altogether, although this 'honest opinion' may seem silly to some, that's really my entire experience with the game: a short run followed by a dismissive hand wave and a seat on the sidelines. Overall, I just wasn't having any fun with it, and that is the only reason to keep playing a game. I've read some 'professional' reviews that praise the changes Might and Magic: Heroes VI made to the series' mechanics, and how it's a fairly robust TBS game, but since I'm not a fan of the series, nor a connoisseur of the genre, neither of these things mean diddly to me. If you're a fan of the series, or of TBS games in general, I suppose that's enough for me to tell you to at least give it a try. But if you're not a fan of either the game or the genre, and just think it looks interesting, I'd say pass on it. If you're looking for an entry-point into the genre, I'd recommend looking around some more. There has to be a TBS game out there that would be a better starting point. That's my honest opinion, anyway.