Heroes 6 - Discussion

I wonder if anyone else feels the same way?

Well, many of my old-school gamer friends agree with me. And that says a lot for me.

I don't understand either, even against humans and necromancers, battles don't last more than 15 minutes (and that's against huge armies).

I'm not quite talking about that. I'm talking about the loss of dynamism in these battles. Previously, any mistake had its consequences (limited resurrection), and the damage of the units was much higher. As a result, the battles were more fast-paced.
But 6HoMM is built on the principle of "drag out the battle as long as possible" – medics, strong healing magic, incredibly powerful mass vampirism, tough units.
Previously, you could feel the tension, the significance of each move, the desire not to make a mistake (because every mistake meant huge losses, HoMM 3 didn't forgive).
A simple example - in 6, if tier 3 units (the strongest) attack tier 1 archers, they deal too little damage to them. In 3, they would simply crush these archers (weak archers, not titans), and that was right - you put the archers in a vulnerable position, you pay for it. Here, the archers take 4+ hits to the chest from creatures much stronger than them, stubbornly refusing to die. At the same time, these archers can be healed by a hero and units, which allows them to "tank" tier 3 super-units until the hero runs out of mana. In other words, the game forgives unacceptable mistakes (in this case, putting archers in a vulnerable position). How is this even possible? Is it normal?
And I just feel like falling asleep during these battles. Mistake? Half the archers died? Well, what, 1 healing spell - and they're all alive, heal@conquer further, without straining your brain.

great graphics, unlike the cartoonish fifth and 2D third, etc.

Yes, the execution of the 2D in the 3rd is the best. But I'm not talking about the execution of the graphics (I'm not a fan of the cartoonishness of the 5th), I'm talking about the graphical features that are not supported by the engine and the excessive pomposity. Consider, for example, the human units: a paladin in shining armor with a spear (VSL), a paladin VSL with a crossbow, a nun (wow, not a paladin VSL, a breakthrough!), a paladin on a shining white horse VSL, a shining golden thing (it's great to create a unit in a prequel that doesn't appear in the 5th part, don't you think? Although maybe they died out on the way to the 5th part, who knows), then - a paladin VSL with wings, called an angel. It's great when a tier 1 unit looks like a tier 3 unit, and all the other units are clones of each other, don't you think?

it's always like that, the second Shogun and the fifth Civilization were unplayable at first, now everything has been fixed.

Heh, I could play Civ normally. Although patches improved it a lot, that's true. But again - there weren't such terrible bugs as in HoMM6. And your "it's always like that" surprises me. Do you like playing such a raw product? Do you consider it normal? Do you consider yourself worthy of mediocrity? Wouldn't you like to give the developers a stronger kick so that they do everything "right" next time? After all, they can, Blizzard recently released SC2, it was polished and refined to the limit. HoMM6 is the most buggy game I've played in the last 5 years. Of course, I mean the release versions of the games.

attacking magic is really terrible, but general magic just saves the game, that's why I play almost only as mages.

You mean healing (and buffs/debuffs/disables). And it determines the dynamics of battles. Moreover, often you can't "break through" a unit with this healing. For example, a Kensai stands in the Naga's gate and simply chops up the enemy army, being healed by the hero and Naga priestesses every turn, with full health. Yes, it can be solved with a dispel (dispelling magic), but even the dispel is healed by target heals (the dispel has a cooldown), unless it's a unit dispel (light spirits are top-tier?).
P.S. I'm curious why the developers, in the process of simplifying the game, didn't go all the way and leave only one resource - gold and one unit with the same parameters but different models (as it was in the 2nd Warcraft). What, it's quite logical. And you don't have to think about balance.