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I played it and remained extremely dissatisfied. I really wanted to like the game. I would have liked to write a good review. But I cannot.
What is the point of all the good things in the game if the game itself is unfinished?
An incredible number of own serious bugs, an impossibly stupid AI, and periodic crashes ruin all the pleasure from the game. It seems the Campaigns walkthrough wasn't tested at all.
So, the start of the game. On the third attempt, the game finally launched and... my hopes of seeing something new and interesting were shattered. Loading times that exceed all acceptable limits, and the amount of memory it consumes, already didn't bode well, but I bravely continued. The first shock was watching frozen 3D models with gaping mouths from which saliva seemed ready to flow, but other than the blazing torches, animation was completely absent. Fine—I decided—this isn't the game itself, I need to move further. After launching the first map and playing for 15 minutes, at first I thought I had been mistakenly sold something else—some old, slightly reworked heroes or an alpha version of the game. But no! As it turned out, this is Heroes VII. This is exactly how a game in 2015 should look according to the developers and publisher: with static and poorly drawn 2D images (Castle, unit models). The implementation of combat mechanics animation for units and especially spells also proved to be very weak. In a fit of rage, I closed the game and switched to GalCiv3. Having cooled down a bit the next day and convincing myself that I don't love Heroes for the graphics, I reconciled myself to its ugliness. I continued playing and surprises awaited me. At first, I appreciated the idea of strengthening flank and rear attacks, the new "wheel" character progression, and the ability to hire support units, but then everything went sideways again. Artifacts refused to work, the AI finally showed itself to be a complete noob, characters made strange instantaneous movements across the map on their own initiative, and a bunch of other incomprehensible glitches occurred—such bugginess can only be seen in alpha or beta versions, but certainly not in releases. Fighting through these bugs and cherishing hope for a new patch (which, by the way, only partially fixed the situation), I still tried to enjoy the game, but I was finished off by the final and decisive bug—attempts to load even one save after restarting the game led only to it crashing to the desktop. [/B]
Now in more detail:
1) From the very beginning, you can feel the budget constraints; it seems they economized on everything;
2)10/05/2016 Support for the game has ended.No one will be fixing errors anymore. Bugs will remain bugs. The AI will continue to lag, and the plot will continue to put you to sleep.
3) You can easily spend several hours on a chapter only to find out that quests cannot be turned in—for example, because the army you were supposed to attack passed through textures and cannot be attacked.
4) But enough about the Campaigns. After attempts to complete them, I tried the "skirmish" mode against computer opponents. The first hour was interesting, but then it became clear that the entire AI strategy on the global map can be described in one phrase: "imitation of own activity." The AI started pumping out eight heroes without armies who happily and aimlessly ran from one captured mine to another, while heroes with armies carefully avoided fighting neutral monsters.
As a result: the game is currently unplayable in principle. Which is a pity, because the economic system, combat system, and progression look quite worthwhile. I have a feeling that if there weren't so many bugs, it could easily get scores of 7/10 or even 8/10, but considering HOW unfinished it turned out to be, it only deserves 3/10. I want to address Ubisoft and Limbic: if you cannot make a normal game on time, then either push back the release date or sell the franchise rights to those who know how to make games. It is simply a shame what you have turned the series into.
5) There is no balance. Not in creatures, not in hero development, not in Castle development—nowhere.
6) The innovations are botched; yes, there are good ideas that have not been brought to an acceptable level, and there are outright fails.
7) The plot is naive, stupid, simple, and boring. An interesting lore was just starting to emerge in H6, but in H7 it was turned into trash. I don't believe in the realism of events; blatant sloppiness in the development of the saga.
8) Bug upon bug. Either a hero cannot move, or action points appear from nowhere. Big problems hitting targets; some textures get in the way. Artifacts fall through textures. Either a squad cannot move, or abilities don't work, or spells calculate negative damage, etc., not to mention freezes and crashes.
9) The situation reminded me of Disciples 3, but will Ubisoft be just as honest and release a full game? I doubt it.
GIVE THE RIGHTS TO THE UNIVERSE to someone who will value it! I would love to see how Blizzard or Larian Studios would have implemented this game. Or give the developers as much time and money as they need to work until an acceptable result is achieved! Change the writers, hire testers, fix the bugs, polish the balance! Then I'd be ready to pay 2k for the game and 1k each for quality expansions.
10) Terrible interface; it is inconvenient, unresponsive, and overloaded. For example, if resurrecting undead after a battle in previous parts happened in one click or automatically, now you have to spend 5-20 seconds because when dragging raised undead, you can accidentally click the mouse on creature buttons scattered in all corners, which are completely out of place there.
11) If an enemy is standing in wall debris or smoke during battle, it's almost impossible to aim at them; several minutes have to be spent just finding a spot where the mouse turns into a sword/arrow. Terribly clunky combat; before and after creature actions, the game lags for 2-3 seconds. Auto-battle suffers colossal losses where it's impossible to suffer them, and on top of that, auto-battle is unavailable in battles with bot heroes—even if you have thousands of creatures and the enemy has a couple of dozen, please spend your time.
12) The cutscenes are awful. 2D cities without a single animation in 2015 is simply laughable and sad; remember the stunning cities of the 5th part at the time of release—actually, even in the 3rd part they look more alive.
13) Technical problems. I wouldn't say my hardware or provider are completely awful, but it alarms me that sometimes the game extremely hinders my attempt to play Multiplayer—when trying to load a save, it calmly crashes, and when trying to join someone in an online game—silence....
14) The game lacks map detail; they simply lack details. Locations look like labyrinths with mobs and loot. The same-day videos in the Campaigns are disgusting; how could this even be allowed for release? And the plot and characters are dull and uninteresting. The city progression tree became ugly and non-informative, unlike the fifth part. Speaking of the fifth part—there are enough textures/models/icons in this game that were simply borrowed from there. The devs just didn't bother with such trifles. And what struck me most is that there are only 10 (!!!) maps for online play; apparently, others will be in DLCs (for an extra fee, of course).
15) In non-story modes, there is one big problem—the opponents. The AI doesn't know how to handle troops, doesn't know how to gauge its own strength, and doesn't know how to play. Sometimes it misses resources; sometimes it completely forgets to make a move. It loves to spend a round finishing off two skeletons when it could have halved a vampire squad with one hit. If you trust the computer to lead boring battles and use quick combat, it will make the same mistakes. Of course, one can always argue that people don't play these games against the computer—but even after patches, online Multiplayer continues to ruin parties with desync errors. Only hotseat remains, which fortunately exists.
16) Technically, Heroes VII is a complete catastrophe, and we aren't just talking about minor errors. Once, I completed the mission objectives, apparently in the wrong order (though what order can be "wrong" if you are presented with a random list of tasks?), a necessary plot item broke, and the mission became impossible. Another time something similar happened on the first map of the Academy Campaigns: an altar that was supposed to remove a field blocking progress simply didn't work. More than once the game froze in battle after one of my squads attacked: neither I nor the opponent could do anything.
17) The main problem with all recent "Heroes" (6, 7) is not that they refuse to follow canon (to hell with canon, since we're at it), but that far less time was spent on them than should have been. Maybe the sixth part would be loved if it didn't work so haphazardly. Maybe the seventh wouldn't seem like a monster made of scraps and sticks if Limbic had its own clear vision and the ability to properly allocate limited resources.
18) Why does the game have such a long campaign if it suffers from the same problems until the very end? Why use Unreal Engine 3, which is completely unsuitable for global strategies, if in story scenes motionless models with open mouths are used, and maps look worse than in the sixth part, even though they use half of the same materials? Judging by the city design and promo images, Limbic has good artists, so why not make small but concentrated and stylish two-dimensional "Heroes" in the spirit of UbiArt games?
19) Heroes VII is a mess. It has no look of its own (only models and music snatched from different games), no core (only timid attempts to do it "like before"), nothing truly special. To make this series be taken seriously again, all that was needed: one good, balanced, finished game that knows what it wants from life. Heroes VII, however, gets lost among the demands of everyone it strives to please and, in the end, succeeds in nothing at all.
20) Summary:
this is not a breakthrough, and this is not work on the mistakes of the sixth part; this is not a continuation of a legendary series; it is an attempt to again cash in on an audience that believes in miracles. We've been screwed over again, and I hope that the rights to this series go to other developers who love good games more than their stuffed pockets.
