Noir9090
Might & Magic Heroes VII
Sep 29, 2015
To put it shortly, if you've played previous parts of the series you got no real reason to play H7. The game shines in absolutely nothing. The game-play feels very mechanical and tiring. Already in my first map I started to use quick battles because I found myself bored and hating the battles which I used to love in past games. The AI is horrendous in this game, offering no challenge at all even on heroic(hardest difficulty). The battles in general will get harder, but only because they got more enemies which means more EXP so you level faster and after the start it actually becomes easier than easy games.

H7 skill-system is heavily based on H6 and I personally hate the optimization it brings. Every game you end up building your hero the exact same way(which you know since start of the match). Because how some classes are much superior compared to others it doesn't help to diversify game either as you will want to pick the good classes and heroes which are clear minority in the game. I loved in pre h6-games how you were forced to analyze and evaluate what skills you should pick for the situation. H7 has none of that because it's just general build, the game lacks situational abilities completely. The system also doesn't require you to think what to get because there are no requirements for abilities nor is there limit how many you can take per skill.

Magic system is yet another h6 feature. You are back to more classic approach on getting spells from magic guilds. Problem is that all schools have little bit of everything and at basic level most spells are just copies of each other. To make them any different you have to specialize in them via abilities. And to get more power to spells you have to learn other spell-schools which you have to do anyway because you can't master your school because of the new arcane system(learning high level spells requires 8 points and mastering single school only gets you 6). Even in general it doesn't feel like schools specialize in anything particular which is just sad, not to mention many iconic spells are also dearly missed.

Hero specializations are currently worst in the series. They are generic boring start bonuses that make you feel like you're playing nobody/anybody instead of being the mighty Kragh or whatever. The same bonuses are also copy-pasted all over and some copied from other places like buildings. They just simply leave you disappointed..

Unit abilities don't really do much better either. There is so much copy-paste mentality there it's not even funny. That doesn't get helped by the fact that units have pretty much 1-3 abilities so there being same abilities over and over makes units feel too similar. Which is even further hurting the game because units stats are kept with too small margin. All units cross the battle-field for example at turn two, the unit powers are roughly the same given their growth. Even in h6 units felt more distinctive and that by the way is not a compliment. This is partly because h7 decided to use the hated 3-tier system from h6(core/elite/champion). They did edit it adding powerful version to core and elite, but it's still a far cry from old 7-tier system which had a lot of variety.

The battle-system they copied from h6 which wasn't that good. They also lost many of the good parts like map objects and creature-placing to tower. They added flanking mechanic from Heroes Online to system which was a bad decision. In essence it means you get extra boost to damage when attacking from back/side. The result is that player either plays turtle so you can back-stab them(at least till you get near and then he does that to you first) OR it makes units waltz around each other going for back-stabs which looks absolutely idiotic. The flanking system would have been great addition as ability for some units like assasin, but when every unit just runs past enemy to go for their back it really breaks immersion.

The graphics of the game are also not top quality. H6 has better graphics, not to mention it had colors that made the game feel like it was placed in fantasy world. H7 uses completely grey washed out colors that make concrete wall look just about interesting. The games styles don't really mesh together either. There is the general graphics which is rather minimal, then unit designs which are completely over the top with all the extra spikes and decorations that shouldn't be there. And then there are the 2d town screens which are more like cartoony paintings. The graphics are just a real mish-mash of things(and a lot of the models are copied from h6 btw).

Overall the game just doesn't excel in anything. Having played h6 this doesn't really feel even new game with so much cannibalized from h6. It's really more like stand alone expansion to h6 kinda like colonization was to Civilization 4. It feels extremely simplified much like h6 and offers very little replayability. Frankly speaking the game just feels cheap and lacking for 2015 game.