Every part of this game is clearly made with love. The artwork is beautiful. Seeing wavy pixels of smoke washing up out of a recently abandoned battlefield never gets old. On top of that is the astounding soundtrack. There's very few games like this that I'll boot up just to hear a specific faction's theme music while I do other things. Overall, each faction caters well to the playstyle that feels right for it. The only warning I'll give you is to keep your AI games to at max 4 factions. Tried six and the wait times in between my turns made my brain hurty. Then again I'm very impatient.
I have played for several hours thus far after getting the game yesterday. I am a life long fan and player of Heroes 3, played probably over a thousand hours in that game so far. And I gotta say, where other Might and Magic Heroes titles failed me, this game delivers.
It is still in early access and I am not up to date with how development goes, I hope they finish it because so far I am very impressed. Music, speed, stability, interface, factions, graphics, mechanics, the game is already well balanced it seems, we get four factions so far, I prefer the Rana swamp faction. I love the rustic aesthetic.
I wish they improved several details like I am still not sure how buildings influence one another and why I still cant get my dragons despite having built everything else. Skill and research trees are also very unclear to understand right now, but it all works, I just dont understand how it is all connected yet.
Best luck to developers. This game works, looks, plays and feels the worthy successor to Heroes 3.
And is also it's own product I really really enjoy ! :) 5/5 already.
Battles look terrible: units never stop moving. When you have several units meeting in the middle, it's a swirling, twitching, waving green&blue mess. Often, there are 2-3 enchantments on those units and every spell adds adds a passive animation to the unit. If it's a siege, you'll see burning stuff on the ground and Gladiator-style fireballs falling from the sky.
There is NO setting to disable idle unit animations or idle passive spell animations.
Normally games look *better* in motion than still. This game is the opposite.
Don't let anyone gaslight you by saying "oh, you don't like pixel art". Pixel art is not inherently unreadable and messy. There's HoMM2, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Noita, Eternal Daughter, Shovel Knight, Spelunky(freeware), Eador:Genesis, Hero's Hour. Really old games like Master of Magic had crude sprites and blocky look, but they had only a few colors available so everything was vibrant and clear.
I'm substracting *two* stars for how the game looks in practice, especially on battlefields.
Lots of audio noise too. Every time mouse goes over something interactive, you hear a slight tick.
It's a strategy game, but it doesn't display the tech tree for buildings anywhere! There's no graph. Imagine you're choosing a building to construct and you select Castle. It doesn't say you'll need Quarry to upgrade it. You select Lumber Mill. It doesn't say it lets you upgrade Troubadours. You've paid for Castle for upgraded knights. They now cost extra resource and it wasn't mentioned anywhere.
Campaign is heavily scripted. At least half of battles are interrupted by a cutscene. You gain access to a second town, so OF COURSE scripts make one of your heroes go away(would now be useful) and the gate of *your* town locks behind you to stop you from going back.
Spell system makes your units generate 5 energy types and there are many multi-color spells. But the devs haven't heard about a 5-way Venn diagram to visualize the combinations. Mess in many ways.
This game is everything HoMM should have evolved into. And yet the Devs manage to create a unique game that plays differently with smart and interesting changes. And yet this game is great on its own without the need to be compared to the genre primus. Thank you this is everything I've waited for!
Beautifully designed "fast paced" turn based strategy game with immaculate attention to detail. Pixel art that feels alive and dimensional, well developed/intelligent AI, gameplay that is easy to pick up and start playing but great depth.
100+ hours of play time in early access and I still can't get enough!
