HoMM6 & Space Mariner

[IskatuMesk]

Yeah. I'm not a puzzle guy, either.

[GnaReffotsirk]

Well, at least in DS, there were no Gundams. eheh-hehe-he

[IskatuMesk]

Well, Heroes 6 is out.

No RMG.
No Dungeon.
Thought I saw a reference to an unseen faction in the beta but no new faction in release, so eh.
Spinner is still there WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU LUBEYSOFT

Well, I won't try the game until I actually have some free time/hd space to do so, but I definitely intend to try it and report back.

no sim turns in MP from what I see, either.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

Even excluding the RMG or Simultaneous turns, I wasn't that woe'ed that much by HMM6 itself when I tried the demo.

With bad experiences (mostly the invisible desync bug) with HMM5 and more limited time right now, I am not that willing to jump into HMM6.

[IskatuMesk]

I haven't tried the release yet, but if I look past some of the strange shit I did experience in the "demo" (aka the beta they renamed to demo), I think it's pretty decent. I liked 5, after all, other than the slow CPU turns. I'll definitely make some videos of it when I get the time.

[IskatuMesk]

Alright, so I've begun my release recordings and have completed a 4v4 so far and am currently on an FFA. Here's my updated thoughts (of homm6).

In the first game, the 4v4 (which I intended to be an FFA but for some idiotic reason the map is literally "UMS" only...) I played as Inferno, a caster. The first thing that immediately stuck out to me, that should have stuck out in the Beta, is that when you make a game you can only choose between 2 heroes - but there's TONS of other heroes! What the fuck?! No, seriously, what the fuck was wrong with 3 and 5's way of having hero selection? Seriously...?

This map was very poorly laid out. Because the AI gets free money, it was able to steal the fortress in front of me LONG before I was ever able to fight the guys defending it. Thus, he got the only crystal within reasonable access to me on the entire fucking map. I had to buy crystal to get anywhere. Because of this, I always played at a huge disadvantage and this skewed my perspective on the AI's cheating balance. Be forewarned of this during my review.

Because I could do nothing for over half the game, I focused a lot on specifics, like how the AI works. Well, the AI is pretty bloody stupid. I can't really put it in words, you can wait for the videos if you're genuinely interested. Basically, they are horrific at defending their towns, they run back and forth a lot indecisively, and the only reason I got as far in the video as I did was because they're idiots. The only reason we didn't win the game or get close to it was because we're idiots. I kind of don't want to spoil the video because the entire thing is built on the AI's weird as shit decision making, so I'll leave it at that. The most basic decision-making elements of the AI are very bad.

But the combat AI is actually pretty damn good. Currently, it does much better in most, but not at all, combat situations than me due to my inexperience. Usually you'd see the AI doing blatantly stupid things which, in some circumstances, they may still do, but for the most part they are pretty damn solid from what I see. In some cases I was able to save unnecessary losses by trying auto combat after I finished the combat manually, or vis versa. So, it doesn't have too many truly fundamental flaws.

The strange particle performance from beta has been fixed. As has been the missing sounds from what I hear so far. However, the game bypasses windows audio, and I cannot directly record the game with fraps. From what I understand, this is basically some idiotic form of DRM that RIAA and co are responsible for. What makes it doubly retarded is that fraps still doesn't let you choose what inputs it uses, otherwise I'd just manually record bloody stereo mix. God damnit America.

This is a shame, too, because the game's audio is really, really good. The music is really solid (I even used a track or two in Black Sun) and the SFX are, like 5, pretty solid. The graphics are passable; I don't know why people complain about the art style, I find it much more pleasant than, say, Diablo 3 or Sc2. It's just the right balance between "happy" and "gritty", you could say. Any further into "happy" and the art would be a mess, like sc2 or d3. However, I feel their animations should be revised, as a lot of them seem very rigid. I also don't think the game has a blending system, as there's a lot of strange jerkiness at times. Overall, though, I like the graphics, but they aren't really reflective of a 2011 era game in terms of what polish should look like. I suspect we can blame Ubisoft for that.

Back to the gameplay, one of the things that I concluded by the end of this game is that offensive magic really sucks. The cooldowns, the low damage, and the things you sacrifice to get it anywhere meaningful all acculimate into offensive casting, at least Fire, being very weak and scaling poorly. Early on it's decent, but end-game it just plainly sucks. This opinion may change as I was at a huge disadvantage, but in my second game I am building a strictly might hero with my only casts being buffs (stone skin), and I feel very strong, strong enough that even the cheating AI doesn't seem to be really ahead of me.

Because resources got axed down to scarcely a shadow of their previous form, it REALLY sucks to not have crystal. Like, it's not having any vespene gas. You can't buy shit all without it. Add this onto the tiny default maps, the backdoor-heavy map design, and the fortress control system, and silliness erupts.

Although fortresses do grant you "control" over buildings (as long as you've tagged them), it is perfectly possible for a hero to stand on a structure and control it as long as he stands there. Or, you can opt to just take the fortress, because it is NEVER defended once it's captured. It's no longer a fortress, it's a control point, basically. You can't portal to it, either. I should mention that before I played release, Pheo warned me about elementals. I just attacked a neutral fortress guarded by a horde of air elementals and got thoroughly ripped apart before I took it down. Apparently, light elementals are ridiculous. I thought Radiant Glories were what pheo was talking about in the game 1 video but then I remember it's light elementals instead.

Other than these quibbles I do like the gameplay. I think the game needs a random map generator to have any hope of surviving past 1-2 expansions, though, like those they forced out for HoMM5. Even though I liked 5, I cannot deny that this is a dying franchise. Luckily, 6 is moving in the right direction. It just needs fundamental features, like the RMG. It does have an editor, though how good I do not know.

If you're interested but skeptical, wait for my videos. If you liked both 3 and 5, check out the demo.

/e

And so, I finished my FFA.

This game NEEDS an RMG with bigger maps. Their "huge" maps are fucking tiny and so poorly designed it's really not even funny, and ultimately is detrimental to the game as a whole. The FFA really just degraded into a backdoorfest, with the AI unwilling to fight me at any turn, and the whirlpools... dear God the whirlpools. You see, Sanctuary heroes can walk on water like Jesus, while boats can be enter/left without any movespeed loss. Yes, some spawn points have whirlpools - which don't seem to drop units anymore - right next to them. Like, right next to them. But the map is incredibly small. So, plenty of positions on this map are extremely unsafe, while 2-3 are fairly safe. Even with an insanely powerful army and a huge advantage it took me forever to actually finish the game.

Oh, yeah. There's multiple grails now. They're called Tears of Asha. I am not quite sure how you get them, but random enemy heroes dropped them when I finally got Shackles of the Last Man and started executing them when they got close enough to my towns.

Heroes 6 overworld gameplay really doesn't even RESEMBLE the old games anymore. Allow me to elaborate.

- Any town can be portaled to from any town (as long as you control both) if you have built the first level Town Portal. If you have the second level Town Portal, your heroes get a spell that casts Town Portal. All of your heroes. It takes them to the closest town. However, the former town portal eats at least half your movepoints, and the second around 75%. So, it's very safe for you to run up to a guy, but then port on the next turn if he can't reach you or whatever. If an enemy approaches your town and you want to save it, you probably can't get to him before his turn comes up and he runs away. When you want to be aggressive and the map is so small and there's so much backdooring, you're basically dancing between what you own trying to discourage guys from backdooring you.

Eventually, you stop giving a shit about Forts because you can't hold them with a scout unless he's Sanctuary and fucking walks on water. Upon which case, you can usually steal the boat the enemy bought before he actually uses it, and hide it away on another island. Or, you can run away when his hero approaches, let him steal the fort, then steal it back. Be prepared to repeat this for 10+ turns at a time. If you try to kill him with your army, expect him to port away, and then another guy to piss out of the whirlpool and backdoor you.

Due to this, it seems that the computer players extremely rarely actually fight each other, for two big reasons -

- Enemies almost always port back home at the end of the week to reinforce, OR they run back to their secondary hero to reinforce.
- Enemies almost always run away or port away from you even if you have a slight advantage.

Even with pathfinding, logistics, insane movespeed items, it just wasn't possible to chase down enemy heroes because they see you from a mile away. What I had to do was basically "hide" my hero at another town, bait them to try to backdoor a town, then port in and jump them when they are really, really close, so I can hit them on the same turn I port. Else they just fuck off.

On a big map this wouldn't be a big deal, because they wouldn't cross the whole map in 4-5 turns. Also, a big RMG map isn't likely to have backdoors that all lead to each other all over the fucking place. Unless you play secret monolith land, but they are mixed varieties.

As there is no dimension door, it's not really possible to teleport around with your mass mana and stats. Also, I have yet to see a dragon utopia in either large map I've played. Son, I am so disappoint.

Also, this was weird as hell.



Not only do you, of course, start with a hero and need to use a hero to do anything, the AI also does buy an additional lackey hero. How the fuck does the game figure they had no heroes? On top of that, why are some CPU players named but others aren't?

/e

There may be a dimension door, I have to check something to make sure...