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[Pex]

I recently bought a copy of this game but only got a chance to play it this weekend, so I tought to share my first impressions with you guys. As with all sequels, the best way to discribe it is to compare it to the previous games in the series.

The first thing to notice is that the developers decided to change the name from Heroes of Might & Magic to Might & Magic: Heroes. Obviously the idea is to show belonging to one brand (M&M) for all different games in the franchise. To a traditional nitpicker as myself the idea is stupid, but that's ok.

The second thing, following trend from some other games (especially console ones) is to implement on-line attribute to the game. So, even when playing single campaign, you are still on-line and you get points for your achievements and can use them "buy" things like portraits, dynasty abilities, weapons and similar. It's probably a sort of copyright protection I guess, although you can play the game off line as well. The trick is that you can load your off-line games in on-line mode and vice versa. The most annoying thing about being on-line is that if your internet connection drops out (which happens to me from time to time with wireless), your game gets you into main menu and you lose any unsaved progress. Although game automatically saves at the beginning of each turn, if you just won a difficult battle with minimal losses, you would hate having to do it all over again.

And now to the game. The graphics remind mostly of HoM&MV, with 3D perspective, animated objects, etc. Towns change their look on the main map depending on building you build/upgrade. Saying all that, I still believe graphics are a bit simplified compared to the number V, which I don't particulary mind considering I haven't upgraded my graphic card a few years.

There are five available factions at this stage (they'll probably introduce others in the expansion). Lots of new creatures or some old with new abilities. Heroes development structure suffered the most change and I haven't looked too thoroughly into it to be able to describe them all. But shortly, upon gaining a level you can choose to develop you might abilities or your magic abilities and both are divided into five different categores. All in all, to much to decide if you ask me and probably some branches/abilities that you'd never choose. But I'll wait till I play some more before I make my final judgement.

Battles are similar number V, with the field divided in squares (rather than hexes) and creatures acting in the initiative order. Your hero can act once per turn (with one turn meaning that all creatures acted once) when your stack of creaturs is about to act. Your heroes can use their might abilities (direct damage or augument type enchantments) or their magic abilities or spells. The first ones don't cost any mana. Like in HoM&MV, your or enemy heroes can't be attacked.

Sieges are again similar to number V, but the big difference is that units can attack gates and walls, making it easier to penetrate defences (especially with random catapult shots). It's bit 'unrealistic' though, since a stack of one will inflict same damage as sack of 100.

All actions your hero does follow path of tears (compassion), neutral path or path of blood (agression) and using different actions give you points in one of these two paths. That will influence what actions are available to you - for example if you lean on tears side, when facing decision to negotiate or attack, only option to negotiate will be available to you.

The main change in the resources scheme is that you only have four resources now - wood, stone, crystals and gold. It makes life much easier although I guess it limitted developers choices in making certain maps tactically challenging by putting some important resource deep into enemy territory. The other big change is that cerain resources productions and troop boosting structures that you can tag belong to the town, city or fort they are closest to. So if you capture a mine, it won't stay yours unless you either capture the city (fort) it belongs to or leave your hero on the mine to control it. And that happens even if the structure was neutral before you captured it - as soon as you abandon it it will go to the city that owns it. On another hand, when you capture a city, all it's mines become yours automatically (unless they were neutral - you still need to conquer them). I guess the good thing about it is that you won't have to worry about playing 'tag a mine' with oponents when you are defending and having to leave the city you defend to do it.

That's all that comes up my mind now - I still need to play more to decide whether or not I like it more or less than previous games in the series.