So when we last left off, everybody died from their own stupidity, hooray! This leaves the game kind of directionless in terms of plot, however. The campaign selection style is reminiscent of Armageddon’s Blade – instead of all the campaigns revolving around a central narrative, they each tell individual, self-contained stories. There are six, each one revolving around one of the six factions. I figure I should talk about them first.
The total number of factions has been reduced from nine to six, generally by combining many of them together. They are also now dressed up in weird philosophical duality conflict themes. It’s dumb. It makes the factions a little too distinct now. Everything is compartmentalized – every faction has its own school of magic, its own versions of special buildings, and just generally completely different playstyles. Storywise, more pigeonholed morality and philosophy is pretty much the opposite of what the series needed, and just generally makes the factions look and sound like flat cartoon characters with no depth behind them.
Gameplay-wise, the game is…confusing, to say the least. Upgraded creatures are no more, and the tier system has been completely changed. There are now only four tiers of creatures instead of seven, but there are two possible creatures for each tier. However, except for first-tier creatures, when you choose one of the two, it prevents you from recruiting the other. This is a good idea in theory – instead of just objective power progression, you are forced to tactically pick and choose which creatures are better for your situation. In practice, though, it’s just frustrating when you capture another town only to find that they’ve built it completely differently, making it useless to you. The two choices of creatures are often so tactically different as to require you to use a completely different playstyle – so of course you’re always going to go with the ones that suit your preferred strategies best, and then not use anything else because that’s the lineup you’re used to. It just presents too radical of a dichotomy.
But perhaps the most important revamp of all is that the game has arguably become more of an RPG than a strategy game. Heroes have been completely changed – they can now participate in combat directly, and have their own battle stats, just like creatures do. To capitalize on this mechanic, there are consumable potions that have special effects on heroes, and most artifacts now augment their stats directly instead of just improving the army.
This is a terrible idea. It makes the game much more RPG-like, and, yes, the series was conceptualized as having strong RPG elements…but RPG mechanics just clash so utterly with the strategy component! Battles are still fought between dozens of faceless, nameless troops that, individually, are worthless, except that there are now these special troops who can be as powerful as an entire army even though they’re only one guy. At high levels, heroes are practically unstoppable, and this is incredibly pronounced in the campaigns, where experience levels carry over between scenarios. By the end of some of them, I barely even bothered with regular troops because my heroes could annihilate everything. This…just doesn’t feel right to me. RPGs are power fantasies about a small group of people performing impossible feats of heroism and bravery, but war simulators are the exact opposite of that: a single troop is worthless and they die like flies. They are diametrically opposed design philosophies. When combined, the implications are really disturbing. Apparently, in the world of Heroes 4, there are a few individuals who can literally take down an entire army without breaking a sweat while the ordinary plebs die in droves even on a good day. Why are they so special? What sets them apart from the generic troops? Why does this have absolutely zero impact on the story? This is a nonsensical mechanic that tries to shove a round peg into a square hole. It has no place in this series and only adds more junk to an already overcomplicated system.
To correspond with the hero change, the skill system has also been completely revamped. There are now nine “primary skills”, each with three corresponding “secondary skills”. There’s usually this weird balance where the secondary skills are what you really want but they have to be unlocked by advancing the primary skill, which provides lackluster benefits on its own. Things get more complicated by the fact that you can have multiple heroes in one army now, so you don’t have to have one hero try to do everything, allowing you to set up team synergy just like in an RPG. The randomness/limited slots is still a factor, but it’s less annoying now that there are fewer skills total. Every hero has five slots, so they can actually get more than half the skills, plus they can add a second hero to round things out. Actually getting the skill you want can still be a bit tricky, but there are a lot of structures that can teach you new skills, and most maps like to hand them out like party favors. Some towns have special structures that can teach skills, as well. This is probably the best change, I would say.
The magic system has not escaped radical modification, and it now has even more problems without fixing the underlying issues. So close and yet so far, developers. The spells you get from mage guilds are still random and you can still only cast one spell per turn (unless you have multiple spellcasting heroes). Direct-damage spells are a bit better, but they still have the linear power growth problem. What’s the big change? You now need a special skill to be able to cast magic at all. And it’s not just a single skill you have to worry about like in previous games – magic is now rigidly divided into five schools (linked to the factions), and you need a skill in the specific school if you want to learn it. Upgrading the skills to the highest tier isn’t easy, either, because there’s a complicated dance of prerequisite secondary skills you have to go through. The whole thing is a mess – it’s a complete crapshoot whether you’ll be able to get the magic skill you want in the first place, and the school system is needlessly limiting. Most of the schools have a very rigid focus with little overlap in spell types, so your spellcasters can be hamstrung by a lack of diversity. Only two spell schools even have direct-damage spells, for crying out loud! In earlier games, everyone could at least access basic spells, but here, if the random number god doesn’t favor you, you’ll just have to do without them entirely!
Battles themselves have also changed quite a bit. The viewpoint angle is now isometric instead of a side view (which I found pretty jarring and hard to navigate with click-based movement), and positioning of your units now matters more. Archers and offensive spellcasters now operate on a “line-of-sight” mechanic where they have to see their target to attack it. If an enemy creature is blocking your target, you have to go through them first. This change I actually like. It’s now much easier to keep squishy ranged units alive, and also means that creatures designed to be defensive tanks can actually do their jobs. Castle sieges are really annoying now, though – you no longer have a catapult, and the only thing you can attack is the gate, which your melee creatures have to bash down directly. Fliers can’t fly over walls with impunity, either – they have to move up to the edge before they can fly over. Because of the line-of-sight mechanic, this also means that most of your ranged attackers are useless during a siege, since they can’t attack through the walls, and even if the gate is destroyed, it only presents a small window of attack. I suppose this does make sieges a bigger deal – before, the main advantage the defending army had were the arrow towers (which have been removed), because the walls were destroyed quickly enough to not really matter (plus, fliers could just bypass them). However, it also makes sieges pretty tedious and forces most of your units to twiddle their thumbs during them, so I’m pretty ambivalent.
So, factions.
The knight/Castle faction has now become the Haven, and their associated field is “life” (read: objectively and perfectly good). They are back to being the boringest of boring factions, because they no longer have griffins. In their place, they get…ballistae. Yes, war machines are creatures now, apparently. You get to choose between them and pikemen. I chose ballistae because I like shooter units, and my experience with pikemen in the first two games showed them to be very boring and useless. They are pretty decent melee units in this one, though, as their weapons allow them to attack from a distance and prevent retaliation. Their next tier is crusaders vs. monks. I generally chose monks because shooter, although sometimes I did choose crusaders, since they’re a good tank unit for protecting the archers. Final tier is champions vs. angels and…does anyone choose boring people on horses over angels, really? They’re the only supernatural unit this boring faction has, come on.
Like in Heroes 3, I found them to be pretty powerful, probably because they have potentially three shooters now. However, their campaign was by far the easiest, and I didn’t use too many troops, so maybe that’s skewing my perceptions a bit. I felt that their magic school was also one of the most useful – it revolves mostly around buff spells, which in my experience were way more useful than debuffs. You can boost both the offense and defense of your units to godhood and there’s nothing your opponent can really do about it, unlike with debuff spells where you can get screwed over by magic resistance. The only problem is that they don’t have any direct-damage spells, so once you’re done casting buffs there’s not a whole lot your spellcasters can do.
This faction drew a bit of controversy over a questionable design choice: the Inferno and Necropolis of the previous game have been fused into one faction, collectively lumped in under “death”. This is a horrible decision, because demonic troops still get a morale penalty from being with undead troops. Even though I felt that a few of the demonic troops were actually better than the undead ones, I couldn’t really use them.
I actually wonder if they weren’t planning on doing this originally. There are a surprising number of “neutral” undead troops that look like they should be part of the faction but aren’t, and some of the demonic troops feel slapdash, like they were hastily thrown in to replace undead units.
Their tier-two conflict is between ghosts and cerberi. I actually think cerberi are better – they can attack multiple units at once without retaliation – but, well. Interestingly, ghosts have completely inverted from the glass cannon strike unit they were in Heroes 3: they’re fairy weak offensively, but have a special ability that doubles their defense against all physical attacks. They also have a special effect on their attack that reduces the enemy’s damage and speed. I didn’t get much use out of them – they tended to die off pretty quickly before they could inflict major damage. The tier-three conflict is an interesting one: vampries versus…some stupid thing they hastily threw in to replace liches, I think. It’s simply called a “venom spawn”, and it’s the Necropolis’ only shooter. It’s a good one, but…vampires are really awesome, and, as a bonus, are an actual mythological creature instead of a bland uninspired thing the dev team rushed out the door. Ultimate creature is bone dragons vs. devils. Devils are a lot stronger now, about on par with angels – they have infinite movement range, and have the ability to summon minor demons. Bone dragons are also better now, though – they’re a lot tougher, and enemies can’t retaliate against them.
Overall, I felt this faction was…really lacking. Only one shooter that requires you to give up your best melee unit, and fairly lackluster creatures elsewhere. Necromancy has finally been nerfed – it can’t affect undead or mechanical casualties, and there’s a hard cap on the amount of creatures it can raise based on the hero’s level. It can raise ghosts and vampires instead of just skeletons now, though. Normally I would be in favor of all this, since necromancy used to be ridiculously overpowered…but now that other factions have gotten their own special overpowered abilities (Haven spellcasters can automatically resurrect half of all their casualties after a battle, for instance), it just makes them feel weak.
Their magic school is also very disappointing. It’s mostly just debuffs and buff removers, so prepare to weep in the face of magic resistance. They also don’t work against death enemies, which are your only opponents in the campaign so magic is pretty useless there. They also have some summoning spells that allow them to raise undead from corpses, but, well, it’s a bit like what I said about the battlefield nuke spells in Heroes 1: if you’ve been trounced so thoroughly that you need to summon troops from your own casualties, you’re not going to come out ahead. It’s only useful to a computer opponent determined to be as annoying as possible, and useless to a player trying to preserve their own troops. Perhaps their spells are useful against living troops, I wouldn’t know. The weird/hilarious part is that one of their top-tier spells is actually one of the best in the game. It’s called “Hand of Death” and it breaks the game in half: Instead of dealing damage, it just flat-out kills a set number of troops. Naturally, this is disproportionately powerful against high-level troops, but even moreso, it allows you to instantly kill an enemy hero. It fills me with incredible glee to show that oh-so-special and shoehorned game mechanic that its adherents are just as flimsy and expendable as their troops. (why yes I have cracked why do you ask)
Finally, a decent faction.
This is the Academy, a pretty direct analogue to the wizard/Tower faction in previous games. It’s associated with “order” now, which has turned its personality into Saturday morning cartoon levels of ridiculousness. Every creature tier is divided between shooters and tanky melee units. Halflings are back as the low-level shooter, then the tier-two choice is between magi and golems, which are pretty much as different as can be. An interesting change is that magi cast actual spells now, instead of just being shooters. They have a basic direct-damage spell, as well as a variety of other situational spells. I suppose it makes logical sense, although it has the downside of hamstringing them if they’re facing enemies with magic resistance. The tier-three choice is similar: nagas vs. genies. Genies are full-blown spellcasters now, and are basically souped-up versions of magi. They’re pretty powerful, and their variety of spells make them useful even against magic-immune enemies. There’s pretty much no reason to use nagas over them, which are boring slow melee units. The final choice is between titans and these new things called “dragon golems”, which I found to be pretty lame. They’re fairly fast and tough, but they don’t have any notable special abilities and can’t shoot like titans can.
They also have dwarves now for some reason – maybe Gelu’s stupidity made them decide that elves were losers and they should throw their lot in with the wizards? They’re the second tier-one creature. I didn’t get much use out of them – they’re too fragile to use as dedicated guards, but aren’t that strong offensively either.
Their spell school is pretty good, mainly because it’s the most diverse. They have some serviceable direct-damage spells early on, and also have some “illusion” spells. They create a brand-new copy of a troop for you to use, and you can keep casting the spell to make it stronger. It’s a bit like the death faction’s raise undead spells, only without the requirement for your troops to be dead first. And in the late game they have some incredible curse spells – they can shut down an enemy for three turns provided they aren’t attacked (useful if you’re trying to focus on one enemy stack at a time), make an enemy attack its nearest ally on its next turn, and finally, they can actually take direct control of an enemy troop. That last one has an interesting little exploit – there’s a life spell that causes all the damage inflicted on one troop to be directed towards another. However, when an enemy is hypnotized, it counts as “on your side”, so you can pile this spell on it with impunity.
Overall, I had a lot of fun playing as these guys. They have lots of shooters and a strong magic focus, which is exactly my preferred playstyle.
This is the Asylum, the “chaos” faction and a pretty direct analogue to the warlock/Dungeon faction of previous games. Chaos is not really something I associate with that, but fine, the developers created an “order” faction so they had to shoehorn something into the “chaos” slot to complete their silly duality system. As per usual, they have some of the most interesting creatures, though one of their basic units are now boring human bandits (I guess to fit the “chaos” theme). I often went without using bandits at all, since they’re pretty unremarkable statistically. Their only claim to fame is a “stealth” ability that makes them – and only them – invisible to some creatures on the adventure map. This is really annoying when they’re random mobs, but not terribly useful if you’re using them yourself.
Their second tier choice is minotaurs vs. medusae. Both of them are pretty good. Minotaurs are defensive tanks, reflected in a really annoying ability: they have a random chance to completely negate all damage from an attack. (There really should have been some check to prevent it from happening too many times in a row, because one time I saw it activate three consecutive times, which was absolutely absurd.) Medusae are the opposite in that they have an incredibly powerful offensive ability – every attack they make has a chance to instantly kill a certain number of creatures in the target stack. I tend to pick medusae because they’re shooters (ditching the bows and just staring things to death this time) and because offense beats defense in this game. The third tier introduces a new creature: nightmares. They are awesome. They’re fast, tough, and have a once-per-battle ability to completely incapacitate a single enemy for a few turns. They compete against efreeti, which had to be taken from the Inferno lineup after it was fused with the Necropolis I guess. I feel like it’s no contest – efreeti are slightly faster and have their fire shield ability, but they’re pretty inferior in all other respects. (Also nightmares are just cool; they’re the only good new creature in my opinion.)
Weirdly, the faction seems to have absorbed some aspects from Heroes 3’s Fortress faction (which has now disappeared) – their native terrain is swamp, and they’ve now gotten hydras back after lending them away last game – not that I think anyone really uses them because they compete against dragons. Continuing the theme of the developers really liking dragons, dragons are among the best creatures in the game: they have the highest number of hit points among any creature, they’re incredibly strong, and their breath weapon lets them attack multiple enemies at once. Their immunity to magic is also more of a benefit now, because more creatures use spells or spell-like abilities (which the magic immunity also covers), and chaos magic doesn’t have too many buffs to begin with.
Their spells are a little disappointing, to be honest. The vast majority of them are direct-damage spells, which still fall under the problems I’ve outlined before. The developers seem to have partially realized the issue, as chaos magic does grant a special ability that increases the power of damage spells, using a multiplier rather than an increment. It helps, but not always enough. The direct-damage focus does make the school rather boring, because once you get higher-level spells you don’t have any reason to use the weaker, lower-level ones. They do have a few interesting buffs as well, most of them offense-based, but past level 2 or so they start to disappear in favor of more powerful damage spells, which is a bit of a shame. Still, it works I guess – their magic is direct and to the point. You spellcasters will rarely run out of things to do, even if most of what they’re doing is just blasting the enemy.
Overall, I felt this faction was pretty fun. As per usual, they have interesting creatures with great special abilities, and they tend to focus on overwhelming power while still being tactical about it. They tend to allow you to wrap up battles quickly and neatly instead of having to drag things out – and unlike Stronghold creatures, they can actually take a hit.
Euugh.
This is the Stronghold. It’s referred to as the “Might” faction. I’d just like to take a moment to point out that there is no corresponding “Magic” faction before we continue. (…And I just realized that the Heroes 4 engine would be perfect for that, like if your army was entirely made up of spellcasting heroes or something that could totally work and it would be awesome but it doesn’t exist because the designers hate magic. I’m sad now.)
Obviously, their schtick is that they can’t use magic, once again showing how magic is just a cute gimmick instead of a core feature in this series. To make up for this, they have a special structure that increases the growth rate of their creatures, so that they can overwhelm those snobby magic-users with more corpses I guess. Go team go.
After originating with warlocks and then being transferred to the elves, centaurs have now been shuffled into this faction as a tier 1. They’re a weird hybrid of their previous battle roles – they’re ranged attackers, but their damage is sharply reduced at long range, so they have to get close to be effective. They’re also decent melee attackers. (And continuing the fine tradition of pilfering creatures from the warlock faction, the Stronghold also has harpies now.) The other tier 1 creature is really ridiculous – it’s a “berserker” that can’t be controlled, it just runs up and attacks the nearest thing in sight. They are useless crap that only exist to get themselves killed. I guess they have the capability to do some damage before they go down, but they’re still suicidal. Thunderbirds have now been promoted to a top-tier creature, which I think is nice because I like them better than behemoths, even if they’re a bit fragile.
(They look weird though.)
But, eh, it’s the barbarian faction. There’s not a whole lot to say at this point. Boring, generic, warrior-y, etc.
This is the “Preserve”, which is kind of an awkward name but I guess it fits being aligned with “nature”. This is basically the sorceress/Rampart faction from previous games, though it’s gone through some changes. Their creature lineup has more of a focus on wild animals and the like – the Stronghold has given them wolves (as a trade for centaurs, presumably), elves compete with tigers in tier two, and they’ve stolen griffins from the Castle for their tier three. Interestingly, it’s closer to the original sorceress lineup than the Rampart’s – pixies are once again their tier one (in addition to wolves), and one of their tier fours is the phoenix.
I didn’t find the tier ones all too useful here – pixies are a bit useful early on, but, as usual, they die like flies no matter what you do. They’re fairly fast, but not enough to be a true hit-and-run troop. Wolves suffer similar problems – weirdly, I actually think they’re supposed to be the more defense-oriented version (despite being a copy of an old barbarian creature), but as a tier one, they’re still made of wet tissue paper so that doesn’t amount to much (and they really aren’t fast or strong enough to be useful otherwise). To be honest, I usually just place them in front of my ranged troops and have them sit there the entire battle.
Tier two is no contest – elves are the only shooter the lineup has, and tigers aren’t even that great of a melee troop (they suffer the same problems as wolves, mostly). Tier three is griffins vs. unicorns – and as much as I like unicorns, I have to choose griffins. As fliers, they’re so much more maneuverable, and they have the always-useful infinite retaliations skill. Unicorns just have their random blind attack, which has always been a pretty iffy ability since blind is really not an effect you want to activate randomly. Also, they look absolutely ridiculous. Just look at this:
I mean seriously, psychedelic rainbow mane? What are they even trying to do here. They also produce a sparkly cloud effect when they gallop, which is awful. It looks like a solid object.
Tier four is phoenixes vs. faerie dragons. This is such a hard choice, because they’re both such cool creatures! I really liked faerie dragons in Heroes 3, but I thought phoenixes were really cool too! I usually pick faerie dragons, even though the uniqueness of being an offensive spellcasting creature has disappeared (and I think these versions look a lot uglier than their Heroes 3 counterparts), because they’re ranged attackers and I like those. They only have direct-damage spells, but two of them are area-of-effect, giving them some versatility that most ranged troops lack.
What’s interesting about the faction, though, is that they have a big focus on summoning. Their magic school’s special skill makes the hero automatically summon certain creatures into their army every day, but most of them aren’t actually part of the normal lineup. You can recruit these creatures directly by building a special structure in towns that gives you access to a whole slew of creatures that all share the same growth pool. Some of them are more useful than others – at the bottom rungs are two gimmick creatures that each cast a single buff spell (but only have enough mana for like one cast), and the upper rungs are alternative tier four creatures that are pretty inferior to the town’s actual tier fours. I found the mid-tier summon creatures (elementals) most useful.
After bouncing around as weird neutral creatures nobody really used, then being shoehorned into the new faction the developers had to slap together for Armageddon’s Blade, elementals have now been slotted into the “nature faction” camp, which…actually makes sense, I have to say. They’re also much more diverse and unique now instead of all just being generic melee troops with superficial stat tweaks. Earth and air elementals I didn’t really both with – they’re melee troops, which are boring. (Although, curiously, air elementals have the ghosts’ “insubstantial” ability, doubling their defenses…which I guess means they’re not fragile speedsters anymore? But doesn’t that make earth elementals obsolete, since their whole thing is defense?) Fire elementals are now shooters (yay), and water elementals are now casters. They only have a small selection of spells, but they’re very useful ones if you’re focusing on ranged combat – they can slow troops down, make them deal less damage, and also create a barrier that delays walking troops for a turn, giving you extra time to pick them off. They also have a direct-damage spell if you want them to contribute to the barrage themselves. I like water elementals the best – I really think they fulfill their role the best out of the elementals – but I also used some fire elementals because shooters.
Their magic school is…weird. It’s a bit of a jack-of-all-trades thing, with a variety of spells (including two that are identical to ones from other spell schools), but it mainly focuses on summoning spells, which I am…not the best with. They’re very useful at the beginning of a map when you don’t have many troops, but once you start establishing a permanent army they become kind of obsolete. They can still be useful for drawing fire away from your permanent troops, though, and that’s one of the reasons I choose faerie dragons over phoenixes – phoenixes, being a melee troop, are best for summoning and then quickly throwing them into the fray to draw fire, while faerie dragons are meant to stay in the back and attack from afar, making it better to accrue a large, permanent stack of them. They do have some other nice spells, though, including what I believe is the only buff spell that boosts both offense and defense simultaneously.
However, making each campaign rigidly revolve around a single faction was a poor decision. The game just doesn’t seem designed for it, and it’s also just so terribly bland. You’re fighting against the same faction you’re playing as, so everyone’s using the same creatures as you, same spells, same tactics. It’s also tedious to play as the same faction the entire campaign – previous games would often mix things up as time went on to keep things from getting too repetitive, but here, well, hope you really like your designated faction, because you’re going to be playing it for 5 scenarios straight. This also means you can’t mix-and-match tactics to try to exploit other factions’ weaknesses to yours, which seems like a missed opportunity, since that’s where so much of the game’s strategy comes from. It’s particularly egregious in the Necropolis campaign, since undead are immune to death magic and the death school has a grand total of, like, one buff spell I think, so buff removal is also ineffective. My necromancer just floundered around being useless in many battles.
You may also notice that the faction layouts have all become practically identical. This is unfortunate, but art is costly and the company was hurting so I’ll cut the game some slack. At least we still got an awesome soundtrack.
Words words words. This game series makes me write so much I’m going to have to cut this review short. Next time, I’ll talk about the plot.
“It makes the factions a little too distinct now. Everything is
compartmentalized – every faction has its own school of magic, its own
versions of special buildings, and just generally completely different
playstyles.”
You do realize that’s actually a very good thing, right? Oh, you don’t. Shame.
As for the “one-man army” issue you have with Heroes being units now, have you tried pitting a single Hero against a mid-to-large stack of tier 3 or 4 units? Or worse, against a spellcaster? Basically, the Combat and Magic Resistance Skills are a requirement for all Heroes, regardless of Class, otherwise your Hero is squishier than the Halflings and Pixies. That would have been a valid complaint, by the way, instead of whining about how humans are so boring.
As for magic being “useless”, you’ve never cast Mirror Image on your own stack of Titans, eh? Or Blindness on those pesky shooters? Or simply take control of one of your enemy’s stacks? Heh, if a Mage Hero could cast spells every single action instead of just once per turn, HE would be a true one-man army, instead of the “boring” warriors (also, don’t you think it’s weird you are so opposed to a warrior being able to kill hundreds of Pixies all on his lonesome, but have no problem with a magician taking control of their minds?). Really, the only spells that weren’t very effective were direct damage spells, and now with IV at least the Chaos faction is good with those.
Your criticism of the story is good and generally well thought-out (though I’m still weirded out by how nonchalant you are about corpse-desecration. Yeah, your loved ones’ souls have already moved on, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be horrifying to have their corpses risen to KILL OTHER LIVING BEINGS), but when it comes to the mechanics… I know you’ve said repeatedly you’re not a fan of this style of game, but that should be no excuse.
Oh, yes, I forgot: have you noticed that in the single-player campaigns, you’re often forced to use different faction units for every level? I imagine it’s so you can practice with all of them before coming up with a favourite strategy for multiplayer games.
That’s irrelevant to me because I don’t play multiplayer and hamstringing one gameplay mode to serve another is bad game design anyway.
You do realize that’s actually a very good thing, right? Oh, you don’t. Shame.
I don’t follow. Ideally, yes, it should have introduced variety and give each faction a distinct playstyle to suit everyone’s preferences, but it… doesn’t. In my experience, all it did was heavily narrow my options to a frustrating degree, making things repetitive and shallow. It also makes it incredibly difficult to branch out, even though that’s essentially required to make an effective mage character. Some coherency and overlap of mechanics is a good thing.
The fact that the campaigns make you fight against your own faction too probably contributed to my stance, I admit. Do things open up a bit more when you mix-and-match?
have you tried pitting a single Hero against a mid-to-large stack of tier 3 or 4 units? Or worse, against a spellcaster?
…Yes? Did you not get Hand of Death in your Half-Dead playthrough? Spellcasting heroes and high-tier creatures are nothing before that spell. Low-level heroes get trashed pretty easily, yeah, but once they get into high levels they skyrocket in power very quickly, especially since damage doesn’t weaken them like it does creature stacks. In a lot of campaigns (especially in The Gathering Storm), I literally did run around with nothing but my hero(es) most of the time, and I still won most encounters handily. They are literally equivalent to armies, if not on their own then definitely in a party.
Basically, the Combat and Magic Resistance Skills are a requirement for all Heroes, regardless of Class, otherwise your Hero is squishier than the Halflings and Pixies.
Yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that all it takes to become unstoppable is a single skill slot that everyone and their dog tells you to pick. I actually tried not giving some heroes Combat (Emilia, I think), just because it makes things too easy otherwise.
[Complaining about heroes being weak at low levels] would have been a valid complaint
I don’t follow this either. Why are mechanics being reasonably balanced at low levels is a bad thing? And, again, heroes shouldn’t have a lot power in the first place since RPG characters shatter a strategy game’s mechanical consistency into a million pieces.
As for magic being “useless”, you’ve never cast Mirror Image on your own stack of Titans, eh? Or Blindness on those pesky shooters? Or simply take control of one of your enemy’s stacks?
I’ll admit I was a bit hasty here, and I revise my stance in the expansion pack post (where Bohb was quite literally a one-man army because of his awesome spells), but I would like to point out that all of those spells are high-level (except for Mirror Image but it can’t keep up in the endgame and has a souped-up higher-level version anyway) and thus only available very late in a campaign. Many of the early spells are decidedly meh. And also? Those spells are mostly useless if you don’t have troops. That’s my main complaint: not that spells are totally useless in and of themselves, but that they’re a support mechanic and an afterthought when the game’s title and framing make it look like might and magic are equally valid tactics. I’ll admit that magic over might is a personal preference of mine and not something that everyone has to share, but it’s still a sticking point for me.
also, don’t you think it’s weird you are so opposed to a warrior being able to kill hundreds of Pixies all on his lonesome, but have no problem with a magician taking control of their minds?
…What? I honestly don’t get what you’re trying to say here.
though I’m still weirded out by how nonchalant you are about corpse-desecration. Yeah, your loved ones’ souls have already moved on, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be horrifying to have their corpses risen to KILL OTHER LIVING BEINGS
Perhaps I should have been more clear: my rant last game was more a reaction to the general trend of obsession with corpse desecration (see also Wither, where dissecting a corpse to find a cure for a disease is portrayed as worse than institutionalized rape). The fact that necromancers are evil and always use the undead to kill people stems from that idea. There’s nothing wrong with necromancy inherently; why can’t necromancers just use the corpses for labor? How is that any different from the wizards’ usage of golems? And is using undead soldiers really worse than sending live soldiers to their deaths? You can totally create reasons for why what the necromancers are doing is wrong, but you have to actually provide those justifications instead of acting like corpse desecration being evil is self-evident.
(why is this so long, why does this game always make me write essays)
Except that psychologically there’s a huge difference between performing an autopsy and seeing the reanimated corpse of your friend walking around? I think many people also wouldn’t want to actually *see* the autopsy of a loved one, just because, yeah, it could be kind of traumatic even if intellectually you still know it’s happening.
No one (here) is saying it’s inherently evil to reanimate a corpse, as logically of course it’s not. We are saying, though, that people would have some extreme emotional reactions to it that are totally valid and probably something to consider when talking about using the bodies of human beings (or, hell, even pets) as meat puppets.
It could be interesting if that was totally normalized, though. In a world where necromancy is an accepted thing, you could totally see it being expected that you serve after death as part of contributing to society, so there’s no such thing as funerals and dead bodies aren’t seen as gross, weird, etc., and people are completely inured to the idea.
But it’s kind of weird to imply that IRL people should be totally fine with the idea on an emotional level. “Hey I know you’re still struggling to come to terms with the death of your mother, but you don’t mind if I string her up and use her to mow my lawn every day, right? I mean, it’s not like it’s *really* her or anything, so there’s no way it could bother you!”
Hm, alright, fair enough. The insistence that necromancers are even more evil than the other evil factions in this series still bothers me, but I can see how the creators might come to that conclusion.
We are saying, though, that people would have some extreme emotional reactions to it that are totally valid and probably something to consider when talking about using the bodies of human beings (or, hell, even pets) as meat puppets.
You know, come to think of it…I wonder how much they would. One of the reasons desecrating the dead comes up as something only horrible people do probably has to do with how there is no reason to do it other than such overwhelming malice you’re willing to do something that’s pretty much pointless just to try to hurt someone slightly more. I’m in the “you’re dead, you can’t possibly care” camp as far as bodies go, and even I’m bugged by desecration on that basis. It’s the same reason why burning someone in effigy is creepy even though that just involves a crude doll.
But using skeletons to repave roads is like using skeletons to point out bones in classrooms. People probably wouldn’t be too upset so long as you swore you weren’t enslaving Grandma’s soul in the process.
TBH, that’d still freak me out (as the skeletons-in-classrooms thing does) at least initially, but as always I’m a bleeding heart about these kind of things.
I also imagine it’d be one of those things that’d be weird at first but pretty easy to become inured to because it’s completely depersonalized and you can’t have any emotional attachment if you can’t tell who’s who. The whole idea would start out freaky, but I think people would kind of quickly not have an issue.
Actually, now that I think about it, that’s probably exactly why necromancer classes tend to resurrect bodies and/or spirits and not skeletons; the illogical emotional reaction of EEEEVILLLL just isn’t there for bones like it is for things you can immediately recognize as a specific person.
Also, fictional necromancers usually come with a lot of fluff about how the soul is being enslaved or undead automatically maul any living creature because they’re animated by hate.
Really, though, the necromancy in HoMM is perfectly set up for the story of a halfway decent necomancer, since it’s so light on fluff. People’s first response will be negative because it’s creepy, then add to the fact that they’re a faction that can actually gain troops from slaughter so they have more incentive than usual to murder people, and you quickly end up with everyone sure that necromancers are all evil and probably animate skeletons with baby souls.
“Yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that all it takes to become unstoppable is a single skill slot that everyone and their dog tells you to pick.”
You don’t actually become unstoppable, though. Shall we give it a try? I assume you also have the map editor. Create a map where you have a Hero with Grandmaster in all Combat Skills except Archery, then put him up against, I don’t know, 12 Black Dragons. I doubt your Hero will fare all that well against that. :-)
“I don’t follow this either. Why are mechanics being reasonably balanced at low levels is a bad thing?”
It’s not. But they aren’t reasonably balanced at higher levels, when a single direct damage spell can drop your high-level Mage Hero. Forcing the player to take Combat for his Hero isn’t good, considering it skews said Hero towards one of the Combat sub-Classes, when the player could be more interested in another.
” I’ll admit that magic over might is a personal preference of mine and not something that everyone has to share(…)”
Hey, I love playing as magicians, and the Tower/Academy faction has always been my favourite in all the HoMM games I played (III-V). But I do think you’re seriously underestimating the power of buffs/debuffs in this game. For instance, let’s take a look at some great low-to-mid-level Order spells from this game:
Level 1: Precision
Level 2: Cowardice, Slow (Create Illusion is good, too, until you get Phantom Image)
Level 3: Forgetfulness
I’d classify all of those as potential game-changers. Spells like Berserk, Blind, Mass Slow, Hypnotize or Pain Mirror can even be gamebreakers.
I do agree with you that the randomized access to spells and Skills is an awful idea that should have been put to rest a long time ago.
“…What? I honestly don’t get what you’re trying to say here.”
Basically this: you rant about how it’s horrifying to have a single Hero be the equivalent of a stack of regular units because it dehumanizes even further the rank-and-file, but then shortly after you complain about how direct damage spells are weak, or how magic is only an afterthought; as if magic – the power to reshape reality! – doesn’t also dehumanize the rank-and-file. That’s the impression I’m getting.
12 Black Dragons
…I think my Dogwoggle could take that, actually. If not him, then certainly with backup from another hero (which you’ll almost certainly have in most games). Regardless, that’s a massive force that you rarely see, and one of the few creatures against whom magic is useless. Admittedly a level 25 hero would only occur in the late game as well, but it still doesn’t change the fact that they’re much, much more powerful than troops. How many minotaurs, pikemen, or dwarves would you need to take down that force? Far more than 2 or 3 I’d bet, which is all it’d take for heroes. Also, seriously, I really did plow through the campaigns with little more than my heroes. They are unstoppable in the main story scenarios at the very least.
Forcing the player to take Combat for his Hero isn’t good, considering it skews said Hero towards one of the Combat sub-Classes, when the player could be more interested in another.
Alright, that’s a good point. Do you think the game would be better if Combat was removed (or at least far less vital for survival) and the gameplay was balanced around that? (I suppose capping hero levels or stat growth or something would help too, they really only go off the rails at level 10+ or so.)
But I do think you’re seriously underestimating the power of buffs/debuffs in this game.
But that’s exactly my point. Buffs/debuffs — slight nudges and game-changers acting on the basic mechanics — being the most useful shows how marginalized the magic system is. The idea of magic as a force of control that acts on the pieces already in place, creating small nudges that can turn the tide of battle, is a good one but it’s not what the game was marketed as, and so I feel a little cheated on that front. Like I said, it’s a weird personal hangup on mine.
as if magic – the power to reshape reality! – doesn’t also dehumanize the rank-and-file. That’s the impression I’m getting.
I was actually thinking about this, though I didn’t put it in I guess because I didn’t have space or couldn’t formulate my thoughts or something. The fact that magic is largely the purview of heroes is another disturbing inequality and if the writers were more self-aware, they could probably milk that for some good drama. Magic could easily be used to keep discontented rank-and-file in line, protect heroes from harm at the expense of others (hello Martyr), give them privileged status etc. Really, examining any of the mechanics too deeply produces horrific results, I think.
“Regardless, that’s a massive force that you rarely see, and one of the few creatures against whom magic is useless. Admittedly a level 25 hero would only occur in the late game as well,(…)”
Well, that’s a little less than 2 weeks’ worth of production for the Chaos faction. That’s more-or-less easily doable in a multiplayer game.
I think I see the main issue here: I’m much more used to multiplayer games, while it seems you’ve only played the single-player campaigns. See, the campaigns in HoMM games have always been terrible, in terms of gameplay; the AI is usually VERY stupid, so to make up for that, the computer often cheats with its amount of troops and resources, and even movement (V is even worse in that regard). Multiplayer games actually provide the ideal gameplay experience for this sort of game, especially with four or more players.
“Also, seriously, I really did plow through the campaigns with little more than my heroes.”
“Do you think the game would be better if Combat was removed (or at least
far less vital for survival) and the gameplay was balanced around that?”
Definitely! I think every Hero should gain additional survivability (especially Hit Points, but also Defense and some amount of Magic Resistance) just by levelling. Have you heard of the Equilibris mod? It actually does just that, in addition to several other fixes to the game. I recommend it for anyone who liked (or wanted to like) the original game.
“Magic could easily be used to keep discontented rank-and-file in line,(…)”
Why, it’s almost like you’ve played the Academy campaign! :-)
I’m actually looking forward to when you tackle the storylines. Have you played through both expansions, or only the base game?
Yeah, focusing on/balancing for multiplayer seems to be an issue with a lot of games. I’ve never been interested in it, though… Single-player mode should still be a complete experience.
(I know what you mean about the cheating, though. The chaos campaign, aaagghhh.)
[Equilibrius rebalancing]
That’s nice, but I really think the idea of including heroes in battles was a terrible idea to start with. You can tweak and rebalance them all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that they’re too RPG for a strategy game.
Why, it’s almost like you’ve played the Academy campaign!
…No, that’s not the Academy campaign at all. What Magnus does is a weird special thing that can’t be replicated by normal magic, and Emilia is free to hypnotize as many people as she wants and the game never calls her out on it. Like I said, total lack of self-awareness. I meant more like how in feudal Japan the samurai took all the weapons, robbing the peasant class of the power necessary for a revolt. If the upper elite have magic but the plebs don’t, that’s a massive power imbalance. You don’t even need straight-out mind control, you can probably just terrorize them with regular spells.
And I played The Gathering Storm but not Winds of War. It looked boring, TGS was a huge disappointment, and I was really burnt out by that point.
Sorry, I forgot to comment on one thing: “Also, seriously, I really did plow through the campaigns with little more than my heroes.”
I do believe you, but you can’t tell me you did that for every single battle – the computer cheats too much for that. Heck, by the end of TGS, in spite of my Heroes being extremely powerful, most of them were still dropped in 1-2 hits by some of the enemy stacks. If it wasn’t for Bohb and Alita’s Life Magic and artifacts, even Dogwoggle would have been turned into minced meat.
I liked quite a bit the inclusion of Heroes as units. In III, Heroes never really seemed to have an impact in the battle, especially if they knew no spells; yeah, static bonuses are effective, but they’re also terribly bland. I get what you’re saying, but think about it: the HoMM games have always been about heroes first, armies second – not in the gameplay, but in the story. HoMM IV only brought that to the forefront by featuring Heroes more preeminently in the gameplay.
While I still prefer Heroes IV, I think V was a good compromise between both games. It’s a shame how it only exarcebated the issue with static bonuses being a lot more effective – but I’ll save THAT rant for when you get to that game. :-)
“What Magnus does is a weird special thing that can’t be replicated by normal magic, and Emilia is free to hypnotize as many people as she wants and the game never calls her out on it.”
I have to say, I think you’re making a weird distinction there, but that’s not my point.
Emilia isn’t called out on anything because she never uses her magic to hypnotize anyone (for example). Sure, she could do so, but she never does.*
Again, I get what you’re saying: if magic as depicted in these games existed in the real world, it would bring up a whole lot of potentially horrifying issues. But aren’t you perhaps only setting yourself up for disappointment by expecting the story to be something it isn’t? I mean, it’s one thing to, I don’t know, be disappointed that Gavin Magnus turns out to just be another “I’m going to steal everyone’s free will in the name of peace!” villain, thereby removing all possible moral ambiguity from Emilia’s campaign; or even to complain how HoMM V is yet ANOTHER work that plays the “woman that goes mad with grief when her man dies” with the supposedly strong Queen Isabel. But to complain about how this game doesn’t take the time to address the potentially immoral uses of magic? And not in a “as an aside, I wish games addressed this issue”, but more like “THIS game doesn’t address this issue, and it should”?
* In the interest of playing Devil’s Advocate against myself, there is a Charm Skill under Order Magic which helps you convert hostiles to your side. But it only works when your force is so much stronger than the enemy’s that they would already surrender, so it’s more of a nudge than mind control? But would a magically-induced nudge be all that different from outright control? Yeah, the implications are potentially horrifying, no doubt about it.
I do believe you, but you can’t tell me you did that for every single battle
In the last two maps of Bohb’s campaign I pretty much did. I tried carting around troops to get past some obstacles but they died off so fast that eventually I just stopped bothering. I’ll admit I did have to stop using autobattle once I got down to just Bohb, but that’s a really low standard.
I will grant that heroes do become glass cannon-y, but that’s what life magic is for. The only time I really had trouble was the final battle. It’s always possible to heal back any damage and even revive dead heroes with Divine Intervention, while any damage you do to the enemy is permanent. It’s possible to outlast just about anything.
Emilia isn’t called out on anything because she never uses her magic to hypnotize anyone (for example). Sure, she could do so, but she never does.
…I don’t think we’re on the same page here. Hypnotize is a freely available order spell in that campaign and I abused the crap out of it in my playthrough. (I even used the Martyr combo trick, which I think we can all agree is horrifically evil.) She doesn’t explicitly mindcontrol anyone in the story, but she does in the gameplay and that’s never addressed. If Hypnotize wasn’t an available spell in that campaign, that might have been clever, but it is, so we’re left with an awkward plot hole instead.
There’s just such a sharp divide between the mechanics and the story, and that’s what bothers me. In a good game, gameplay and story should weave together and support each other, not live on separate planets. I think that’s a reasonable standard to hold story-telling video games to, because it leads to some really weird results otherwise, especially if you analyze it (which is the entire point of this blog).
“There’s just such a sharp divide between the mechanics and the story,
and that’s what bothers me. In a good game, gameplay and story should
weave together and support each other, not live on separate planets.”
I find that sentiment debateable by itself. Sure, when a game also tells a good story, that’s very welcome; but I, personally, much prefer an uninspired story with great gameplay than the other way around.
However, in the context of analyzing video games as part of a larger entertainment industry and its effects on culture, I agree that we shouldn’t cut videogames any slack.
Darn, I keep forgetting to make the other points I wanted. Basically: I strongly dislike being forced to take Life Magic and / or Combat in order to ameliorate the “glass cannon” status of Heroes.
Ah… it’s not a binary choice. Games should posses both good gameplay and story. Besides, the point was about the segregation of gameplay and story, not about the quality of the story in itself.
It’s like those RPGs where you can easily resurrect your party members… unless they died in a cutscene, then they are gone forever.
It’s always jarring and breaks the immersion, even if sometimes the story can make up for it with other points.
True, true. But should we really tear a new one into something like “Doom 2” because its plot relies on the whole human race being defenseless before the demons, except for one man who also happens to be a soldier? Or complain about how the primary motivation of the characters in “Golden Axe” is to avenge their loved ones, not to save the people?*
* Besides, protagonists with selfish motivations are a staple of the sword and sorcery genre.
I understand your point, but yes, the dissonance between gameplay and story should be treated as a flaw. The important thing to understand is that it’s OK to enjoy flawed works, especially since some flaws are hard to get rid off without breaking the game. It is, however, important to acknowledge their flaws so future works could do better.
It is especially frustrating in this case because “your magic is based around mind-affecting spells” is something that should’ve been brought up. It could’ve led to an interesting question where one draws the line: let’s say that the protagonist is OK with using mind magic as a subversive tactic in battle because it keeps her troops safe, but is very much against permanent hypnosis. Then the villain could point out that hypnotizing the enemies forever would prevent all future conflict, keeping her people safe even better.
That could lead places and is worth exploring, I think.
Also, I don’t have anything against selfish motivations as long as they are treated as selfish by the narrative. Your protagonist didn’t act before his or her loved ones were in danger? Sure, it’s fine. But give me dead bodies of people the protagonist didn’t save and grieving loved ones of the dead as well.
“The important thing to understand is that it’s OK to enjoy flawed
works, especially since some flaws are hard to get rid off without
breaking the game. It is, however, important to acknowledge their flaws
so future works could do better.”
I agree – up to a point. I think we should also keep in mind a work’s intended purpose when judging it; sort of like a broader “willing suspension of disbelief”. For instance, criticizing “Twilight” because it wants to show Bella and Edward’s relationship as romantic but then actually portrays it as an abusive one is fine, that’s a legitimate flaw of the books. But criticizing it for thinking it’s believable that a centuries-old vampire could fall in love with a high-school girl, or that a love between two such beings is actually a mature and emotionally healthy feeling instead of simple infatuaton? That’s the entire premise of the book – heck, of the whole genre!
Basically, I think we should evaluate a work of art – and I confess to having some difficulty with equating video games with “works of art” – by what it is and what it intends to be, not what else it could be.
“Basically, I think we should evaluate a work of art – and I confess to having some difficulty with equating video games with “works of art” – by what it is and what it intends to be, not what else it could be.”
Fair enough, but the problem in this particular instance is that it’s really easy to fix the issue:
– Bring up the protagonist using mind magic, draw a line between her use and villain’s or
– Make a plot about some other issue – the villain doesn’t need magic to be a tyrant.
I find that sentiment debateable by itself. Sure, when a game also tells a good story, that’s very welcome; but I, personally, much prefer an uninspired story with great gameplay than the other way around.
But in this case, you could just not have a story. No one forced them to try to write a story about morality into their war sim, let alone one about how people deserve to have free will in their war sim where you crush that free will under your boot.
HoMM4 is a good game but it’s not a Heroes game. If half or even less of those changes were in, it’d be a radically different Heroes game. As is, it’s some strange new game that pretends to be Heroes and that pissed off far too many people. It’s very much inferior to actual Heroes games though.
I was very disappointed in death faction. The aesthetic styles of infernal and undead troops clash horribly, if nothing else.
I would comment, though, that while magic system definitely has problems, support spells being most useful isn’t one of them.
HoMM is a strategic game. Managing your troops should be central to your victory. Making direct magic more important creates the very problem you outlined: it makes heroes more important than the troops. If you can defeat the enemy with magic alone, you’d need only enough tanks to survive before you could cast necessary spells.
In my opinion, the choice between might and magic should be between directly boosting your troops, so they would be stronger, tougher and faster, and working with them in creative ways. Creating duplicates of your units, resurrecting the fallen, teleporting them around suddenly turning slow defenders into strike force. Stuff like this.
On another topic, what did you think about the caravan mechanic?
Yeah, the necropolis was really bizarre and disappointing. I really wonder what was going through the developer’s minds. Did they originally have a seventh Inferno faction, and scrapped it but wanted to include the troops anyway for some weird reason?
In my opinion, the choice between might and magic should be between directly boosting your troops, so they would be stronger, tougher and faster, and working with them in creative ways. Creating duplicates of your units, resurrecting the fallen, teleporting them around suddenly turning slow defenders into strike force. Stuff like this.
Ah, so like, the difference between brute force and clever, versatile strategy? Yes, I like that. Unfortunately, I don’t think the magic system is quite developed enough for it, especially in HoMM4 where you’re unlikely to see anything outside of one or two schools. Perhaps that’s why I liked Academy the best, the order school is the only one that allows you to do everything you said.
And caravans! Sorry, I totally forgot to talk about them. They were a godsend. You no longer need expert Town Portal or a million ferry heroes to get anything done. Automating that process was very nice, and I think one of the few new developments that was undoubtedly a good idea. It’s still annoying how random monster spawns will block them, but eh.
“Ah, so like, the difference between brute force and clever, versatile strategy?”
Kinda. There should still be strategy involved even if you go full Might, of course, but magic should allow you to expand your options and pull off stuff you simply couldn’t do otherwise, in my opinion.
And yes, that would require a more sensible system integrated into gameplay, but magic in HoMM was due to revision for some time anyway.
I like the merging of demons (not Kreegan! Demons!) and undead; I mean, it seems appropriate to me, especially considering how often undead are described as evil spirits possessing corpses in real-life mythologies. My only aesthetical issue with it is that the Venom Spawn is so ugly, while also being bland! Why couldn’t they have used something more traditionally demonic instead, like the Ice Demons? Or at least go all Lovecraft and make something truly Cthulhu-esque.
Eh, very much not my preference. I like my undead to be separate from demons, thank you.
It is not impossible to combine them thematically, of course, but I always thought of demons as gleefully evil while undead being, how to say, cold and unfeeling.
I like how undead and demons are portrayed in Disciples, while we are on strategic games.
It’s a personal preference, but I am sticking to it.
I think it’s also pretty difficult to combine them when they were set up so differently already. The demons were a really lively faction with all the flame and stuff, while necromancy is so calm. If they’d started off with a black magic faction, the two aesthetics could probably have been put together better as different ways to draw on your initially unflavored evil might. Or perhaps have the lower level troops be all undead and then at a certain point you bore into hell and can start getting demons for higher level elite troops, with a damned souls troop as the connecting point.