I’d wager that it’s been pretty awful ever since Heroes of Might and Magic 3 (HoMM), and being saddled with Uplay certainly doesn’t make things any better. But Might & Magic: Heroes 7, which launched today, is getting panned from pillar to post.
The initial reports from the beta were mixed. Heroes 7 — as a die hard, I’m refusing to refer to it as Might and Magic tagline because that just reminds me of the long-running RPG series — reintroduced seven resources, improved the unit tiering and towns.
But during the beta, players complained about the performance. AI turns were becoming Civilization-esque in their length as the game dragged on. Hero customisation was threadbare. Animations were janky. And there’s bugs. Lots of bugs.
Users on Steam aren’t impressed. They weren’t impressed with the HD re-release of HoMM 3;that only got a 57% rating from over 1,900 reviews. But the initial response to Heroes 7 has been noticeably worse.
Riptor90, like many, was enthralled at the prospect of a new Heroes — particularly one that might be able to improve upon the previous release. But they were sorely disappointed.
Snippedy S. Nap, author of one of the most helpful reviews so far, was much more brief in his criticism, remarking that the developers needed more time.
Not everyone is scathing: SirDeLis posted a positive review in two languages, although I’m not sure some of his points are entirely relevant. And is new always better?
Hood of Might and Magic went one further, describing the singleplayer as “11/10” and flawless unless you cared about multiplayer — because you needed to port forward before it worked correctly.
But more than half of Heroes 7’s reviews are far less conciliatory. Rungoe’s summation, rated as the funniest, puts it best:
And Chester is almost seething in conclusion, although the hate for the 1990’s is perhaps a bit extreme given the IP in question.
If you haven’t been dissuaded from picking up the latest in the turn-based fantasy franchise, it’s available for the princely sum of US$53.45, or $76.28 in our fair currency. Which is a bit of a hard sell, if you ask me.
Comments
19 responses to “The New Might & Magic Heroes Game Is Getting Hammered On Steam”
This makes me incredibly sad. Guess I’ll hold out hope they fix it.
Also fer Christ’s sake Ubisoft, stop releasing broken games. Better to miss the release date as people rarely get genuinely upset at delays.
Unfortunately it doesn’t appear that way. With the frequency that this occurs, it’s safe to posit that it’s more profitable for businesses to push out unfinished, sloppy games and fix them later with the B Team with a smaller budget and a longer timeframe to completion, while they reap the benefits of the sales.
“Easier to ask forgiveness than permission,”
Unless your game is catastrophically bad (Two Worlds), the annoyance and delay doesn’t really seem to do much to your business.
Your first paragraph is basically most Alpha-release games on Steam at the moment. It’s a shame that the standard is now release it to get more money to actually finish a game rather than finishing a game before releasing it.
This is published by Ubisoft. It’s the year 2015.
Why do people still get surprised when they release a broken piece of trash?
The Might and Magic series peaked at number 3. Arguably the best of the release, 4 was still solid but a small step down and then it all just snowballed from there.
Should have quit while they were ahead instead of making more half-assed entries to their series.
I’ll agree on 3 being the peak, but I preferred 5 over 4. I can’t remember why, but 4 really put me off.
I’ve not played 6 or 7 yet.
Can’t even remember 4… 5 was the first non-NWC game, right? Then came the stupid name-change, and now this debacle.
Yeah 5 was the first non-NWC developed and Ubisoft’s first published game in the series.
Looking at metacritic:
4 is critically rated higher than 5 (84 vs 77). User ratings are the reverse. (7.5 and 7.9)
5 and 6 are rated the same by critics. Users ratings are panning 6 (6.0).
I only ever played 4 and thought it was great when I was younger, how much better was 3?
3 is generally considered the best by most people I’ve seen comment on it…not many seem to disagree.
Personally it’s my favourite and then number 2…that might just be because I played the hell out of 2 when I was younger, that was one of the games that introduced me to PC gaming.
2 & 3 are still fantastic… Anything following are okay-ish but just really aren’t as all around solid as especially 3 is.
There is also a HD mod floating around online for 3 so you can buy the older complete game and run it at higher resolutions, so you can skip the official ‘hd version’ they re-released that for some odd bloody reason is actually missing content.
Just waiting on the new AC to ship as buggy as the last one was. More floating mouths and eyeballs await!
Disappointing, I had hoped they had learned at least a few things from the decidedly average HOMM VI
This sounds even worse
I didn’t mind 4 or 5. They didn’t quite match 3, but it was to be expected – how else could they improve on perfection apart from the graphics?
VI burned me bad. Numerous technical faults and failures, the uPlay integration was buggy and obnoxious, and the campaign AI was complete cheating horse-shit trying to force you into playing certain ways or conforming to their script of events. I gave up completely when an entire day of force-fucking my way to victory was stolen away by a crash that deleted or corrupted my save.
Sad to see that not much has improved. I sigh, ignore another mediocre/bad entry and think fondly of the good old days.
I think we can just about put a ring around Ubisoft as the worst AAA developer in the western world, and second only to Konami as THE worst AAA developer in the entire world (at least they’re not TRYING to utterly destroy not only their business but also their entire legacy). Why are people surprised that the latest Ubisoft game is shit? EVERY Ubisoft game is shit to some degree or another, because Ubisoft are utterly incompetent.
repeat after me “bad reviews on steam, just like nasty comments on youtube and/or twitter does not constitute news”. I am not saying the game is good or bad just something getting a bad reviews in 2015 is NOT NEWS. Hell these days I would be more concerned if something gets praised.
Just started playing (2H). It’s not awful, it’s just cheap. It should be $40 considering the corner cutting. I’ve not encountered any bugs as of yet.
I would love to see game developers not give a release date for upcoming games then release a finished and bug free game. Wouldn’t that be fantastic?
HOMM 2 was one of the first PC games I ever played, and I greatly enjoyed 5, I played 3 after 5 and I have to say that gameplay wise it definitely felt the most polished and balanced despite it’s age. I uninstalled 6 after just an hour and I guess I won’t be touching this.
That’s Blizzard isn’t it? That’s their style…