Recent reviews by Luetti

I tried my best to remain optimistic but I really can not recommend the game seeing the direction it is going.

The original 2006 AWS is one of my favorite games, with various really unique mechanics that made the game itself unique and stand out. Almost all of which have been stripped.

1 - There is no definite unit limit in the original. You were feeding your population - if you ran out of food, you had a range of trouble to deal with. This opened strategic depth where players wanting to bolster a large army had to feed it, and the food production itself being just about the most important part of one's infrastructure. In fact, there was no definite limit to speak of, aside from the map boundaries.
Instead, we have a fixed unit limit.

2 - You actively managed your population in the original - from training new soldiers to recruiting peasants or slaves to operate your buildings. This is entirely gone - instead, workers just spawn out of thin air.

3 - You had a very slow paced buildup period with careful choices to make. Actions could take a relatively long time to complete, raising an army of competent warriors would sure take a lot longer than training a militia force. Sieges were a common sight and, in my honest opinion, rivaled the stronghold games in their depth.
Well, pacing is ridiculously fast now as in literally, my average match took ten minutes to be pretty much set in stone. Versus literal hours in the original.

4 - Unit customization. It took a HUGE step backwards. There is just no other way I can say it.

All in all, it feels like it's taking one of the most unique RTS games I came into contact with and pressing it into an AWS themed starcraft/age of empires merge with some empire earth in-between as to the resource management. And saying that it's an insult to the original would be putting it lightly, unfortunately. And I really mean unfortunately - I had high spirits and hopes.

To quote from http://www.heroesofmightandmagic.com/ :

"
Posted by Storm-Giant at 19:59, 5 Oct 2016:
Heroes VII development comes to an end..

Just 2 months after the release of the first and only expansion, an update on the official page announced the end of the partnership between Limbic Entertainment and Ubisoft, and, therefore, H7 development cycle ends too.

This shouldn’t really catch anybody by surprise, considering the base game lackluster sale numbers, or the absolute non-existent promotion of the Trial by Fire expansion, which as of today has still not been reviewed either. H7 woes have been in the talk of the community since before the game started the public beta, with each of Ubisoft’s movements spilling more doubts around its eventual fate. Although it is remarkable that the support of the game has been terminated after only two months of its release, a sad record in the franchise.

It is hard to imagine where will the Might & Magic franchise will go from here. After the disaster of H6, H7 was supposed to bring some form of stability to the series, but it has obviously failed. With the spin-offs released after H6 (DoC, HO, MMX) also failing to leave a mark and all but forgotten now, plus Limbic out of the picture, it would not surprise me if the M&M brand is frozen until the time for a proper comeback is due. Or it could continue releasing cheap mobile games on the chinese market, who knows.

On an unrelated note, our veteran moderator in the Tournament of Honor forums, Vesuvius, has been working on a turn-based strategy game for the past two years called Space Wars. Game beta will start on December, and he has already posted some information about the game. If you are interested or you have any questions about the game, drop by and ask him directly, he won't bite! :)
"

The game's state at even this time is "barely playable at best" - Honestly I had my hopes up for H7 but instead of even beginning to really fix anything, an expansion was released. And if you can believe the news post, development seized two months afterwards.

So: Buyers beware. You will run into disappearing units, thrown together balance fixes that break faction mechanics (undead's raise), and a humongous amount of gameplay bugs. All of this without any hope it will be fixed - at all.

Going to leave the same review for the base game.

Honestly though? Ubisoft has outdone themselves with this title. In the bad sense.

To quote from http://www.heroesofmightandmagic.com/ :

"
Posted by Storm-Giant at 19:59, 5 Oct 2016:
Heroes VII development comes to an end..

Just 2 months after the release of the first and only expansion, an update on the official page announced the end of the partnership between Limbic Entertainment and Ubisoft, and, therefore, H7 development cycle ends too.

This shouldn’t really catch anybody by surprise, considering the base game lackluster sale numbers, or the absolute non-existent promotion of the Trial by Fire expansion, which as of today has still not been reviewed either. H7 woes have been in the talk of the community since before the game started the public beta, with each of Ubisoft’s movements spilling more doubts around its eventual fate. Although it is remarkable that the support of the game has been terminated after only two months of its release, a sad record in the franchise.

It is hard to imagine where will the Might & Magic franchise will go from here. After the disaster of H6, H7 was supposed to bring some form of stability to the series, but it has obviously failed. With the spin-offs released after H6 (DoC, HO, MMX) also failing to leave a mark and all but forgotten now, plus Limbic out of the picture, it would not surprise me if the M&M brand is frozen until the time for a proper comeback is due. Or it could continue releasing cheap mobile games on the chinese market, who knows.

On an unrelated note, our veteran moderator in the Tournament of Honor forums, Vesuvius, has been working on a turn-based strategy game for the past two years called Space Wars. Game beta will start on December, and he has already posted some information about the game. If you are interested or you have any questions about the game, drop by and ask him directly, he won't bite! :)
"

The game's state at even this time is "barely playable at best" - Honestly I had my hopes up for H7 but instead of even beginning to really fix anything, an expansion was released. And if you can believe the news post, development seized two months afterwards.

So: Buyers beware. You will run into disappearing units, thrown together balance fixes that break faction mechanics (undead's raise), and a humongous amount of gameplay bugs. All of this without any hope it will be fixed - at all.

Going to leave the same review for the expansion.

Honestly though? Ubisoft has outdone themselves with this title. In the bad sense.

Quick Edit: The official announcement - https://mmh7.ubi.com/en/blog/post/view/important-announcement-from-the-team

One of these "there should be a maybe option" cases...

Singleplayer is straight awesome, there are enough reviews regarding it. However, usually after completing the singleplayer storyline, people head to the online/multiplayer mode of it...

And regarding that one: It's basically carved into roles, and to do one and have basically any way for a stable income that isn't instantly eaten away by hilarious upkeep enforced upon you from the very start (stables, camp). Doesn't sound too bad, right? Yet there's a catch: You have to unlock those with Gold, the ingame premium currency.

[edit]
The next absurdly hilarious thing would be that there is no text chat whatsoever. At first I thought it was hidden somewhere or on a weird keybinding - upon research though: No, there is none, and has not been one since release. And whilst there was talk about them adding it in at some point in articles found during said research, there is none to this point, making "multiplayer", especially in free-roam, more of a joke...
[/edit]

This effectively blocks any gameplay whatsoever for me, so regarding Red Dead Online - Throw it out of the window. It's one of the worst multiplayer modes I've seen from Rockstar, and this is saying something.

Game-Version: v1.4 as of 24.02.2017
As I have seen no serious review so far, well, here it goes. It is my first, so I'd be glad for productive criticism!

I don't really get why, but this game is severly underrated due to people who seemingly aren't capable of handling the not-always-obvious complexity of the game.

First of all, I would like to adress a few things mentioned in other reviews:
- I have read reviews about massive, "unbeatable" AI star fleets needing the "impossible" amount of 200 Command points. I have 4 Fleets needing 40 CP each, and calculating the combat CP of one of them, I am at 252 due to frigates and corvettes. That is as much as I have to say to this manner.

- There are bugs, especially considering random fodder appearing near fleets, fleets which disappear (the fodder will still be there), and so on. I even managed to get into a "resolve ground combat" loop which forced me to alt-F4 out of the game. However, there is no real game breaker so far, as the game saves each turn and before each combat. Most of them are of cosmetic nature. A few (like reappearing dialogue options which unlock the very same science projects) are quite hilarious, but everyone with some kind of memory should be able to handle it.

- And here goes my personal favorite:
"
Spam colony ships.
Take over 2/3s of the galaxy.
Get your 3 super-powerful fleets wiped from the face of said galaxy by blatantly broken "balance" mechanics for the AI.
Uninstall.
"
Nothing to add. Dude, you are at the wrong kind of game. Simply take a look at the huge penelaties over-sized empires ;) (Expanding to fast? You lack all the rest.)


So here comes my pro/con, despite the ones already handled:

PRO
- You can design your own ships, allowing you to create own tactics - do you want specialised ships working together? Do you want an all-rounder? Choose yourself!
- Intense depth of gameplay and unbelievable complexity. You play your first 3 campaigns and you are pretty much assured to get the hell blown out of you. Trieing the 4th time, you hopefully know about the fleet mechanics, the economic difficulties and tweaks and the leaders fitting your playstyle. And you will still be beaten, until you mastered the balance between all 4X aspects and rule the galaxy. This is something many 4X games lack in my opinion. And sth that should not be missing at all!
- Punishment for unbalanced approaches, if kept over long time. Not like having a massive fleet improves your planetary infrastructure, you know?^^

CON
- Missing move command for simply rotating a ship in tactical combat? I have tried it for a full of 1min before winning the battle anyway. So far, an attack order is needed, with the target in engagement range, to let the ship rotate onto the target without gaining directional speed. MEH.
- Missing rotation in fleet deployment
- Missing multiplayer entirely. Although it is turn-based (except space-combat and events).
- Bugs. Even if most of them are cosmetical, and no real game-breaker is present, some of them require you to load the latest autosave (which doesn't loose you much, as in any progress at all) or force you to kill the process, may it be with alt-F4 or via the task manager.
- Neutral, hostile fleets are simply overpowered in early game. My first playthrough got eXterminated - by the Masters. My second? By the masters. Howling wolves stormed my apartment at the third, so that one is not due to neutrals. Oh wait, my military forces vanquished against them just 2 turns to eXtermination. Who cares. I managed to handle them quite well on later playthroughs, though.
- Spy-o-mania. That is completely up to everyone himself to decide, but I simply dislike the massive spam of spies getting in my empire. And later in the game, the whole events-bar gets spammed with killed, "enemy" spies.
- Missing possibility to form alliances. This is a major con as it's simply stripping a major part of gameplay and strategic planning.
- Enemy factions limited to a number of eight, as remaining peoples to choose from. Why a con? Because tree.


All in all I can recommend this title to all hardcore 4X-fans who can oversee cosmetical bugs and got nothing against reloading a savegame every once in a while (as in "every 2-3 hours of gameplay" (I may have been lucky)). But I do mean "hardcore 4X-fans" who got nothing against loosing quite a few times before being able to do anything real, and who intend to get into the complexity of the game before expecting accomplishments. If you are more of the casual player who just wants to game on - well, move on. You will be terribly punished by this game as well as any 4X title worth of his genre.