So I caved and played the first map last night, when honestly I should've been studying. Anyways, has any other long time HoM&M player given this a shot and gotten the feeling that this game is wrong on so many levels?
My first gripe was the fact that an old resource system, tried and true through so many iterations, was flipped on its head and simplified to far too great of an extent. Some of us really liked having to deal with gold, wood, ore, crystal, mercury, sulfur, and gems. Now the latter 3 are gone? Wood/ore mines only give me 1 unit per day, making them the equivalent of crystal? I haven't made it far enough to know if the game gives you a market place to trade these things in, but if they got rid of that too, I'll be beyond disappointed.
I did make it to the point where I saw it lets you convert a captured town to one of your allegiance, and while I think that's a neat idea, I was fond of the challenge of mixing/matching troop types, but that's a play preference.
There's also the issue of the graphics. Sure, it's a pretty engine. Everything looks nice. But it doesn't look right. it's got a very bland color pallet compared to the older games. Things are not that vibrant, they don't grab at you and say "there's stuff here!!! CHECK IT OUT!!!" I find myself running my mouse all over the place waiting for it to change just so I know that "hey, there's something I should potentially grab." The beauty of the old engines was that they would show you a beautiful world, but had a pretty clear way of letting you know "this is just fluffy goodness to spice up the map, and that there, now that's something useful. Go get it."
Aside from that, I'll probably keep playing. I guess I just want to see where they took the story. Was I happy that HoM&MV rebooted the series and created a brand new world? Not for the first 5 minutes, but after that, I grew to like Ashan. We'll see where it goes.
On a happy note, the screen where you can search for online games and such has an orchestral rendition of the classic HoM&MII theme. That was a nice trip down memory lane.
Anyways, now that you've read through that rant, what are your opinions? Are you griping as much as this old man, or are you actually enjoying this next chapter?
