Bugs. It would be a lot more fun if it not for some of the crippling bugs that prevent advancing in the game. Story has no animation, just plain lazy. The Uplay app is almost as bad as Origin. I regret buying it.

I won't buy any ubisoft game again. Multiplayer doesn't work. I was waiting till patch 2.0 with the review. Something changed, but it is completely unstable in multiplayer (don't have hope to end ur multiplayer game). We have 2016, not 1996.

I am not sure where all the hate is coming for this game, I love it! It is beautiful and fun and lots of hours of gameplay. I bought it twice by accident so pay no attention to my time played on here. I have run across hardly any bugs. Highly recommend :)

So Ive been playing for a while, just bought it recently and here's what I have to say. After all the time they had to bugfix there are still minor bugs, you can get around with saving often enough (autosaves anyway), but it's annoying.
To the campaign: I really really enjoyed the first of the additional tales (the academy one), to the official ones.. i personally don't like them, but that's matter of personal taste I guess. What really makes me not wanna give a positive review is the completely unbalanced factions. Academy with meta magic is absolutely overpowered, while all the others are okay I guess, but magic > might by like 9000%. For me it was worth 20 bucks on the sale, but for a game that was expected to be really good, for me it isn't. It's playworthy, but not for that long cause of the unbalanced magic. For me.

New update fixes a bunch of issues from before.

DISCLAIMER

Time in game is wrong. Since I own the game on Uplay and since I own the DLC Trial by Fire, Steam time is not counted.

I'm not a Ubisoft fanboy. I don't get paid writing reviews in broken English for games. from no one.

There aren't that much games lately that keeps me interested enough to write about them and recommend them to others, or friends.

Since I'm hooked to Homm VII lately and start loving the game more the more I play I love to share my story about the game, why I like it so much all with respect for all fans who are dissapointed by the game, Ubi or the dev team who created this masterpiece.

Homm III was one of my first games and it was for sure the first game I played night over night on my 15" CRT screen in 16 bit color with the manual on my desk and the creature card pinned on my wall.
It was amazing to see creatures I only knew from boardgames coming to life on my screen while I was able to hunt for treasure and monsters in a random generated land full with little things to explore.
I still love to play it with the Hota or WOG mod, maybe even will try VCMI one day when it's more stable and I love the HD mod which makes it possible that I can play the game fullscreen in 1680 x 1050 resolution.

I was a fan of Homm IV as well. It was my second Homm game and I think they managed to make an amazing game and story for that time. I did not get back to it after playing some of the campaigns and the lack of RNG was not good for the long livity of the game I think.

Homm V was mixed for me. 3D engines that time did not render detailed graphics. I loved the 2D art in Homm III and IV and V was just a bit too blocky for me. I was not impressed, but together with the later DLC, the improved random map generator and the Homm V 1/2 mod it's a pleasure to come back to that game again.

I don't want to write much about VI. I was not a fan. Game was too streamlined imho, too casual, or better say too cartoony, and I missed the atmosphere and nostalgia from III and IV again. I did not played VI very much even not with the later DLC. But graphics in VI was improved and the UI was very well detailed and nicely done.

I'm a real fan of the series, I own all possible collector's editions, I own some of the games on Steam, GoG and Uplay and already for over 15 years I compare every new released game with Homm III.

Most close to this experience last year was an indie game with the name Thea. That was for the first in many years that a game was so gamers friendly that I fall in love with that game. You can read my review if you like.

At the same time I played Homm III there was a very different game from a different genre I liked very much, but my PC was not capable of running it very well and I was stuck to the editor instead of the game. Unreal was the name. The editor to make your own 3D levels was delivered on CD and frequently updated which I have to download with a simple modem.

Many times I thought as a child how cool would it be if someone will be able to recreate Homm III in the Unreal engine.

The rest is history now because Limbic, the dev team of Homm VII, managed to create the closest Homm III experience available this moment in my favorite 3D engine. That means the game is fully open to MOD, is fully possible to script the hell out of things, is fully capable of importing your own lore etc etc.

It's also a modern engine, with beautiful graphics if you ar able to run it. I can run it on a mediocore PC with a cheap AMD R7 video card and it runs ok. But not only the full 3D landscape with waterfalls, real dungeons, living trees and many buildings and resources is very charming, atmospheric and nice to look at. Also the Heropedia with all skecthes of units, unit models, stat lists etc is impressive. When you open the lore you see a enormous list of units and when you read bout them you get aware of that was just for one faction. All factions have a very complete list of units. And of course many neutrals, many spells, many skills with a new designed skill wheel and series of artifatcs to search for.

Campaigns happens on a huge map with a different campaign for each faction. Each campaign have 4 - 6 scenarios and there are loads of skirmish missions and scenarios.
All factions are present, over 50 heroes, and you encounter characters from III and IV in your journeys.
Between scenarios and campaign maps you see animations, stills, sketches and it all works very nice together.

Since latest patch you are able to create a simple skirmish map with a random generator from within the game as well. Those maps aren't very impressive in quality yet but the feature is just implemented. Random maps you can create from within the games editor are much better but take some time to generate and apply lightening to them. But when you save them and play them because everything is rendered already they are superfast to play and you have a totally new adventure.

Battles are very diverse but always integrated in some way with the enviroment. The maps are much bigger then the battle maps in previous hero games. The tactical battles also have a much better strategical approach since you can flank your enemies now and have different skills for units to work together as a team. Those buffs can realy make a difference between an impossible game or a cakwalk even in the first few campaign scenarios.

The campaign scenarios themself are fully handcrafted and you see incredinle designed bridges, dungeons, and landscapes with Wizard settlements you have to negotiate for right of passage or just planting suspicious seeds from Orcs in Elfs land. Open the Elven story map for the first time and you sit for your screen with your mouth open for a few moments when you see those details. It's really very nice done.

In short I can recommend this new Heroes game. Not because I think it's a mediocore game for fans only but because it is an amazing game at it's own. I did not play any Multiplayer maps so in this review I did not judge any aspect of that.

As a single player experience so far I love the game. Limbic is still improving the game. I'm sure the team was a huge fan of the series themselves and they created an great adventure.

Original storyteller from Homm IV was involved to make some lost chapter campaigns and those campaign are integrated in the base game when you buy it. Those maps are great and the stories very good. You can even listen to some returned music tracks. The random map generator is included in the base game as well.
To play as Fortress (Dwarves) you need the Trial by Fire DLC I reviewed yesterday.

So, the HOMM series is very close to my heart like it is for many other reviewers. I've been playing it since HOMM1 was released (yes I'm that old). When 7 was released and I saw all the negative reviews I thought I'll wait a bit. Turns out I had to wait a year for patch 2.0. I bought it while it was on sale (50% off) which still made me cringe as I was afraid I'm buying a broken game from all the reviews.

However, it turns out the game is marvelous. I'm enjoying the campaign and story thoroughly and I'm not experiencing any issues whatsoever. I don't know what all the fuss is about? With that said, I haven't played or seen the game prior to patch 2.0.

In summary - The good:

+ Adventure map visuals are stunning
+ Careful thought went into the campaign maps and making it fun to play through
+ I enjoy the sometimes cheesy voice acting, reminds me of theatre and the previous games
+ The non-animated cut scenes don't bother me at all. I don't know what all the kids are complaining about. Feels like a story that is being narrated with still illustrations. I guess kids these days don't read anymore?
+ No hand-holding. The game isn't dumbed down. It takes a while to learn and even longer to master on higher difficulties.
+ Spells and hero talent wheels are great.
+ At 50% off a great bargain.

The bad:

- Game doesn't feel optimised. Even though I'm not experiencing any performance issues, my PC sounds like it might take flight as both my CPU and GPU are working extremely hard.
- The towns feel bland. One of the most rewarding things of previous HOMM games were the towns and how they come to life as you build new structures. Here, all the buildings look kind of the same and the animation happens so fast from the 2D selection screen that you sometimes miss what you just built.
- The units themselves are adequately animated but again, their colours and armour seem bland. Take the Seraphs/Celestials for example, they are ANGELS for crying out loud but look like foot soldiers with tiny wings. Also my favourite factions have always been the Necropolis and Dungeon factions. The creatures themselves are great but their modeling struggles to distinguish them from the crowd (bland).
- Still some balancing issues.
- The opponent heroes' AI is weird sometimes. On occasion their actions are non-sensical but from what I've seen, this is rare.
- A bit pricy at full price. Especially charging so much for an expansion (haven't bought it yet - will wait for sale).
- During combat, the camera has some angle issues but these are rare.

All in all, it seems like I'm complaining a lot but, for me, the good outweighs the bad by far and I think Limbic has done a good job. I also love the way their developers are directly interacting with the users.

The game should've been released in the state it is now after patch 2.0. Feels like it was in Beta all the way through version 1.

It had a few glitches; seems to be much better after the most recent update. I like it much better than 6. The AI is still not that great, but it has improved with the patches.

Overall I enjoy it

it works well now.

Great game yet it could use a little bit of fixing..I found hard to get used to the camera compared to Heroes V and VI for some reason,but yet it's a great addition to the Heroes Series.