Recent reviews by Talisman

Great game. Excellent story, combat is fun, character options are fantastic. It's not an open world game, which is FINE. It's a focused RPG experience with great writing, voice acting, and gameplay.

TL:DR - The UI is in an unacceptable state for a AAA 4X game, and the lack of a focused camera for combat AND a lack of post-battle report makes the game extremely frustrating to learn and play.

I'm looking forward to updating this to a positive review after a few much-needed updates.

Considering the incredible quality and production value in this game, it's pretty shocking that a few relatively small issues are dragging down the experience and making it unenjoyable. For example, cascading, keyword-based tooltips are the gold standard for 4X games in 2025. Civ VII is missing tooltips in many, many places. An easy example is buildings that have been constructed in a city. You can see which tile the building is in, you can go to the city panel and check that the building is built, but neither of these places have a tooltip that will show what effects the building provides. You have to actually type the name of the building into the in-game Civapedia or whatever it's called to get any information.

There are issues with interactions that are unavailable without an associated explanation as to why they are unavailable. Independents in the game (city-states in previous CIV iterations) have a woefully incomplete info panel. Resources do not have appropriate tooltips with explanations for their effects or use. Celebrations are introduced in the tutorial, but not explained at all. Happiness fills a celebration meter, but mousing over happiness does not show progress toward the next celebration. The UI is completely inadequate for a game of this complexity.

Combat is in need of rescue as much as the UI. The camera does not snap to show units fighting, and there is no after-action report. I appreciate the effort to reduce turn times when there are many units on-screen fighting, but the player needs to be able to see what happened between turns in some capacity.

Learning any Civilization game is always a challenge, but in previous games it was an enjoyable challenge. Right now, these issues make the game a frustrating chore to learn, and they are getting in the way of the fun.

Great 4X fantasy strategy game with a number of unique systems that interact in satisfying and interesting ways.

Excellent start for an EA game.

It's in a good place for an early access product. Good progression, heroes are fun and interesting to level and equip. Looking forward to seeing where it goes.

Good game, has women generals.

TL,DR: I like this game a lot, but it is very buggy. Many users have reported issues with crashing (I have not experienced any crashes), multiplayer does not work (desynchs), and most importantly (in my opinion) units do not behave correctly on the tactical map. This is pretty standard stuff for a Ubisoft game, so unless you are a big Heroes of Might and Magic fan, like me, then you should hold off on buying the game.

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Honestly, I'm surprised with how much I'm enjoying the game. I've sunk a ridiculous amount of time into every heroes entry since 3 (yes, even 6--I ♥♥♥♥ you not, I played it for over 250 hours). Fortunately, they have outright removed all of the awfulness from 6.

Hero leveling is fairly interesting. The schools of magic seem reasonably distinct and useful. I have an inkling that Prime might be a bit OP (seriously, the perk for teleport, +50 initiative, is very, very powerful, and time control, for its cost, is super useful). UPDATE: Light magic is also overpowerd. Dear God retribution is absurd. If ALL of the schools are overpowerd, then I'm totally behind that design... but I feel like fire, water, and earth are probably lagging behind. We'll see.

They have massively reduced the ease of resurrecting units, to the point where you have to specialize pretty hard to be able to do it, which I think is appropriate.

There seems to be a good number of items. Not like heroes III, but respectable. Set bonuses can be very nice, and on larger maps where you get more items, mixing and matches these bonuses is good fun.

Factions are nice and distinct. Each has its own style of play, and they seem to be balanced by each being unbalanced, which I prefer.

Creatures are, for the most part, pretty good. There are some that I dislike for various reasons, such as pixies and dryads being way too similar in appearance, and others which seem either under-powered, or too difficult to reach critical mass (as in, they keep dying off in combats because the AI will prioritize targeting them). Some examples of these include blade-dancers (very low HP for an elite unit, melee, low growth, expensive creature building), vampires (melee, low growth, bugged--will come to that in a bit), lamasus, etc. I think a balance pass will fix most of these issues.

Town development is interesting and full of meaningful choices. Do you squeeze out a creature building before the end of the week, or are you fiscally responsible and prioritize getting your town hall up ASAP? It takes a lot of time and adventuring to obtain the resources to max out your town, especially since you'll also be recruiting creatures and a hero or two.

Walls now come with a garrison, which can't be removed, and defend towns from those pesky 1 creature hero armies. Forts, and gates also come with garrisons, which fill over time for free, allowing some meaningful zones of control.

Caravans are back! In IV, you could order a caravan, and it would magically appear after a set period of time. In VII, caravans are an actual unit on the map, with a high move speed, that can be interacted with by your heroes and by the enemy, so they can be somewhat risky if your territories aren't secured.

Finally, let's go ahead and mention that this game is buggy as all hell. I personally have not experienced any crashes, freezes, or issues with the SP campaign. I HAVE, however, noticed a lot of incorrect unit behavior in battles. Do not take any perks relating to your warfare units right now, because they are very glitchy, and perks seem to make it worse. I've noticed gnoll hunters don't always do what they're supposed to, the treant's abilities don't seem to work at all, and effects that trigger on damage/unit kills will not trigger on the battle-ending attack (so vampires don't lifesteal if they end the battle by killing something, and Djinn won't provide mana to your hero). Units sometimes also get really excited and decide to ignore their move speed, allowing them to cover the entire tactical map. Similarly, heroes will sometimes get a second wind on the campaign map for no discernible reason. Also, the AI is just terrible, both tactically and strategically.

So why the hell am I enjoying this game? Because it's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Heroes of Might and Magic game, and it's got a lot of potential, and it's actually a well designed game. Also the music is quite nice.

You know, I'm surprised this is as good as it is (and without serious bugs). Techland finally broke free from the glitchy zombie games they've released previously. This is a solid game which is tons of fun with friends.

I was surprised, and very impressed, by how good this game is. The game map is the most beautiful I've seen in a strategy game, even more so than Civ V. They've also managed to do a fantasy strategy game right, each faction (all EIGHT of them) is very distinct and unique. The game plays like a mash up of Civ and Elemental Fallen Enchantress, taking all of the best parts from each. The tech tree is broad and you'll make meaningful decisions about which techs to pick up and which to skip. I do wish heroes had a bit more oomph in their leveling. It is also a shame that changing armor load outs on units/heroes doesn't affect their appearance in any way.

The biggest issue with the game is that it's fairly complex, and despite having a good tutorial to introduce you to the UI and basics of the game, some more advanced mechanics are not explained, and the game's wiki is pretty bare bones.

That said, overall the game is great, you should play it if you're a strategy/fantasy fan.