"These changes give you a much greater level of control over how you develop your main characters..

Each fresh installment in the franchise brings with it the usual array of new faction-oriented campaigns, re-tooled units, slick graphical updates, and other subtle iterative tweaks. You'll find all of that in Heroes VI, including a sweet new faction of Far Eastern-inspired serpent people called the Sanctuary that prominently features aquatic and amphibious creatures. But Black Hole Entertainment also made some notable adjustments to the way the game's heroic protagonists work. On the battlefield, heroes now act strictly as support units that can fling spells or attack once per round from the sidelines. Outside of combat, there's also a new alignment-based reputation system that affects heroes' abilities, and the skill tree system has been entirely re-worked for the better. These changes give you a much greater level of control over how you develop your main characters, and they're a welcome improvement.

Other refinements in Heroes VI are geared towards streamlining the flow of exploration and expansion to make it more manageable. Resources, for example, have been pared down to four key elements: gold, wood, ore, and blue crystals instead of the usual seven. A new zone of control system makes defending your realm a little less stressful, since enemies have to take over your central town in a region if they want to permanently steal your resource-producing mines. There's even an awesome option to convert captured enemy settlements to your own faction type. While the sudden push towards greater accessibility isn't geared towards HoMM veterans who revel in the series complexities, it doesn't diminish the level of challenge or strategy of the experience. If anything, Heroes VI's steep difficulty is as unforgiving as it always has been, requiring careful thought and planning with each move to avoid being outpaced and annihilated by your foes.