“It all works well enough, save for several bugs, such as heroes vanishing into towns never to return, or a camera that seems to have a mind of its own, and performance issues that sometimes seem to stem from running Ubisoft’s Uplay overlay at the same time as Steam’s, and sometimes are unrelated. MMH7 simplifies the business of hero progression as well, while still providing many options, chiefly through the introduction of a skill wheel that lets you put points in everything from Leadership for troop boosts to bonuses for actual combat attacks. They're drab at first, but rather impressive to behold once everything's in place.

Gone, for instance, are the 3D towns in their place, Limbic introduces 2D town maps where you can create and upgrade new troops and buildings through an intuitive progression tree. There's also a drive for simplification at work here - one that's aimed at bringing the series back to its roots and stripping away the chaff that's worked its way in since the late '90s. It's a shame, then, that Limbic's efforts at prettifying the world and characters sometimes backfire, as in the ways that the seven resources (like wood and ore) sometimes get lost in the busy details of the otherwise-attractive maps. “The few other additions to the old formula chiefly amount to eye candy, as in the dynamic events that sometimes pop up on the overworld map, such as when an ogre smashes a key bridge in two with a boulder.

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