Might and Magic X Legacy a new title of a classical RPG series is coming out Jan. 23th and somehow I get the feeling that not many people are excited about this title? I really thought games like Grimrock would make this genre more popular but it does not seem that way. Even though legacy got so far really positive previews like this one for example. It is kind of sad to see that this game is not even listed on Giantbombs release list at all..

http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=9291

So far I only played the early access Beta which consists of Act 1 but I really liked the promise and the "execution" f this game. It feels like a game I could put hours and hours into it. Especially for only 30 Euro or 30$.

For people who have not heard about it yet here is a trailer.

If you are an old school RPG player you really should check this out.

I'm interested in it because it's a first person dungeon crawler and I played some of those last year, but I don't know much more about it than that.

Old-school first person dungeon crawls aren't terribly popular these days, so obviously it's not going to get a ton of hype and there aren't going to be tons of people talking about it.

Friend bought it for me for Christmas. I played legends of Grimrock and that was my first experience with this type of RPG. I really wanted to like grimrock, but it being real time turned me off of it so badly I couldn't play it. This being turn based has me real excited. Been avoiding watching and playing everything I can though. Don't want any of it to be spoiled.

Might and Magic 6 is one of my all time favorite games. So the answer is yes! Very much so!

Yeah it's very likely i'll be picking it up. But I have no great interest in early access, unfinished builds; so after taking a look at it on the Steam store it's been quietly simmering away under the radar for me.

I guess my problem is that I feel like 6 and 7 were by far the best and most popular Might and Magic games, but this game is of course based on the gameplay of the earlier entries. I loved how in 6, 7, and 8 you could choose to play either turn based or real time and how much freedom you got to explore the world. Things like being able to fly and being able to go to any area even if you were vastly underleveled for it made the game special for a first person, semi-3D game. As far as I know none of that other than maybe different areas with different strength enemies are in this game. Also I was a huge fan of the art and music used in all of New World Computing's games and nothing Ubisoft has done has made me like their take on the series. All that said, I enjoy these types of games to an extent and I did enjoy Legend of Grimrock so I might try it.

Definitely interested. Would love to see a QL

I bought it on Early Access because it is cheaper that way and also as far as I know people in Europe and Early Access will be able to play on 22th already^^

But glad to see that at least some people are interested in this game. 2014 is the year of Turn based RPG's with a Wsteland 2,Torment if its 2014, Blackguards, Might and Magic. Grimrock 2 and other games^^

It's cheaper now? I would have to buy it now then, as it's a must buy for me along with blackguards this month.

Paid for this EA because I knew that I'd want to play it when it released. I played ~18 hours of VI and really enjoyed it, but I stopped for some reason. The M&M series was one I never really had experience with, and the same with the Wizardry games, so I wanted to dive deep but went a little too deep too fast. In retrospect it was probably because a break ended or something like that, but I couldn't get back into my game without completely losing my mind. Even my notes for the game were incomprehensible. Maybe I'm an idiot, and I'll willingly agree, but I'll likely be going to Legacy instead of back to VI.

For now, at least. I can't stay away from those amazing portraits for too long.

I think so. Either this or Blackguards. Since I have both of these games already I can not remember anymore...

I bought blackguards at a steam flash sale for 50% off so that one was cheaper, at least for 8 hours. I'll just snoop around to find out then, thanks for the info =)

I can't believe that we are so lucky to be getting both Grimrock 2 and this game in the same year. I loved Legend of Grimrock and I can't wait to give this a go. Its on Steam early access, but I refuse to support that dumb feature so I have been waiting for a proper release. Sadly, I suspect it will be full of UPlay stuff since its from Ubisoft, but if they can make it unobtrusive enough I might be able to over look that shitty thing for the sake of old school dungeon crawling.

Unboxing Video of the Deluxe version. Wow did not know that you will also get a cloth-map with this game and that for only 30 Euro. The same price I paid for early access...

Game is now out.^^

The first thing I noticed is that on Warrior thee potions are really expensive. I was poisoned in the town by spiders and since I had no antidote and nothing droped 2 chars "died". Then I went to the store and each antidote is 98 gold., Health is 90 and Mana 100. Was it always that expensive?

I've been keeping an eye on this game since it appeared on Steam. That said, I've got the last bits of EOIV to finish up and all of EO: The Untold Story plus some Legend of Grimrock stuff to work my way through before I'll really have time for this. I really hope it does okay for them and that Ubi will keep going. Looks pretty spiffy.

If it doesn't have laser guns and space aliens alongside dragons I don't give a shit!

I'm very interested, especially since there's mod support. If I can create my own party from scratch, art and all, I'm so getting this.

So how is it?

so far it is great. I just finished Act 1. It is really old school and pleasantly it is also really challenging so far on warrior. Also a nice feature if you really want to go oldschool. Retro mode XD

Bottom line if you are a fan of the old games or a game like Grimrock you should really buy it.

Other than feeling like it's running way worse than it should be, it's pretty good. I've played about 4 hours and had two relatively challenging fights on the normal difficulty, which I imagine actually require a pretty decent amount of tactics in Warrior. Also, I just died to the first big boss because of something pretty fucking great - I laughed out loud rather than got angry at the game. I can only hope the game keeps escalating that sort of stuff and that the puzzles and dungeon design/trap layout get a little better. Though the game could be slowly introducing more complex dungeons, which is also a-ok.

In other words, it's fun and challenging enough.

might and magic 7 was fucking bad ass....i have to check it out.

I beat Act 1 (essentially the extent of what the Early Access version showed), and I think it seems pretty great thus far. It's come a long way from that rough alpha that I played a few months ago, but it definitely has the "feel" of older games in the series, not even counting the rather specific references to previous M&M games that they seem to throw in here and there (one of the Uplay "rewards" is a dungeon called The Temple of Meow). I'm playing on Adventurer, and it seems... decently challenging. I've gotten a game over or two fighting regular enemies. I'd imagine Warrior would be the way to go for subsequent playthroughs.

Currently rolling with Defender/Blademaster/Shaman/Freemage, and it's working out for me pretty well. If I had a tip, it'd be to have at least one caster with access to Earth magic, since Regeneration seems to be the single best healing spell early on. You can also use the "Gust of Wind" spell to knock an enemy back and pelt him with arrows or spells.

@darji: @siroptimusprime: @arbitrarywater: Thanks for the feedback fellas. I'm getting it then.

Trying out the Blackguards demo atm, pleasantly surprised so far, will probably pick that up as well.

@darji said:

so far it is great. I just finished Act 1. It is really old school and pleasantly it is also really challenging so far on warrior. Also a nice feature if you really want to go oldschool. Retro mode XD

Bottom line if you are a fan of the old games or a game like Grimrock you should really buy it.

Is that an aircraft hangar on the left?

I never got into these games, I think they were before my time. What is the draw to these games? Do you become super powerful by the end with like crazy awesome spells?

On a bit of an unrelated note: Heroes of Might and Magic 3 is still one of my favourite games. The level up music is still the best in any game IMO.

Well you guys sold it. I have never had the chance to grow up with these types of rpg, so this is uncharted water for me but seeing how much love it is getting here. I am going to go ahead and jump in.

Yeah Blackguards is good as well. I did the same. I do not think you will regret it if you like old school rpgs^^

And @siroptimusprime Do you have a 32 bit system? Because it seems with a 32 bit system M&M runs a bit slow at the moment.

Nope. My PC's being really finicky lately though, so it might not be M&M's problem. I don't know yet, haven't had the time to look into it. I'll see if maybe there's a graphical setting that eats performance needlessly this weekend.

I don't know why I paid $30 for this game, but I did. I made my party before work this morning, then had to leave. I really would rather be playing it than sitting here watching the second hand move.

Man this game is great. With the begining of Act 2 i really got lost and did not really know where to go first so I explored areas I amybe should have not and got killed rather quickly. But after I figured it out this game is a blast. Not only combat, Riddles, Puzzles, history about the world you need to know, landscape and so on. Sooo goood^^

Game is fucking great so far. Everything I hoped for. Can't recommend it enough for people wanting a proper CRPG.

Loved the crud out of 7. Rather skeptical since seeing all the new Heroes stuff fumble. Will probably give this a shot because I'm a sucker for this series.

I dislike this first person looking rpgs , that you dont get to see your character models etc...... seems lazy to me

Might and Magic X isn't exactly a game with a huge budget. Budget aside, it's also a stylistic choice hearkening back to old dungeon crawlers, especially its own legacy. It's hardly lazy.

Besides, what these first person dungeon crawlers lack in dazzle they make up for in design and mechanics. That's virtually all they are, and I love them for it.

EDIT: Oh, right. Above I said that I didn't know much about this game. I then decided to buy it on a whim because, for all the dungeon crawling I did last year, I played no Western ones except Grimrock (which didn't blow me away, really). And I must say, I'm really enjoying it. I only have three complaints:

1) It runs terribly. It hasn't crashed or bugged out on me yet, but textures constantly pop in and the framerate is terribly inconsistent. This might be a big turn off for any other genre but, eh, it doesn't bother me too much here. I do hope it gets fixed, though.

2) This might be heresy but I kinda want to play this with a controller and menus instead of a mouse and keyboard. It's completely turn-based so you're not really losing anything, and like the graphics complaint it's not something that bothers me that much, but I would still prefer this sort of thing with a controller.

3) The map could use more detail. It's just got a white dot or square where anything is and you have to hover over it with the mouse to see what it says. Considering the genre, I should probably be glad that I got a map at all, but still. It's good enough for navigating once you know where you want to go, though, and you can make custom markers, so it's not all bad.

I started the game on Warrior, with my own custom party, and it's been pretty rough so far. I'm finally getting on my feet, so to speak, in terms of being able to dish out damage, though I still take quite a bit. This game seems paced pretty well, too - it doesn't throw super hard encounters and complex dungeons at you right from the start. I'm definitely going to play it more, though SMT Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2 will probably take up the majority of my time for the next month or so.

@aetheldod: It's a specific style that's more reliant on shouldering good mechanics than amazing animations and etc. If you're not into it that sucks, but I wouldn't just generalize all first-person RPG's as lazy. If you really wanted to call this game lazy, or maybe under-funded is the better wording, you should look at all the assets it uses from Heroes of Might & Magic VI (e.g. human crossbowmen and crusaders).

I'll buy this when it goes on sale. Wizardry 7 is one of my favorite games, and it's nice to see these types come around now and then. I liked Legend of Grimrock, but I would have much preferred an overall turn-based system instead of real time, although the real-time action was probably necessary for some of the puzzles. Hoping this game is good.

@siroptimusprime: @believer258: Mmmmhhhhhh . Maybe it is underfunded , but from my part I need more , I dont mean ultra super duper graphics mind you but art assets on screen. Dont get me wrong I also dislike the japanese version of these games as well , I believe Dragon Warrior plays from that perspective as well? I dont know why but not seen my character on screen takes away a lot from my enjoyment. It is weird , I know :/

It's not for everyone, but for me, the focus on design and mechanics is more. I don't get anything from selecting an action and seeing my characters do something. It's just an animation I'm going to see a billion times by the end of the game, so cutting it out altogether doesn't bother me one bit.

You really should try one. I had doubts when diving into Etrian Odyssey IV as well, but that game wound up in the #2 spot on my GOTY list. Definitely try this one if it ever goes on sale and you have a decent computer to play it, you might find yourself pleasantly surprised. It's not that different from any other turn-based RPG, anyway.

Where is Dave for the QL when you need him?!?!

I've been playing it and its been fun. I'm in the elemental tower dungeon right now, and its been entertaining. I've never been one to build a party all on my own and try it out. Its been fun, been running Merc, Guardian(Paladin class), Druid, and Ranger. My only gripe is its hard to tell the difficulty of quests, say for example, the quest to class change towards a pally for my guardian comes near the end of act 1. However, the area that I need to go to complete the quest is blocked by these two spectral wraiths. Both extremely powerful, and completely wreck my team right now. So I wish there was more clarity on a level range of sorts for the game.

Also, I think this is a bug (I hope so at least...) But when I'm in an area and I am fighting an enemy and battle music queues in, after the battle it never goes away. Its a little annoying when I'm exploring an area that I cleared of enemies and all I hear is DUN DUN DA DA DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUUUN!!!!! The entire time.

@byterunner: Try doing the paladin quest around level 20.

A while back I bought Wizardry 8 for some reason. I spent a couple hours with it over the weekend and was surprised at how much I was enjoying myself. It's made me substantially more interested in trying out Might & Magic X. The last Might & Magic game I played much of was Might & Magic VI, at least a decade ago.

It always feel to hard to choose the classes at the beggining of a dungeon crawler. I just think that archery is rather useless in this game

I decided to give it a go, and holy cow that exposition dump at the very beginning. As someone who never played any of the Heroes of Might & Magic games, I had no idea what was going on. The game itself has been pretty fun, though.

@brites101: I put one point into the ranged weapon skills for each of my characters just so they could equip ranged weapons, but I'm putting the majority of my points into close combat.

Wizardry 8 was an amazing game which hardly anybody played. It looks pretty dated now, but I played it all the way through when it came out and it is one of my favorite dungeon crawlers of all time now.

I'm about 12 hours into M&M X Legacy and loving it. I was raised on Wizardry, Might and Magic and Bard's Tale games... so this is right down my alley. First person dungeon crawlers with turn-based combat just aren't really made so much anymore... and this is a very good one. The graphics wont blow you away, but they aren't bad either. This game kind of picks up where Might and Magic 5 left off (because 6 and 7 were free-roaming) but with modern graphics. I definitely recommend it to anybody who likes these sorts of games... for example, anybody who likes Etrian Odyssey games would probably probably love this.

@scrawnto: That's pretty much the right way to do it. Ranged weapons seem really underpowered in general, but especially in act 1, they can be pretty useful and are a good use of a point. Later on, when you've got stuff like Chain Lightning doing 700-1000 damage per hit, they just can't compete.

I decided to roll with a Crusader, Blade-dancer, Druid and Freemage (since it was pretty close to my old MM7 staple of Knight, Monk, Cleric, Sorcerer), and I'm really happy with it. The Crusader hits like a truck, takes next to no damage, and after throwing every +mana/spirit potion I can at him, is really rocking the light magic too. The fact he can heal my Druid when she gets KOed has saved me plenty of times. I went daggers on the Blade-dancer, and with GM daggers + dual wield and two daggers that double attack, every time he attacks the screen just fills with numbers and stuff drops dead. He doesn't have the utility the Crusader does, but he's about as tanky with GM dodge and is a straight up killing machine. I pretty much went straight Earth + Water for my Druid and those two spheres, along with the Archdruid's unique heal not only gives me more healing power than I'll ever need, but a ton of utility too. I did this run on adventurer, but when I go back and do Warrior, I'm bringing a Druid for sure, if just for how awesome water magic is. She can also lay down the hurt with water magic too, so she basically has a tool for every job. The Freemage is probably my party's MVP, thanks mostly to how amazing Chain Lightning is. I don't even have GM Air on her yet, but have done casts that dealt over 2000 damage to a group (granted, these were undead in Cursed Tomb, which I'm pretty sure are weak to Air). Still, it's stupid powerful. Fire would have to bring some amazing stuff to the table to match the sheer destructiveness of Air, and even then, spells like Gust are really abuseable and I imagine would get a ton of use on Warrior. Dark magic is incredible too, and prior to getting Chain Lightning, I was having a field day just sleeping anything I wasn't beating on and turning huge brawls into a procession of 4v1s.

So yeah, really having a blast, can't wait to go and do it all over again on Warrior too. I hope this does well enough we see a (better funded!) MMXI.

Yes, this game looks amazing. I bought it last night and can't wait to jump in. I liked Grimrock, but felt the environments to be repetitive and got boring after a while. This game looks to have fixed that.

It's amazing that games like this one and Blackgaurd are being completely ignored by the site. No quicklooks, no mentions on the podcast, nothing. There are some great indie finally coming out of the Early Access program, and not a single mention.

I really had to put down Blackguards, it starts off promising but boy oh boy does it go nowhere fast. By start of act 3 I was completely tired of the combat, it's just too shallow and repetitive. On top of that it's glacially slow, with no way to speed up or skip animations, i could just feel my time eroding away on a very boring activity in bucketfuls. That's like 99% of the game, as the towns are just a small menu screen and there isn't that much role playing to be done, no exploration, the side quests are few in number and so small and bland, nor is the main story interesting enough to suffer the rest of the game for. The character/combat system starts promising but is incredibly imbalanced and the game does nothing interesting with it either.

Jumped into M&MX and now I can't stop playing, it's an absolute joy so far. Just completed act2 (tho i was mostly doing the main quest). The fact that it's open and enemies vary in types and toughness creates a great roller-coaster ride of difficulty that goes up and down, making you feel powerful in some fights and challenged in others, keeping things interesting. The combat can be as slow and tactical or as fast and snappy as you want it to be depending on situation. Aside from the graphics which aren't so hot (but serviceable), I find little to complain about.

Actually the only annoying thing so far is like other people pointed out archery feels a bit pointless, both in terms of damage and the way the combat works, since you have a party of 4 and most encounters will have melee enemies in the mix and 9/10 times you are duking it out in melee anyway. Nor is slinging it at range vs. ranged mobs efficient either, as the rest of you party that isn't ranged specialized can only do token pew pew at best. So now I find myself with the (almost) default ranger that is kind of a waste of a party slot and has to be changed into sort of a gimped blade dancer with a bunch of points sunk into archery.

Finally I don't know why but I found that not being able to take your horse hireling with you on a gryphon ride kinda amusing :)

@tennmuerti: I like both games to be honest. But yeah I can see how Blackguards can be more offputting. Honestly I have not touched blackguards since the release of Might and magic because it is so much fun. I already played horrible 73 hours including 13-.15 hours early access of Legacy but it is still a blast to play even though it becomes much easier on warrior with the time.

I'm pretty deep in the game now and am beginning to burn out. Maybe it's just that I've been taking too much time off for sidequests, but the xp gain has really slowed down (so few new abilities) and all the relics I have equipped make it rare that loot makes it into any of my equip slots. My ranger/warden character is doing almost all the work now while my crusader is really only good for healing despite being nearly a grandmaster in sword. My rune wizard has switched from my primary damage dealer into a buffbot, and my defender mostly tries to get enemies to hit him and misses, but is mostly invincible when he succeeds. If he kills something it's by pure luck.

Still, fun game, whether I make it to the end or not (I probably will).