I set aside a bunch of time last weekend to play some games:
Bard's Tale IV
I'm about 20 hours in now, and enjoying it. I didn't follow its development at all and it's not at all what I was expecting or hoping for... and while I was extremely disappointed at first (in fact, refunded it and then rebought it once the first patch came out), I have grown to appreciate it. The only thing I can compare it to is M&MX, as they are both attempts to create "modern" blobbers, but I would rate BTIV above M&MX easily—BTIV is merely okay in a lot of aspects, but at least it's not annoying, unlike the mid-late game of M&MX. Character building and equipment are both unfortunately dumbed down to a ridiculous degree in BTIV, but they aren't totally braindead, as doing even 1-2 points more damage per attack (or preventing 1-2 points of damage with armor class) can make quite a difference up until the mid game.
It's got a lot of puzzles, but there are generally only 3-4 types of puzzles total. They keep adding stuff each time, though, to keep them "interesting." If you hate puzzles, you'll hate this. If you love puzzles, you'll probably also hate it cuz it never gets truly brain-bustingly hard (again, at least until the midpoint). If you are in the middle, like me, they are a nice distraction from combat and exploring.
The lack of random/respawning encounters in combination with no respec worried me at first, but you get plenty of mercenary tokens which allow you to create new characters that are automatically leveled up to your current party level. This is a fair compromise for fixed encounters with a heavily skilltree based character system (M&MX would have benefited greatly if you could have discarded characters and created new ones).
Bard's Tale Trilogy
Considering the absolute sales disaster that BTIV has been, I worry that this trilogy will even be finished.
I put a few hours into BT1 (obviously, since it's the only game available now), and it's okay. The reduced experience requirement seems to make the game way easier than the original, but I suppose it evens out eventually. I'd rank it 3rd after Wiz 1 and M&M1, from what I have played of all three. The town is annoying to navigate and 99% empty, while the sewers are just a maze without any rhyme or reason. Still, it's fast as hell to play and it's always exciting to level up at the Adventurer's Guild and see those numbers go up. Plus the bard is a lot of fun. I like it, but early on it feels sort of like a pale imitation of Wiz and M&M to be honest.
I really dislike the scaled up art, but I find that playing with the smaller (default) dungeon view makes it much less noticeable. I assume the art was drawn for the default dungeon window at 1920x1080, so increasing the size of the dungeon view just blows it up and makes it look weird imo.
Wizards & Warriors
The GOG version finally has fixed the mouse cursor lag issue, and is now worth playing over just downloading it on some ISO site. After trying it to see if the mouse cursor was fixed as reported (it has been), I created my party and played for an hour or so. I'm not in love with the combat, but it could be worse. I've always had a soft spot for this ever since it was released (even over Wiz 8), so it's nice to finally be able to play it without major issue.
Might & Magic 1
I only played this a little bit last weekend. I progressed the main quest a couple steps and explored a bit. M&M1 plays fast enough that you can just drop in, explore a bit, and then drop out... but to really appreciate it you need to set aside a chunk of time to actually get stuff done. I'm kind of at a part now in the game where following the main quest has become challenging for my current level, so I probably need to explore a bit, so I need to be in the mood for that.