Preview RPG Codex Preview: Might & Magic X: Legacy, Now with Act II

[Crooked Bee]

Tags: Limbic Entertainment; Might & Magic X: Legacy; Ubisoft

Limbic Entertainment's Might & Magic X: Legacy releases on Steam on January 23rd. Thanks to Limbic and Ubisoft, we got exclusive (tm) press access to Act II of the game. How good is this new act, and how does the game fare as a whole in its current state?

In this preview, Zeriel attempts to find out just that. To spice things up a bit, he's also accompanied by Broseph who adds a few scattered remarks here and there. Have a snippet:

Act II brings with it the majority of the open world, and a handful of new dungeons, along with the town of Seahaven. 2 new classes are on offer over the current Early Access. The first is the Rune Priest, a dwarven spellcaster who can master Light and Fire, providing strong healing and damage dealing capabilities. The second class is the Marauder, the Orc take on the rogue archetype who focuses on Spears and Dodge, with a class promotion ability to lay traps later on.

Broseph: I quite enjoyed the Rune Priest class in particular. It's a classic glass cannon archetype and does a very good job of both dishing out damage and shielding your allies from harm. I found having a Rune Priest in my party to be a big help with some of the nastier enemies in Act II.

Zeriel: The class balance is a little alarming. Even at this early stage there are clearly classes that are simply not as good at others at their chosen role. Why use a Marauder over a Ranger? The Ranger is better at dealing damage. The Marauder can block attacks very well, but if that's the role you're after, there are defensive melee classes that are better at it. In a way, though, this is very old school. In Baldur's Gate 2, the correct choice of class was always sorceror, no matter what. In earlier Might & Magic games, there was almost always a class that was the best at any given job, and then the mediocre ones.​

Seahaven is the standout addition in the exclusive preview. While not the largest town in the game (Karthal presumedly takes on that role), it is considerably larger than Sorpigal, offering a variety of Expert and Master trainers, and several new quests to boot. Aesthetically it's also more impressive than Sorpigal, featuring a Naga and Dwarven quarter in addition to the usual human element.

[...] The open world is indisputably the star of MMXL. Once past the "tutorial area" that is Act I, the world awaits. There are no artificial restraints placed on your party. You can go wherever you want, whenever you want. Sure, you might die horribly, but that's a definite part of the charm. Some areas--such as islands or mountain ranges--require the Blessings to reach, but the Blessings themselves are merely a matter of exploration to obtain.

Trundling my party around the open world like a pack of ravenous hobos in search of crystal meth was by far the most fun I had with the exclusive preview. Beyond each twist in the road there's a new type of enemy, a crypt with a riddle to investigate, and a treasure chest hidden behind a stand of trees. This is MMXL at its best, and why you should absolutely keep an eye on it if you are a fan of the open-world blobber gameplay that Might & Magic and Wizardry pioneered.

It's hard to put into words what's so addictive about this very basic sort of appeal, especially since wandering Skyrim's frozen wastes isn't half as interesting. On paper, they should be virtually identical. Maybe it's something to do with how very quantized a grid-based game is. Every other tile of the world is there for a reason, has something to do. MMXL doesn't have huge tracts of wilderness filled with nothing simply because it would be realistic. In terms of 3D real estate, MMXL is much smaller than the AAA giants of the industry, but it feels big.

Broseph: The wilderness areas in this game are downright awesome. Incredibly fun to explore, with lots of well-hidden secrets and goodies. The map design positively reminds me of MM3. Exploring the overworld here doesn't feel like a chore at all, unlike in some other games of this type where the dungeons are the real meat and potatoes of the experience.​

Read the full article: RPG Codex Preview: Might & Magic X: Legacy, Now with Act II

 

[Darth Roxor]

I still can't believe this is being made and I'm anxiously awaiting the sudden kicks in the balls.

Broseph and Zeriel, please post in this thread so I can brofist your wonderful asses

 

[Broseph]

Writing this was fun! 2014 is going to start off well.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Woot, nice preview, this game is really shaping up nice. Also bonus points for;

 

[Zeriel]

I still can't believe this is being made and I'm anxiously awaiting the sudden kicks in the balls.

Broseph and Zeriel, please post in this thread so I can brofist your wonderful asses

Spoiler

You rang?

<Trollface.jpg>

The swift kick in the balls will be if you try to run this on an outdated computer.

PS. I think we can talk in detail about what we saw, so if you guys have any questions, feel free to ask them.

 

[Luzur]

Hey GUIZE

I just uploaded a little update video from Limbic (we VIP's was allowed to show this to our communities) about the monster/combat speed issue some people been gnashing teeth at:



be advice this is work-in-progress, and can be alteredin the future.

 

[tuluse]

About Unity, optimization, and large areas:

I'm pretty sure that Kerbal Space Program uses Unity and it recreates the entire solar system at ~1/10 scale. So I'm pretty sure it is possible to get it to handle large levels, but there may be some non-obvious trick to it.

 

[Grunker]

Zeriel and Broseph:

Great review. This is fast approaching my most anticipated game of 2014. And I even prefer isometric to blobber.

 

[Zeriel]

About Unity, optimization, and large areas:

I'm pretty sure that Kerbal Space Program uses Unity and it recreates the entire solar system at ~1/10 scale. So I'm pretty sure it is possible to get it to handle large levels, but there may be some non-obvious trick to it.

Kerbal uses very simple graphics, though. Like, ridiculously so. The bigger issue I was seeing with Unity in MMXL is it seems to lack proper culling (or was just left off for some reason). Objects cull, but on the over world terrain will render out to the horizon and beyond. Plus given that Unity seems to just load an entire map immediately without any streaming like you'd expect with very big maps (think World of Warcraft, Skyrim, every game in the past ten years), I feel that they should have cut the main overworld into multiple, smaller maps.

I am talking out of my ass just based on my experiences, though, they probably know something I don't, and maybe even fixed these issues.

 

[Luzur]

About Unity, optimization, and large areas:

I'm pretty sure that Kerbal Space Program uses Unity and it recreates the entire solar system at ~1/10 scale. So I'm pretty sure it is possible to get it to handle large levels, but there may be some non-obvious trick to it.

Kerbal uses very simple graphics, though. Like, ridiculously so. The bigger issue I was seeing with Unity in MMXL is it seems to lack proper culling (or was just left off for some reason). Objects cull, but on the over world terrain will render out to the horizon and beyond. Plus given that Unity seems to just load an entire map immediately without any streaming like you'd expect with very big maps (think World of Warcraft, Skyrim, every game in the past ten years), I feel that they should have cut the main overworld into multiple, smaller maps.

I am talking out of my ass just based on my experiences, though, they probably know something I don't, and maybe even fixed these issues.

i could ask them, ya know?

dunno if they answer though.

 

[Zeriel]

It honestly doesn't matter much? I mean, bottom line, if game releases in a state where performance is tolerable on mid-range systems, we'll be happy. If it doesn't, we'll all be unhappy, regardless of the reason. I'm more just speaking from a perspective of curiosity about the engine. Admittedly it would be nice to know how much of this is on Unity (I'm guessing all, heh).

 

[Infinitron]

I'm glad the game is turning out well. I showered a lot of attention on it on the Codex front page over the past half year, and frankly it'd have been very embarrassing if it had turned out to be a bit of a Rex/Hellgate: London type of situation.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

As expected, they're unexperienced and designing by the hear, and thus have problems balancing the game correctly.

The worst though is how much of an unoptimized POS Unity is, it's absolutely monstrous how unoptimized it is with MMX and especially Wasteland 2.

 

[Sceptic]

As expected, they're unexperienced and designing by the hear, and thus have problems balancing the game correctly.

Inexperienced designer doing what he wants with no regard for mass market? Balance problems? Hey that rings a bell....

Spoiler

The worst though is how much of an unoptimized POS Unity is, it's absolutely monstrous how unoptimized it is

Normally that would be an issue. If it turns out to be the only thing wrong with MMX? I DO NOT CARE.
It should (and I think will) have a bearing on how much use Unity sees for these types of projects.

Great review. This is fast approaching my most anticipated game of 2014. And I even prefer isometric to blobber.

Didn't you also prefer RT to TB?



Great review. Very Codexian in tone yet very positive, nice (and unexpected!) marriage of both. I was getting ready to skip sections with spoilers, but there are none, great read. Some random comments.

I'm of two minds on these easter eggs: on the one hand, it would be nice if fan input and Pirou's vile warlock incantations could one day convince Ubisoft to make a Might & Magic sequel with sci-fi elements. If, on the other hand, that's never going to happen, I wish they'd stop rubbing our face in that impossibility, and have more faith in their high fantasy setting.

I'm of one mind actually: do away with them already. The NWC world is dead. Even if Ubisoft magically deicded to bring it back now, they're 10 years too late. We've moved on. The NWC setting was certainly much more interesting to uncover overall thanks to not being high fantasy and having pieces of the cosmology slowly unfold over the entire series, rather than reading everything off a website before Heroes 5 even came out, but Ashan's not too bad and certainly much better crafted than the average high fantasy setting. And I have to admit (despite skipping Heroes 6 for reasons unrelated to Ashan) that it's grown on me. Have some more faith in your own setting, and do away with references in future games (or tone them down).

generating a completely random party (what genius came up with this idea?)

I suspect you were being sarcastic, but this is indeed genius. A huge appeal of M&M since 1 was creating nonstandard parties and seeing how far you can go with them. In many cases you can finish, and in some (like the all-Sorcerer party in 6-7) this is easier than the standard. What better for people who enjoy this type of challenge than having the game make a completely random party for them, one that's likely to not be optimal, then try to win with it anyway? I mean I wouldn't use the option, just like I never used the all-knight or all-druid or solo builds or whatever, but it's a pretty good option for an M&M.

The changes between the difficulties are exclusively number-oriented: costs for everything from training skill tiers to buying equipment to fetching camping supplies are drastically increased on Warrior, and monster health and damage is also bumped up. There are no rewards or incentives, so it's purely a lifestyle choice.

I think in WOX the option only changed enemy health and damage. Cost of skills and equipment also going up is interesting. If it makes money an actually hard to get commodity like it was in Darkside, as opposed to swimming in money all the time, that'd be great.

Meanwhile, the terrain traversal skills of Xeen are encapsulated in the concept of Blessings

I like that they've brought these back. It really is the best of both worlds, the skills (now blessings) from 3-5 and the skills from 6-8. I wish they'd also kept the non-combat ones, alchemy was a lot of fun to experiment with if you didn't use a walkthrough (and to have potions blow up in your face). Here's hoping for bringing them back in MMXI.

A series of coincidences and obstacles rise up on the way, and present the meat of the game. In a game about story, such a transparent ruse would be irritating, but with MMXL I just found myself smiling and going along with the developer's excuses meant to get me into the fray, slaying spiders and nagas and shadow dragons because... uh, you know, it's somehow terribly important to my quest.

Looks like they took a page out of MM6 intro. Dragon! Falling down a well! Falagar! Then unceremoniously dropped into New Sorpigal. Start of game, go out, have fun. Story? what story? I approve.

While the setting is high fantasy, the plot of the game is very low-fantasy: you are in the Agyn Peninsula to fulfill a debt to a dead friend. As you get closer to Karthal, you discover the city is a hive of political intrigues tied to secession from the Empire.

This also reminds me of the early games. All of MM1-5's plots were more about "what's going on" than "save the world", and although you do leave the world (well, excluding all the species you slaughter...) in better shape at the end, it doesn't feel like the main drive. In fact in 3 you arguably do nothing to further the world, aside maybe from making Sheltem run away from Terra (but then if you hadn't played MM1-2 you wouldn't even know who Sheltem was....). In fact this plot reminds me most of MM7, with its warring factions and internal politics. It was only an excuse to set up the setting in MM7, as I suspect it will be here, but in this kind of game that's all you need.

Combat sounds a lot like 3-5 with some changes that could only make it better. Really looking forward to seeing it in action.

MMXL reaches the bar set by the previous games in this department, but doesn't really venture any further. The average dungeon in MMXL is probably a little more complicated than the most standard ones in For Blood & Honor, say, but overall the design is just on par.

How would they compare with the ones in WOX? Specifically, I always liked the size of the dungeons in Darkside. If They're like this here then that's more than good enough for me, even if I will always miss MM6's monsters.

While a few drops are static (chiefly, relics/artifacts), most loot is randomly generated at the start of the game.

Any idea how this works? Are chests in the world assigned "level" values, the higher containing better loot? It's how all of the previous games worked (aside from a few fixed ones), and it worked well.

The open world is indisputably the star of MMXL. Once past the "tutorial area" that is Act I, the world awaits. There are no artificial restraints placed on your party. You can go wherever you want, whenever you want. Sure, you might die horribly, but that's a definite part of the charm. Some areas--such as islands or mountain ranges--require the Blessings to reach

open-world blobber gameplay that Might & Magic and Wizardry pioneered.

GTFO

It's hard to put into words what's so addictive about this very basic sort of appeal, especially since wandering Skyrim's frozen wastes isn't half as interesting. On paper, they should be virtually identical.

Not even remotely, even on paper. First, level-scaling means "go anywhere" is meaningless since everywhere is the same. Also, I'll put it into words for you: quality and quantity of the events/enemies/items that you find while exploring. This is what has always made M&M so good, and it's what made BAK so good, and it's what made Morrowind better than Oblivion and Skyrim.

The map design positively reminds me of MM3

I cannot imagine better praise for this game. They should have this on their promo material. I'm not joking.

MMXL will sink or swim based on the answer to one terrible question: do enough people still want to play this genre?

I don't know. But I do know one thing. No matter what happens, even in the worst possible scenario, I'm going to play one more Might and Magic. One real Might and Magic. In a very selfish and self-centered way, nothing else matters.

 

[Jack Dandy]

Great preview. I'm very worried about the whole Unity thing since my comp isn't top notch. It's a real bother to have games with the graphics level of Space Hulk or Conquistador to not have a constant 60FPS.

At least the rest of the features sound fantastic. I appreciate the little gameplay details you talked about in there.

 

[Dorateen]

No better excuse to get some new hardware for the holidays. Four more shopping days, people.

 

[Grunker]

Sceptic: Eh, what? All I've said is that I don't see a meaningful way to call one qualitatively better than the other. Personally, I prefer turn-based.

 

[Zed]

Hey GUIZE

I just uploaded a little update video from Limbic (we VIP's was allowed to show this to our communities) about the monster/combat speed issue some people been gnashing teeth at:

very nice.

I hope they add loadscreen tooltips regerding this so all those nooblets out there know.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

I just don't think these guys are as intelligent, imaginative and methodical as JVC was, the latter came up with some pretty detailed and impressive gameplay systems, and I think he was better as balancing too.

 

[Zeriel]

Well, no shit? They are making the game as fans of the series. JVC (along with his co-workers) invented the franchise. Sadly, in this day and age random fans remaking a series are much more likely than people like JVC to get it right. Remember, he was recently working on a F2P multiplayer Command & Conquer.

 

[sser]

Pretty exited for this game, my only problem is it runs like dogshit on my computer. I don't know why, but I'm hoping they alleviate some of the performance stuff. I got all my settings turned down and it quite literally looks like a bucket of playdo dropped into some mud. Runs about as well as it looks, too. But I'm still having a lot of fun with it, gooey, indecipherable presentation aside.

 

[J_C]

I'm glad the game is turning out well. I showered a lot of attention on it on the Codex front page over the past half year, and frankly it'd have been very embarrassing if it had turned out to be a bit of a Rex/Hellgate: London type of situation.

Don't worry Infinitron, we know that you are a paid schill for the MMX devs and Ubisoft. :D

 

[Zeriel]

I'm glad the game is turning out well. I showered a lot of attention on it on the Codex front page over the past half year, and frankly it'd have been very embarrassing if it had turned out to be a bit of a Rex/Hellgate: London type of situation.

Don't worry Infinitron, we know that you are a paid schill for anyone with two shekels to rub together :D

^ Minor edit to help you out.

 

[Abelian]

A very informative and entertaining review. I wasn't aware of the fact that each race would have a fighter/rogue/caster class. One thing I liked about HoMM 3-4 was that each faction had a might hero type and a magic hero type. Lords of Magic did the fighter/rogue/caster class thing earlier, but the game was based on Lord of the Realm 2 and HoMM 2, so it's a case of what goes around comes around.

And so began the epic tale of how a group of homeless vagrants lawnmowered our entire world in search of things to sell.

 

[Sceptic]

Sceptic: Eh, what? All I've said is that I don't see a meaningful way to call one qualitatively better than the other. Personally, I prefer turn-based.

I thought it was you I had argued with about the TB in 1-5 vs the RT in 6-8, but maybe it wasn't, and I don't feel like going through 102 pages of that other thread to find out (Infinitron this is why megathreads suck)

(in before it turns out it wasn't Infinitron that argued for megathreads....)

Sadly, in this day and age random fans remaking a series are much more likely than people like JVC to get it right. Remember, he was recently working on a F2P multiplayer Command & Conquer.

Hey, no dumping on JVC! even if HHR's comment was dumb. Of all the old-timers he's the only one who seems to have kept his sanity, as can be seen from the Codex interview he gave us a year or so ago. I'd actually love to find out what he would do if given a traditional blobber to work on.