Might and Magic Might & Magic X - Legacy

[Clockwork Knight]

I'm having difficulty about thinking of pest extermination being done well, though. At least a fedex quest allows you to see new places.

 

[Eyeball]

Prefer extermination quests when they're somehow surprising or sinister. I liked the "clear ghosts from tomb" quest in Skyrim that was really just a shady researcher wanting to keep other graverobbers out, making him put in a lot of traps and ghostly shenanigans. The wanamingo quest of FO2 was also good, mainly because of how bizarre it was to find Ripley-like aliens in a FO2 setting.

 

[Shadenuat]

I think defending governor's castle from brigands would be a good starting quest, while spiders in a well could be a side quest after. Would show em noobs with 3 or 4 levels of ambushing brigands with poison arrows and fireslinging mages feebleminding your casters, help to establish that narrative is *sorta* about politics, and give some Harmondale nostalgia.
But eh, game is out, no point to argue about that now, we had our word during development.

 

[Angthoron]

I think defending governor's castle from brigands would be a good starting quest, while spiders in a well could be a side quest after. Would show em noobs with 3 or 4 levels of ambushing brigands with poison arrows and fireslinging mages feebleminding your casters, help to establish that narrative is *sorta* about politics, and give some Harmondale nostalgia.
But eh, game is out, no point to argue about that now, we had our word during development.

Yeah, that'd be a bit better. Or some cult. I like clearing out cults in M&M games. I guess they don't fit in so well with new lore though? I've no idea, stopped "following" M&M lore since the last reboot.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

help to establish that narrative is *sorta* about politics

The narrative is retarded. let us nto pretend otherwise. It works best when they make fun of it in the game itself like the spider well clear quest. Instead of droning on and on and on about the shitty angel and his shitty revenge.

 

[ricolikesrice]

i thought the codex of all places would be more sympathic to extermination quests that involve killing those responsible for poisoning wells.

 

[cvv]

Yeah, that'd be a bit better. Or some cult. I like clearing out cults in M&M games. I guess they don't fit in so well with new lore though? I've no idea, stopped "following" M&M lore since the last reboot.

The new MnM universe is not terrible. I mean, it's not Planescape but compared to previous MnM universes and plots the Hungarians responsible for Homam6 at least tried to introduce some complexity/morbidity flavour with their new creation.

Insane angels using humans as their stock cattle, raped wives running away, amassing an army and slaughtering their dirtbag husbands, daughters murdering their fathers, brothers executing said daughters and said daughters being turned into undead liches by their zombie aunts...I mean, not your typical NWC vibe.

That said, I found the plot and setting of MMX poor and bland, by far the worst part of the whole game.

 

[Arkeus]

Prefer extermination quests when they're somehow surprising or sinister. I liked the "clear ghosts from tomb" quest in Skyrim that was really just a shady researcher wanting to keep other graverobbers out, making him put in a lot of traps and ghostly shenanigans. The wanamingo quest of FO2 was also good, mainly because of how bizarre it was to find Ripley-like aliens in a FO2 setting.

I actually liked that the whole spider quest was because someone forgot to feed pets on a boat.

 

[Toffeli]

Am I stupid or why I can't figure that lvl 2 floor puzzle of Fortress of Crows? I think I've tried it about 40 minutes. I can only get to the point where I have 2 parts left.

E: Ah, typical, I gave up thinking, and just started going randomly, and with about 4th try I solved it.

 

[Toffeli]

And now I noticed, it wasnt even necessary, and only gave random loot. After that I noticed I hadn't looked at one corner, which had a chest that gave a key.

 

[Abelian]

The guy replying to Infinitron has a point - what the reviewer likely meant is that even if you're winking to the audience to show you recognize you're doing something banal, you're still doing something banal; not that the developers were genuinely unaware of what they were doing.

I just noticed that that was the review's author, swcarter.

 

[Kaucukovnik]

Which is fine. If it is Integrated into the storyline in a halfway coherent way. Would you have accepted it without question if Gladiator had ended with Luke Skywalker zooming by in a spaceship blasting the emperor with a laser cannon? No, because that would have been fucking silly and out of nowhere. Like it was in MM7.

Nope. You knew right from the start.
All right, nobody said aloud: "Look, hi-tech guys in aqualungs!", but it was there.

 

[Eyeball]

Yep, there was a brief video of a spaceship crashing and frog-men walking ashore.

This was not mentioned AT ALL until maybe 1-2 hours before game over. This does not constitute good integration.

 

[Gozma]

Don't think I'm gonna finish the game.

First, lemme set aside my problems with this as a Might and Magic sequel.

Here's the big problem with the combat: They give you extremely powerful damage mitigation tools like holy armor, really strong heals, really strong and effectively infinite potions, and the general panoply of buffs and debuffs. It's very very easy to reach a point where the monsters in an area or even the entire game are zero threat to actually kill you. But it still takes minutes and minutes real time to finish these tactically "solved" combats with full blown damage sperg parties, never mind improvised first playthrough stuff. Even most of the wrinkles added to combat like monsters with retaliation and damage reflection end up being damage brakes that slow down combat even further. I'm tempted to think the basic damage-soaking-tug-of-war dynamic is just what designers are used to now in the post-MMORPG era and they can't conceptualize anything else, but it may just be a straight up error.

They compound the error by throwing very repetitive trash mob encounters using the same 2-3 enemy types per area in your way in various contrived ambushes, meaning you can very easily find yourself looking down the well of multiple hours to clear an area where every single fight is pure deadmind. The "Jesus H. Christ this dungeon has ANOTHER FLOOR?" feeling comes over and over. This bloated fake-tactical combat is probably half the playtime of the game and is used to pad out the perceived size of the twisty corridor maps.

Stuff that takes minutes and minutes to finish has a very high burden of interestingness, designerman

Random problems:

Random magic items suck, mostly because the power curve of the game is so flat aside from damage mitigation. I never found a single piece of non-relic equipment in the game that felt like a legitimate "gamechanger". You feel lucky to get stuff that is a tiny incremental improvement on whatever you have on, because 95% or more of random items are worthless to you. Money also gets out of control shortly into the second act so it even becomes a pain to throw the stuff away.

It's hard to decide how good the exploration is when the combat is so bad and so slow. I liked the stuff that was there (finding trainers, the mysterious and dangerous caves), really enjoyed the riddle tower and riddle chests, and the elemental shard riddle-rooms were mostly good.

Random praise:

They handled buffs pretty well. The short durations mostly keep you out of "TIME TO GET UP ALL DA BUFFS!!" except in exceptional circumstances.

 

[Broseph]

Combat is only slow if you suck. L2P fagget.

 

[Gozma]

Also one other thing: I thought I could just ignore the lore stuff but man they try so hard to keep shoving that shit in your face. So much obvious effort has been spent on it. If you have Dwarves with Scottish accents I will never pay attention to your lore, alright? Please just stop. It's like watching a small child try to wake up a dead animal. Read old Gygax modules to see how to make generic fantasy fun and light instead of leaden beyond belief.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Crooked Bee]

I dunno, from my experience the combat is actually fast enough. Sure, it isn't the kill-200-mobs-in-one-click traditional MM design but that can only be a good thing...

The dungeons aren't anything to complaing about either... If anything, they're actually too short.

 

[Tigranes]

Finished second run with the new dungeons (which were pretty meh), uninstalled. Good fun, but now I'm done. There aren't enough customisation options, and combined with the poor loot table and little nonlinearity there's no real reason to keep going. Still, it did a good job for those two playthroughs and that's a respectable performance.

Combat and movement isn't slow at all, with 300% speed, which is good because it really would have been a drag if they were. Once you figure out the system you can create some powerful parties, and the Warden is really really powerful now with buffed bows - I'd say as good as or nearl yas good as bladedancer.

 

[Bubbles]

but now I'm done

but... what about the DLC?

 

[Tigranes]

Fuck DLC.

 

[Infinitron]

Fuck DLC.

It's free if you preordered. The first one, anyway.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I'm not gonna trawl through 220+ pages of this thread to find the answers to my questions, so I'm just gonna ask. I happened to notice this game being available in retail here in Iceland, and except for the price ($45!) there is no mention of any DRM besides "online activation". Does this game require Steam to work, or does it have that Uplay thing everyone seems to loathe so much?

 

[Darkion]

I'm not gonna trawl through 220+ pages of this thread to find the answers to my questions, so I'm just gonna ask. I happened to notice this game being available in retail here in Iceland, and except for the price ($45!) there is no mention of any DRM besides "online activation". Does this game require Steam to work, or does it have that Uplay thing everyone seems to loathe so much?

It requires Steam AND that Uplay thing that's almost universally hated. The game is fun, so it's worth the pain but if you get it make sure that you kill Uplay's Cloud saves synchronization because it loves to mess up your savegames.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Thanks for the info, it's getting rare when a retail copy is a good deal.