Might and Magic Might & Magic X - Legacy

[Durante]

Well, I'm loving this. I'm not too far in, but one thing I can already say is that some other upcoming games should take a good look at the interface design in M&M X. Clean, functional, aesthetically pleasing, usable at any resolution, coherent and readable font design. Also love the book illustrations.

I'm playing on Adventurer and it has been challenging so far. Normally I wouldn't chose the "easiest" difficulty, but with what I heard before the release and now experienced it seemed like the best choice, at least for the first time through.

Graphically it's not the most jaw-dropping game around, but it actually looks better than I expected:

 

[Zeriel]

Regarding difficulty, it's plenty challenging on Warrior. If you (royal you here, not picking anyone out) picked adventurer and find combat boring, you have only yourself to blame.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I'm playing on Warrior and Mamushi kicked my ass the first time I tried him, then I popped some bandit moles, came back and cleared him after a couple of tries.

I thought Warrior was supposed to be the standard mode for previous M&M players, was I mistaken? The game isn't overtly difficult so far, but my melee dudes seem to miss a lot, and some fights (like Mamushi) can come down to luck as to whether you get blocked or miss most of the time or not. I'm using the default setup of Barb/Defender/Ranger/Mage (Ranger sucks ass so far, does dual wielding make it worth later on somehow? Bows are quite underwhelming at the start I have to say), it's far from optimal but I just wanted to get into the game asap and get a feel for things. I'll definitely come back for a more refined party later on.

So far Earth Magic seems way better than everything else, but the first school I reached Expert in was actually Primal, because I wanted to be able to Identify shit without paying through the nose ASAP.

Overall the game is pretty good, better than I expected it would be. Performance is kind of ass but it doesn't affect me that much. Something that's bothering me is the very low volume for ambient music, or the complete lack of it (can't really tell most of the time), I miss the kickass synth tunes from MM3-5.

 

[Excidium]

Regarding difficulty, it's plenty challenging on Warrior. If you (royal you here, not picking anyone out) picked adventurer and find combat boring, you have only yourself to blame.

To be honest this game is only really hard when a squishy gets randomly one-shot and I sure as hell don't need more of that. I'm fighting Shadow Dragon right now and everytime I miss a taunt something not awesome happens.

With crappy aggro mechanic, potion chugging and lack of combat formations I only see warrior mode being there for replay value.

I thought Warrior was supposed to be the standard mode for previous M&M players, was I mistaken?

Yeah...M&M games were never known for being hard unless you try to rush through them.

 

[sser]

I have to wonder if people are missing in melee a lot because they equipped medium/heavy armor without realizing it has attack penalties...? My guys hit with fairly solid frequency, for what it's worth. I still find ranged combat to be completely useless and more or less transitioned my Scout dwarf into a battlemage (fire) with an axe. 50% nerf to ranged shots at pointblank makes sense game mechanically, I suppose, but you never get long range battles going on... and who wants them, anyway? Typically you have a melee heavy hitter bashin' nerds upfront so the closer the better. I can only imagine a disbalanced party wanting a ranged fighter (all mages, or mostly mages, or mostly ranged, etc.).

The "Iven" guy hilariously one-shot my Crusader upon entering the room, then one-kicked my Shaman in the face. I ended up reloading and walking into the room with Celestial Armor on to survive the initial onslaught... That was a great battle. Pretty clusterfucky. I don't know if Warrior could ever be possible without having someone with Regenerate because that spell seriously saves your bacon 24/7. Dunno about later acts, but the Earth tree totally rocks the first part of the game. Counter-acts poison, gives you straight armor boosts for all the melee/ranged attacks going on, regenerates health, has a decent attack ability (entangle), can cloud poison and debuff enemies' evade abilities, etc.

Light and Fire both step it up in their 2nd tiers, though. Haven't yet explored Water/Air/Primal/Dark, though. We need more battle reports...

 

[alkeides]

Ahahaha, just got raped by the Shadow Dragon. I think it's an optional boss. But I gave him a damn good fight even though I am level 4. Let me just say that Cloak of Shadows and the armor of light spell are very powerful when used together and allow you to tango with foes way out of your league. Unfortunately it's usually a loosing battle since when you run out you die fast.

Spoiler

Still my sojurn was useful. The dragon does shadow damage, so first stop in Sorpigal will be to get the Shadow School resistance spell for my Freemage. That dragon's day will come...soon. The dragon is located near the castle north of sorpigal. Go west from the castle, cross a bridge and go to the very end of the map, by the pink crystal

When the dragon got in my face I missed my anti aliasing. I have now turned shadows off. That has lessened the load on my GPU and it's doing ok now, temp is in the late 70s.

Still, Ubi NEEDS to get the graphics/optimization patch out asap. Otherwise this will kill the games repute. This is the most horrendously unoptimized game I have played.

Excidium

Spoiler

Yes it was a pair of boots!

After reloading from the dragon I went exploring a bit, and got raped by 2 wraiths, which appeared to be mini bosses. Undead are no cakewalk in this game.

Apart from the technical flaws the only thing I would right now say I don't like is that the game mimics the Xeen series a bit too closely in some respects. I hated the wells and fountains in Xeen; in Legacy there are Crystal shrines just nearby town that give you temporary blessings. Yes they are much less and also less powerful than Xeen's shit, but still. It is annoying. Also the overworld map feels too small and constrained with impossibly huge objects, again like the Xeen series. I would much prefer that in sequels they use overworld similar to MM 6 & 7. Everything feels normal in size and there is a huge area to explore.

Anyhoo, back to the game. Have to stop by work tomorrow even though I am on my yearly (last years!) leave so won't be able to play much then. Gotta make up for it today :D

And watch the spoilers guys. Thx.

 

[Excidium]

I have to wonder if people are missing in melee a lot because they equipped medium/heavy armor without realizing it has attack penalties...? My guys hit with fairly solid frequency, for what it's worth. I still find ranged combat to be completely useless and more or less transitioned my Scout dwarf into a battlemage (fire) with an axe. 50% nerf to ranged shots at pointblank makes sense game mechanically, I suppose, but you never get long range battles going on... and who wants them, anyway? Typically you have a melee heavy hitter bashin' nerds upfront so the closer the better. I can only imagine a disbalanced party wanting a ranged fighter (all mages, or mostly mages, or mostly ranged, etc.).

Well I for one wish there was any information about how evasion and attack interact. All I know about these two stats is that more is better, I *assume* they subtract from each other, since apart from hp and mp they are the only secondary stats with flat values.

Destiny is such a shitty stat too.

Dunno about later acts, but the Earth tree totally rocks the first part of the game. Counter-acts poison, gives you straight armor boosts for all the melee/ranged attacks going on, regenerates health, has a decent attack ability (entangle), can cloud poison and debuff enemies' evade abilities, etc.

I really like the poison from Earth, specially against enemy wizards since their retarded AI wastes a turn cleansing it everytime. It could only be better if it ticked at the start of enemy turn. The health regen is also awesome and works as a downed protection as the over time effect is usually enough to bring somebody up from negative HP.

Haven't really made use of entangle because most of my damage is melee, I'd prefer if it dealt no damage but snared for more turns.

 

[Zeriel]

To be honest this game is only really hard when a squishy gets randomly one-shot and I sure as hell don't need more of that. I'm fighting Shadow Dragon right now and everytime I miss a taunt something not awesome happens.

With crappy aggro mechanic, potion chugging and lack of combat formations I only see warrior mode being there for replay value.


Yeah...M&M games were never known for being hard unless you try to rush through them.

Putting yourself into a situation where a squishy gets one shot is a choice, though. I often see people make that mistake. They decide to play one way, convince themselves that one way is the only way to play, and then anything that happens as a result is the game's fault.

 

[Excidium]

Putting yourself into a situation where a squishy gets one shot is a choice, though. I often see people make that mistake. They decide to play one way, convince themselves that one way is the only way to play, and then anything that happens as a result is the game's fault.

It's not really a choice, would be a choice if the game had front/back rows or similar mechanic and you decided to have your squishy up front. As it is, it's just RNG.

 

[Zeriel]

Putting yourself into a situation where a squishy gets one shot is a choice, though. I often see people make that mistake. They decide to play one way, convince themselves that one way is the only way to play, and then anything that happens as a result is the game's fault.

It's not really a choice, would be a choice if the game had front/back rows or similar mechanic and you decided to have your squishy up front. As it is, it's just RNG.

You're not required to make your casters ultra squishy. It's possible to stat them such a way they can take a hit or two. There are abilities that prevent one shots that aren't taunt. The fact that there are creatures that are immune to Provoke (and I'm not talking about bosses here, just normal monsters) suggests to me that you were never meant to rely on it as a cure-all.

 

[Excidium]

You're not required to make your casters ultra squishy.

Sure, if they're hybrids. My shaman can take a beating, it's why I roll with only one healer. But statting a freemage to be tanky would be a tad counter-productive.

You're not required to make your casters ultra squishy. It's possible to stat them such a way they can take a hit or two. There are abilities that prevent one shots that aren't taunt. The fact that there are creatures that are immune to Provoke (and I'm not talking about bosses here, just normal monsters) suggests to me that you were never meant to rely on it as a cure-all.

Yes, like the darkness spell that makes the next attack miss, or the water spell that reduces the number of enemy attacks by one, for starters. None of which really help that much against being one-shot.

 

[Zeriel]

You're not required to make your casters ultra squishy.

Sure, if they're hybrids. My shaman can take a beating, it's why I roll with only one healer. But statting a freemage to be tanky would be a tad counter-productive.

You're not required to make your casters ultra squishy. It's possible to stat them such a way they can take a hit or two. There are abilities that prevent one shots that aren't taunt. The fact that there are creatures that are immune to Provoke (and I'm not talking about bosses here, just normal monsters) suggests to me that you were never meant to rely on it as a cure-all.

Yes, like the darkness spell that makes the next attack miss, or the water spell that reduces the number of enemy attacks by one, for starters. None of which really help that much against being one-shot.

Celestial Armor absorbs more damage than any one character can generally do. Combined with other things it can absolutely prevent random gibs. My experience on Warrior difficulty is that when things do kill you through that, it's because you did something stupid, like feeding a monster that gets extra attacks on miss/dodge an extra 10 attacks (I'm looking at you, Ravenous Ghoul).

anybody found the water shard?

Spoiler

It's in the Lost City, Level 4.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I think it would be nice for bows after Expert or maybe Master level to ignore the 50% penalty at melee range. It's way too harsh.

 

[Excidium]

Celestial Armor absorbs more damage than any one character can generally do. Combined with other things it can absolutely prevent random gibs. My experience on Warrior difficulty is that when things do kill you through that, it's because you did something stupid, like feeding a monster that gets extra attacks on miss/dodge an extra 10 attacks (I'm looking at you, Ravenous Ghoul).

Celestial armor would be p. cool if it wasn't shared party-wide. In my experience It either goes to waste when the tank gets attacked first or amounts to nothing on an AoE attack like the Shadow Dragon tail swipe, unless you absolutely dump points in Light. I used it for a bit but it feels like a waste of turn, only thing that is good about is that you don't need to deal with enemy resistance I guess.

 

[Infinitron]

Yes, it fucking works. Whaddaya think i'm lying? If you're on a 64 bit system, edit options64.txt. Better, edit both to be sure. I can always check the current resolution in my monitor and it shows 1680x1050. Apparently, Infinitron cannot into computer.

Screenshot if you still have doubts:

Well, maybe 1680x1050 works but 1920x1200 doesn't.

 

[Zeriel]

I think it would be nice for bows after Expert or maybe Master level to ignore the 50% penalty at melee range. It's way too harsh.

Ranger ability used to do that, but looks like they changed it to instead aoe every target in front of them. (I assume it doesn't have the melee penalty when you use it.) But... well, the Ranger has daggers GM for a reason.

 

[alkeides]

Bows are amazing. I gave my bladedancer 1 rank in bows and my crusader 1 rank in crossbow simply because by the time the enemy gets close they can whittle him down.

Gust of air is a great spell. Much more damaging than it appears, and half the damage is physical, meaning it cannot be resisted with magic resistance. Same with Crusaders divine weapon.

Yeah armor lowers attack rating, which is why pump up your main weapon skill first as it ups both damage and attack rating. Pump up armor later IMO give priority to weapon skills.

 

[Syvere]

Those running without a tank how has the game been? Making two blade dancers feels kind awkward for some reason so I thought about blade dancer, barbarian, rune priest and freemage. Barb and blade dancer both have master Warfare so they both get taunt, seems like they could hold off the aggro from the mages but since they have no armour I don't how viable the Dodge grand mastery is.

Also Mercenary seems kind of lacking? No GM weapon skills at all and dozens master skills. But who would need more than one or two weapon skills? And my problem with the Crusader is that you would have to spend stat points on might, magic, vitality AND spirit.

 

[Zeriel]

I'm running two Blade Dancers right now, they work just fine as tanks. Throw points into Warfare and the occasional point into vitality and its all gravy. My blade dancers have 200-250 HP at level 17.

 

[alkeides]

Bladedancers get more HP than other classes because they are kinda glass cannons. Except their evades get so high they don't get touched. I am level 5 with Arwyn my Bladedancing bitch, and i made sure to pump destiny every level. Her evades are through the roof when you add in the bonus from elf race and dodge skill.

Only problem I see with more than 1 Bladedancer in a party is you will run out of good swords and maybe even daggers to equip them with. My Crusader needs a good sword too

 

[Syvere]

Yeah, you need either 2x swords and 2x daggers or 4x daggers. Is the vendor stuff any good?

 

[Stabwound]

Yes, it fucking works. Whaddaya think i'm lying? If you're on a 64 bit system, edit options64.txt. Better, edit both to be sure. I can always check the current resolution in my monitor and it shows 1680x1050. Apparently, Infinitron cannot into computer.

Screenshot if you still have doubt

Well, maybe 1680x1050 works but 1920x1200 doesn't.

This may seem to work, but I believe it may break UI elements. I tried setting a custom resolution in this way (to play windowed in a custom res, something like 1920x1000) and while most of the game displayed fine, some UI elements were not draw correctly because the game isn't designed to have specific offsets for them. Example, dialogue options were off the screen, etc.

Can anyone confirm this method works with zero errors including dialogue? Otherwise it needs some modding before it's playable in these resolutions.

 

[Zeriel]

I'm currently using all vendor daggers because, you know, RNG drop tables. As far as I know, vendor loot is just as good as what drops normally outside of relics (which are static, obviously). As an example, I bought a dagger in The Crag that had +17 prime damage and +9 destiny, another with +14 fire damage and +48 HP.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Yeah, you need either 2x swords and 2x daggers or 4x daggers. Is the vendor stuff any good?

There are good stuff from the begining. First "wagon" you find after leaving town have a really god 2h sword with AoE bonus damage.

 

[Zeriel]

Yeah, you need either 2x swords and 2x daggers or 4x daggers. Is the vendor stuff any good?

There are good stuff from the begining. First "wagon" you find after leaving town have a really god 2h sword with AoE bonus damage.

Vendor loot is random, and refreshes based on time, actually!

Most chests/drops are random, too, though determined at start of game in the case of containers.