Might and Magic Might & Magic X - Legacy

[cvv]

I didn't like the gated areas (big placeholder overlevelled monster stacks preventing you from straying too far).

There are no "gated areas" or "overleveled" monster stacks, just areas and monsters that are more difficult than others. I thought that's a good thing. Or are you proposing all mobs should be always around the same level as you? Like, level scaling?

 

[Excidium II]

holy shit

 

[Great Deceiver]

I didn't like the gated areas (big placeholder overlevelled monster stacks preventing you from straying too far).

There are no "gated areas" or "overleveled" monster stacks, just areas and monsters that are more difficult than others. I thought that's a good thing. Or are you proposing all mobs should be always around the same level as you? Like, level scaling?

Well, I guess I didn't phrase it properly - in earlier MM games, when you wandered into a higher level area you would randomly encounter monsters that were of a higher level, but you had no prior warning that the area itself was of a higher level. In MMX this felt forced because higher level areas were pretty much always "guarded" by an obviously higher level monster.

Your reductio ad absurdum is cute, though.

 

[Excidium II]

It is. Also in the games MMX desperately tries to be you have buffs and strong but resource intensive spells, that make it possible to beat encounters you were underleveled for, so it's a choice of the player to suffer or take it easy.

In MMX it's effectively gating, together with actual gating the game has in the overworld. Even in encounters of your level it often becomes a game of your squishies getting one-shot and brought back up by heal over time just in time to quaff potion or cast a spell and get one-shot again.

 

[cvv]

Well, I guess I didn't phrase it properly - in earlier MM games, when you wandered into a higher level area you would randomly encounter monsters that were of a higher level, but you had no prior warning that the area itself was of a higher level. In MMX this felt forced because higher level areas were pretty much always "guarded" by an obviously higher level monster.

How long since you played the game? I played it a few months ago and I don't remember many areas that are outright "guarded". The crypt in the first outside area is definitely one. The entrance to the higher-level area in the Lost City. Maybe one or two others. In most cases there are no "guards" tho, it just never takes long to bump into the first group of the area if that's what you mean by "gated".

 

[Lady_Error]

I didn't like the quest gating of the first overland area where you are prevented by guards from going further. The beginning in general was weaker than the rest of the game.

 

[victim]

Lords of Xulima has a similar style to MMX and is much better than I expected. Elminage Gothic is good for people who liked the early Wizardries - it doesn't have NPC's or much of a story. There were other TB blobbers recently like 7 Mages or Paper Sorcerer, but I haven't tried those yet.

There's also a stable of recent games like Stranger of Sword City which, story considerations aside, is basically the same as Demon Gaze.

 

[animlboogy]

I didn't like the quest gating of the first overland area where you are prevented by guards from going further. The beginning in general was weaker than the rest of the game.

The few people I know who also played this game pretty much stopped immediately because of this.

Meanwhile I bought a few extra copies of Underrail, feeling confident that these sub-humans wouldn't play it at all, and everybody put a good deal of hours in. Assumptions make an ass out of blah blah blah.

 

[cvv]

I didn't like the quest gating of the first overland area where you are prevented by guards from going further. The beginning in general was weaker than the rest of the game.

The few people I know who also played this game pretty much stopped immediately because of this.

It's too bad if people always stop because of this. They'll miss like 90 % of all RPGs ever made.

There are VERY few RPGs where the majority of the game world is open for you as soon as you grab hold of your character. Gothic 3 comes to mind, the Elder Scrolls games...not many more. Vast majority of RPGs I've ever played or heard of are structured, or "gated", in one way or the other.

Saying you stop immediately if you bump into an obstacle in a game world that requires you to solve some quest first is a very amusing example of edgelordism.

 

[Excidium II]

Some games you know are worth enduring bad starts, some just aren't.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I mean, I thought MMX was quite good despite its problems, really the only damning fault that kept me from replaying it and going for the DLC was that it was too slow.

I like blobbers to have quick inputs (preferrably all keyboard mapped) and fast combat, somewhat like roguelikes. There's a certain state of mind that I get into when I play both types of games that I found just didn't happen with MMX.

 

[Zeriel]

I liked MMX, however I think the most fundamental flaw with the game compared with the other, better games in the series is that it's too slow. Blobbers need to be fast paced - even when turn-based (or perhaps especially when turn-based). Combat was too slow compared with Xeen, for example - even if it had more elements.

I didn't mind the over-reliance on ambush encounters and I quite liked the puzzle dungeons, however I didn't like the gated areas (big placeholder overlevelled monster stacks preventing you from straying too far).

Overall a pretty enjoyable game that I finished within a week, which is something I am not able to do with many games anymore, I lose interest pretty quickly. People saying it's terrible are definitely being edgelords. It's just not amazing - but then again, what is?

I found the combat very fast. Not sure how quick people want it to be? The biggest issue I had with it was that tile to tile movement could feel not snappy enough with all the performance issues it had. The actual combat was instantaneous on the player side. I'll admit waiting for those monster animations was a fucking bother, but it wasn't that noticeable on 300% speed.

I still struggle to understand why people hate M&M X so much. Everyone is so vague at this point ("shitty design" being about as helpful as "the gameplay is bad"), the only solid point I am seeing here is people didn't like the tutorial area--and I kind of agree with cvv, RPG veterans should be used to getting past boring tutorial areas.

That being said, I am not suggesting people should struggle through something they don't like if they are sure it will never get better. Your time is yours to use as you prefer. I just find it weird how much people hate this pretty decent blobber while much more offensive games get a pass. I guess the Ubisoft aura is strong.

 

[Kayerts]

I liked MMX but probably couldn't make a strong argument that it was good, mostly because the combat system that is 95% of the focus of the game is shallow and can be trivialized by a few simple strategies. Also, Ashan is still a terrible world with terrible lore, and only terrible stories can be told there. Despite that, I enjoyed the feeling of exploring a dangerous world, and the progression system was fun despite its flaws.

The Falcon and the Unicorn, however, is probably the worst expansion to a fun game that I've ever seen. The designers were clearly trying to provide interesting new challenges within the confines of the pretty limited system they'd built, but the result was to combine most of the most hated gameplay elements in RPGs: you get teleported away to prison without warning, and you can easily have this happen immediately after completing the base game. The game temporarily steals all your equipment. It has a terribly-implemented stealth section. While in the prison, you face a lot of enemies that are enormous stacks of HP and require fairly specific counters, which is an okay thing to include but not if you need to acquire the counters before getting locked into the area with them. If you don't have those counters, you are forced into boring, cheesy strategies that take a lot of time to execute without being interesting. Eventually you get out, travel to a duke's palace, and immediately start punching his army (because fuck talking to people), until you punch enough people that you cause political change. I'm surprised that they didn't manage to fit an escort mission in there.

edit: Found a review:

What could be better than stripping the characters of all the items that made their strength, before locking them in a dungeon where every single misplaced footstep means reloading (which still takes bloody ages so maybe, I don't know, it would have been cool if guards just took you back to your cell when they catch you...), and which dungeon's first level ends with a mandatory fight against an incredibely overpowered boss and his two minions who can easily wipe level 32+ characters in just one blow, implying reloading your game until you are lucky enough to defeat him (which I still haven't been yet, after more than twenty tries)? What could be better than that? I don't know for sure, but now that I think about it, maybe taking one or several bullets in the groin or making love to a rusty train under a storm of molten lava could be better ideas to pass some quality time.

 

[cvv]

Lords of Xulima has a similar style to MMX and is much better than I expected. Elminage Gothic is good for people who liked the early Wizardries - it doesn't have NPC's or much of a story. There were other TB blobbers recently like 7 Mages or Paper Sorcerer, but I haven't tried those yet.

Eh, I really have to give Xulima a spin. Been stalling that for too long.

I bought Elminage and it's a good game but it just reminded me why I vastly prefer full-bloodied RPGs like Wizardry 6-8 to simple dungeon crawlers like Wiz 1-5. Nothing wrong with crawlers mind you, just a matter of taste.

And I briefly tried Paper Sorcerer and I'm sorry but it's like a robust, juicy stake wrapped in used toilet paper and served on a shabby, dirty plate by an octogenerian waitress. Again, matter of taste I guess, but I'm not crazy about the art style, I dislike the sounds and music and I loathe the UI. Plus the plot and story are so barebones and cliche it's bordering on a brazen-faced laziness. Such a shame tho since the core gameplay is very solid.

 

[Lady_Error]

7 Mages looks very much like MMX, including tile movement and TB combat. Will definitely try that one.

 

[V_K]

7 Mages plays very differently from MMX - lighter on RPG mechanics, but much heavier on puzzles and tactics (because of party-splitting).

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I liked MMX, however I think the most fundamental flaw with the game compared with the other, better games in the series is that it's too slow.

Like wat. The fundamental flaw of MMX is that some of the absolutely basic things deciding the enjoyment of a game of this kind, mostly character/party building and itemization/looting are bad.

The best thing you can say about it is that it's a game that by default makes you try very hard to like it - party- and turn-based blobber that is a PC exclusive and a continuation of a revered PC rpg series to boot. It also offers some challenging fights with disregard for modern design ideas like difficulty scaling, though it rarely does that through clever combat mechanics or encounter design but rather by bloated numbers and war of attrition, with enemies applying huge amounts of damage and you trying to outheal them.

The character system is just a festival of bad design. Like introducing dedicated ranged classes with ranged options shit to the point of being 100% ignorable, then giving them melee options that are incomparably more potent to compensate for that and then topping it off with stuff like class skill that makes ranged attacks melee. Misguided much? Dedicated defender class that cannot defend shit outside of encounters with single trash mobs and so on. There are literally two classes in this game - melee dmg dealer and a caster (with some extremely original variations like healer or debuffer). There's even some completely crpg 101 stuff missing, like some sort of a backstabbing/poisoning rogue class. The party building amounts to ingenious ideas of "I'll have some fighters with strong attacks and a mage to heal and buff them, derp". It's so boring and inept that even Josh Sawyer could (possibly) come up with something better. Then there's smaller stuff like introducing tons of secret areas and only one character able to discover them (with a spell that need to be recast to boot). I could go on.

Itemization - there's nothing to discuss here, really. It's on a level of an average budget h'n's, which is criminal for a game that MMX should be. I think I've felt more excited about finding a unique item in Skyrim than I did in MMX, which says everything.

The above things are the biggest flaws, but it's not like the less important stuff is good either. Lack of charm and soul that were always so great in all the M&M games - the graphics from the horrible nu-HoMM, portraits from a cheap american comic book, no paper dolls. Technical mess of a poor looking game that runs average at best on pretty much any PC, often stutters during movement and causes temperature spikes. Loading times out of hell. Yada, yada.

Yeah, I wanted to like this game. I wanted to like it very much.

I still struggle to understand why people hate M&M X so much.

I don't think it's a hated game? It's just one that promises quite a lot and then fails to deliver. Its flaws are also very in-your-face and already discussed many times, so it's not like it's something to ponder about.

 

[TigerKnee]

The character system is just a festival of bad design. Like introducing dedicated ranged classes with ranged options shit to the point of being 100% ignorable, then giving them melee options that are incomparably more potent to compensate for that and then topping it off with stuff like class skill that makes ranged attacks melee.

Is that pre or post "big patch"? I remember the big patch for the game just outright doubled Ranged attack damage so I'm not sure if they're a bit more viable now.

 

[Elwro]

So guys, I'm checking this one finally. Should I buy bow skills for everyone like in some previous titles?

 

[cvv]

So guys, I'm checking this one finally. Should I buy bow skills for everyone like in some previous titles?

Can you even get bow skill for anyone except the Ranger? Don't remember anymore.

Anyway don't do it. Afaik bow has been fixed and is no longer useless like in vanilla but there are better skills (haven't tested the patched bow tho).

 

[Mozg]

My main advice is to always try to build and gear for damage output, because the defensive spells are overpowered and if you pay them too much attention you'll be unkillable-yet-slow-to-kill-enemies, which is extremely boring.

 

[Elwro]

Thanks guys. Frankly, I'm out of the starting town and already the walking speed (the 'smooth transitions') is driving me nuts. I like my blobbers fast & furious, I guess.

 

[Zeriel]

I thought the movement was tolerable. Not great or Demise tier, but okay. The pauses for enemy animations was the only thing that really got on my nerves, delay wise.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Thanks guys. Frankly, I'm out of the starting town and already the walking speed (the 'smooth transitions') is driving me nuts. I like my blobbers fast & furious, I guess.

If the walking speed is the thing that drives you nuts at this point then you're set to complete it.

 

[Elwro]

Heh, yeah, I know, the game basically plays like a little bit smoothed-out Demise without a single huge dungeon and some outside exploration. I'm still giving it a chance, though...