I've had some criticism of MMX in the big MMX thread I won't go over again because I'm not interested in putting the boot into the game, but I think it's a pretty good illustration of the fact that the good old games weren't good by accident or just good for their time. Anyway, good work Sceptic.
Thanks. As a token of appreciation, I'm going to dig out your major post in that thread and respond to your main points, because I can be a dick like this
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.
Mostly agree, and that's why I devoted so much time in the review to pointing this out and giving examples. I don't agree that it takes so long once you do have a working party though, in fact by the late game I was blowing through combats quite quickly; if anything it's waiting for animations that took the most time, especially with enemy spellcasting. I guess the biggest problem with the difficulty curve is that the game is at its most difficult early on IF you have a suboptimal party, but no matter how unoptimised your party, it gets too easy later on. I'm not sure if I should criticise this too much though, because while it does remove challenge from the late game, it also really makes you feel that your party has grown in power, and tangible character growth is pretty important in a CRPG.
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
The ambush abuse is bad. I'm not so sure about the trash mobs though. Although there might be only 3 or so types per area, they tend to have different abilities and each encounter mixes them up in different numbers and in a different setup, and I think this gives quite a bit of variety to the encounters themselves. The problem here (linked to the mitigation tools) is that, regardless of this mixing-up, you STILL can get away with using the same cookie cutter set of super-powered abilities to plow through the encounters. I think fixing the abilities would've made the encounter variety stand out a lot more.
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.
Disagree about the power curve. I actually discarded a couple of my relics in favour of more powerful non-relic items, and NOTHING you find on a relic beats the chance to sun (except of course a relic WITH stun), at least for non-boss fights. If there really is one gamechanger, it's stuns, and your own spell that protects you party from stuns, because those are so insanely powerful with the current system. Entirely agree on gold though, there's too much of it and not enough to spend it on, and I blame the removal of level training for this (I should've pointed it out in the review).
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.
Agreed 100%. All this is the best part about exploration, and it's why I was more willing to give them a pass for going away from "real" M&M exploration to that outdoor-dungeon setup.
I don't expect the new guys to be able to meet that level on the first try to reconstitute a lost tradition.
Neither do I, and that's what my conclusion was all about. It's not the best M&M. It's not on par with the best M&M. As a first try, it shows promise. THAT is what matters to me, that they threw this one out there, that they can see what works and what doesn't, and that they can try to make the next one a better game, and a better M&M. There's no certainty that MMXI will be better, or even that there will
be an MMXI. But if there is, then what I saw in MMX makes me trust them enough to think they will learn from their mistakes. After all they won't be "the new guys" when they develop the sequel. This also means I wouldn't go as easy on them or the game if it ends up being a step back, but there's really no point in thinking that far ahead just yet.
