Sceptic
No offense, i recognize your knowledge about cRPG but like most Codex Reviews, it feels like an essay on the Might & Magic Legacy and your summary don't tell much about the main features either.
There's something to be told about concision and a good pros/cons summary.
Lasagna42
Aside from that, that's the little things that make the game tedious as hell, the movement never cease to remind you it's square based.
From M&M III, movement have been lightning fast, here, it marks every fucking tile, i find it infuriating.
Navigating the cities is tedious, it only gets worse each time you get to a new one because their layout associated with loading times and the delay when moving makes it a pain.
Constant backtracking, JRPG-like, every fucking dungeon has an area you unlock later...
M&M VI improved the Lloyd's beacon spell allowing 6/8 spots where to teleport, it'd would have been particularly smart to implement it that way in M&M X due to the clunky movement, navigation, loading and complicated layout all over the place but of course they didn't.
So, they discarded everything that made M&M III, IV, V, Swords, VI, VII & VIII successful (fast combat, fast travel, lightning fast gameplay, UI, inventory) and added JRPG gated areas.
The only change i can get behind, to a certain point is the combat but really, it gets old and it's not that good.
So, it's a Miss, they used the franchise but failed or refused to acknowledge its strength and got the reception they deserved, not a complete failure but not a huge success either, an average reception for an average game with retarded flaws, seriously, the movement/travel issues are too retarded.
If the devs were advocates and performed that badly, they'd be disbarred!