Might & Magic X - Game mechanics etc

I have just reached level 24 with my team after another 20 hours since my last post. As I´ve said in my previous post I am playing this on warrior difficulty and since the last post I have really experienced the harder difficulty in a way that I did not yet encounter in my last post.

In short I would recommend the warrior difficulty. I don´t know how easy the other difficulty setting is but for a game not to loose all its challenge, it have to be rather high for me. The worst example must have been Arcania - Gothic IV which was so easy on the default difficulty that it spoiled the game and forced me to pick a higher one.

I have still not grasped the main story except for a few parts of it.  I am still firm in my belief that the story is very badly executed. You pick up some books and lore from time to time but I never bother to read them since the story is just too uninvolving and it doesn´t matter in the end anyway. All dialogues are only a few sentences long and with no options. It doesn´t matter what you say or not. What´s matter is how good you party is at fighting.

There are quite a few places in the game that requires some mental abilities like solving puzzles or riddles. Certain chests have locks on them in the form of riddles. The elemental forge, a very central place in the game, have puzzles in each important elemental room that requires you to pull levers in a certain order to make something to happen or stepping on plates to build a stairway to heaven for example. There are also mysterious caves spread out in the world and some of them contains puzzles to solve as well to reveal their treasures. It´s good there are some challenges implemented in the game. After all, you just have to look for a solution online if you haven´t the time to solve them or get stuck. It is also worth it to have some sort of spot secret spell active. Many places are contains secret and hidden walls that hides valuable treasures.

Back to the game mechanics. Combat is the central part of the game and the only way forward is to win every fight. The overland map is huge but it is built up like a huge underground dungeon. You still have to travel grid by grid and narrow parts are often guarded by a bunch of monsters which means that after awhile you will be boxed in and have to select one of those obstacles to tackle in order to move forward. It is here the challenge of the game lies because you will have to run back and forth between previously found enemies and newly found ones to try out if you are capable enough to defeat them. At around level 12-15 I had big troubles in advancing the game and really had to search for fights that could help give me much needed experience points and gold in order to improve my group. As I said in my last post, there is NO random encounters or spawning monsters in the game at all which means that if you are not careful in building up your party and spend your skill and/or attribute points wisely things might be too hard to accomplish. The problem is that there is no way to switch difficulty ingame so if you´re stuck you are screwed.

Combat starts when enemies are within a few hexes of you. Depending on your range capabilities both in the form of bows/crossbows and spells you could start hitting enemies from 3 or more hexes away depending on skill. That is useful for enemies that does only have melee capabilities. If you encounter spellcasters it is wiser to try to retreat to a corner to wait for them to show up in front of you since they often are weak melee fighters.

Neither you or the enemies can flee and they have no morale so every fight is to the death. You act turnwise between your group and the enemies group. It took me half the time ingame before I noticed I could actually select which enemy to hit. There are always a preselected enemy for you. Many have talked about the variety in tactics that could be used in combat and yes, the system opens up for some different gaming styles. But that depends mostly on what type of character classes you have and which spells and skills you have rather than any specific choices during the fight.

I have two mages. Their role is to support my melee fighters with spells that remove the enemies capability to block, or to bolster my groups capabilities like Heroic Destiny that improves our critical hit chance, or Stone skin that improves the groups armour value. One very useful spell is the Celestial shield that absorbs an amount of damage before anyone will be hit. Then there is the different types of direct and area effect spells like firebolts and fireballs. Each school has its own strengths and weaknesses and by combining them you could find way to maximise your tactics used. Enemies have resistances against different types of schools. Never try to use fire magic against a fire elemental for example.

I find that the light magic school is important because of the heal and resurrection abilities but you could also rely on a special hireling to do that sort of stuff. The Dark Magic school is important because of the identify spell that helps you identify unknown items without you having to pay money for it. Then there is the spell Spirit Beacon that allows you to set a waypoint and travel back to that place whenever you wish, allowing you to save much boring travel time across the map. There are much more to say about the different magic schools and I have not access to all of them since there are limitations to what my freemages can use. 

I have survived because I have preserved my attribute points and skill points until I have found the trainers I have been looking for. When there only remains a few very hard fights I spend them in order to be able to make progress in certain areas. I don´t recommend the warrior difficulty for inexperienced players because it requires patience and preserving of attribute/skill points.

A good amount of time in the game is spent looking for trainers or remember where you found certain trainers. Your promotion through skills go from novice to expert, master and grandmaster. To be able to train in a grandmaster skill often requires your class to have been promoted which in turn will have you to look for the promotion quests. A promoted class get bonus abilities and is well worth pursuing. The grandmaster level of skills is also often very powerful. Personally, I take help of online resources to find out where certain skill trainers is but only in areas I have already discovered. I have no inclination to write my own logs. A pity the diary in the game doesn´t track that information for you since it works very well in all other aspects.

The game is still as fun as in the beginning. You always want to have that more xp in order to raise a level or get enough money to buy that particular weapon or spell. There is always something you crave for. Not until I reached around level 18 I could build up more than 10.000 gold and now I have over 80.000 gold. At this stage it is hard to find better equipment. And speaking of that, there are certain relic-type items in the game. Such an item works like any other item except it will receive experience points and level up with you, giving you additional bonuses along the way up to level 4. Those items are very rare but powerful.

The outdoor map

My next post will probably be a review of the game. I have no idea how far I have come. But the game is divided into four acts and I have just reached act three.

Might & Magic X: Legacy - Is it worth it ?

It was merely weeks ago I learned that Might & Magic X: Legacy had been released. The last game, Might & Magic IX was released in 2002 and it was very poor. I tried to get into it both then and in 2013 for my blog but I just couldn´t find the motivation and dumped it after a few hours. I never got enough material to write about it.

Anyway, I read a little about this new sequel and it had received quite good reviews so it was a must buy for me. My first experience with this brand was with Might & Magic II for the Amiga in 1988 and then with the follow up in 1991. Unfortunately that was the end of the series for the Amiga. platform.

It seems the story is taken from the Heroes of Might and Magic rather than from the previous Might & Magic (note the ampersand difference!) world.  Not that I care really. The story in the game is  uninteresting due to mainly a poor execution and boring texts and dialogues that I couldn't care less. More of that later.

The game starts with you having to pick four adventures from four races: human, elves, dwarves and orcs and then pick a class for them. Every race has three starting classes and then there are advanced classes that could be reached later in the game. There are tooltips that tells you the advantages of every class. In the end you have to distribute a fixed amount of attribute- and skillpoints. Here is my first complaint. The skills are not described in any details in the game or in the manual so I wasn´t sure of what certain skills really did to my character like.

When you have to choose magical schools I had the same problem. With no way of knowing which spells I would get later on if I select Earth, Fire, Air, Water, Dark, Light etc how could I build a group of characters for my playing style or liking ?

At this point I was pretty annoyed. Today all games are shipped with digital manuals but still they couldn´t include a complete list of skills and spells with their descriptions! A major mistake in my opinion. I had to google for some information just to know which schools sucked and which didn´t. I have never cared for replaying any RPG and would not like to spend hundreds of hours to try out the best party. Life is too short for that.

Ok, so with that in mind I eventually ended up with a party consisting of one orc barbarian, an elven bladedancer and two human freemages, each of the mages complementing each other so I had access to all magical schools for humans. Worth mentioning is that each race has its advantages and each class might have skill caps. There are so much information to take in when creating characters that I much later found out that my favourite magic school (fire) was capped at master level for my freemages.

Enough complaining because the game is rather good. You start out just outside the first city in the game. Your main goal is to reach another city but that city is not reachable nor accessible in any way right now. A female speaker voice tells the story of our group of adventurer and the we are on our own. The graphics, despite using a very old graphical engine with few details, are still rather good and a refreshing sight. Or it is I who have got used to the old graphics in all crpgs played for the past years.

You can explore the town and get to meet a few NPC:s, most are shopkeepers. From them you could gain some quests but the dialogues are non-existing. You never have any dialogue options other than yes or no so it is very simple. That stays for the rest of the game. You get sidequests from NPC:s or you can buy to learn skills from them. In the town you could find classical places like a weapon smith, armourer, magic shop or inn. Here and there you have the opportunity to hire hirelings. They don´t actually take part as beings you could use in fights or equip but add certain skills or abilities to the group. Quite nice.

The classical start mission I got from the garrison commander was to clear out the city well. Deep down it was filled with huge spiders. I have to say I really like the graphics and the user interface works well. It is very colourful and the environments feels unique even though your movement is stepwise. The automap works very well and all important locations are automatically added and you can make notes as well.

You have day and night cycles in the game but they don´t affect anything other than passing the time. You will not regenerate hitpoints or mana automatically. You need to rest and spend one provision and in the starting town you could only buy 6 provision at most. That means you have to travel back and forth a lot of times when exploring far away from the town. Even though you find healing- and manapotions they are too valuable to waste for any fight and they are expensive to buy.

You start out - naturally - with little or no equipment or spells and have to buy everything you need or find it. Money is always a limiting factor. Fortunately there are quite many chests and barrels spread out. The most valuable ones are found guarded by monsters. And here I feel they have done a very good balancing job. It is really fun to open chests and find items. You never know how valuable it will be or how good it will be. The curiosity is at top. And even though you think you will find quite some gold it is never enough when you have to buy expensive spells and increase your skill levels from novice to expert to master and finally grandmaster. 

Even the fights are quite fun and you find yourself trying out different spells and tactics to use. They are turnbased, just as your movement. Range is an important factor both for ranged weapons, spells and your abilities in it. It is extremely rewarding to increase in skill levels and actually see the effects it has or increase in levels and decide how to spend the 3 skill spoints or ability points you get. They have really succeeded in keeping this charm which is so important for a good RPG.

Tooltips help you to quickly assess an items abilities and worth and it helps you comparing it with what you have equipped. The inventory is shared amongst your four party members but they individually equips their own items. You do find unidentified items and unless you want to pay much money to get it identified, you will have to find the right spell in the right magic school. 

I have to say that I have become totally hooked by Might & Magic X. My group is level 12 right now. In the beginning you could choose difficulty level. I choosed the harder one and it has payed out well. Many said it was hard on the forums but I don´t think so. I think it represents just the perfect balance. I even thought it was too easy for most of the starting hours in the game. Only the boss monsters posed any real threat. Now when I am in act two out of four I admit it has become harder. I suppose that if you don´t specialise and spread out your skill points you will have it quite tough to beat some enemies. Since I am and old school player I always save half of my skill and attribute points until I really need them. Yes, you don´t have to spend them when you level up, they all accumulate and you could use them any time.

It could be read in other places that the gameworld is open and not linear. That is not entirely true. You are contained into locked regions which don´t open up until you´ve completed some quite hard tasks so no, you cannot just run around in the whole game and enter any dungeon or castle but you can at least choose from a few at some time. There are a lot of places which are way too hard to tackle and you have to leave them be until you have become much stronger. That´s just how I wan´t it too be.

This game is true to its ancestors when it comes to old, hardcore gaming. It is very thin on story and heavy on combat, exploration and party customization just like the former games was. But what I like really much in this game is the almost total lack of random encounters. When you´ve cleared and area it is a free area 95 % of the time. That also means there are no grinding places which could be tough for those who have misused their skill and attributes because you cannot change any character while ingame and have to restart. Hopefully I won´t come to that later on in the game but this is just another reason for including as much information upfront in the manual as possible. At least today when printing costs, shipping costs and environment won´t be a problem.

I´ll return with more information about the game in a future post....now I have to get back in the game. If you cannot wait for my review I can state it now that it is well worth it´s money and the developers have come with several patches since its release date so I don´t think there are any majore bugs left. It runs smooth and the music is also very good. So good in fact that it deserves to be heard: Might & Magic X - Theme music

Now I must get back to the game....