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....

Eschalon: Book III - Review

Game reviewed: Eschalon: Book III

Version: 1.021
Created by: Basilisk Games
Released: 2014

Formats: Pc, Mac

Difficulty: 5/10

Est. Playing time: 20 hours
Price: $14.99

Arghh...Little did I know I was only a few hours from the end of the game when finishing my last post. I have to say I was almost shocked at the quick resolution of the game. I thought the mainstory would at least continue for a few more quests but alas, that was not so.

Without going into any details, let´s just say I finally made it into the Astral range. I was right in my last post. One of the four vital widget items you need to complete the temple was found in the goblin island stronghold. The most difficult one to find was hidden in a treasury hold in Moonrise. It wasn´t easy to find the last piece and I do have to admit I did get some hints online. After that I could complete the temple and walked out into the Astral range. 

It consisted of three new maps that was quickly explored. They where almost empty. A few new opponents made their appearance like the phoenix but not anyone of them was any problem against my level 6 ice-lance spells at level 16.

When I finally met the warlord I gave him the head of one of his enemies and was let in to see the prisoner. In order to reach the prisoner I had to solve two puzzles relating to numbers. The second part of them, I had to check online also. 

I don´t want to spoil too much now but let´s just say the story takes on a huge turnaround here and the end is quickly approaching with some epic scenes you have to be part in. 

When the game comes to an end you are presented with a final score and some statistics about how many hidden treasuries you found or how many foes you killed. I like that kind of statistics.

But even though the ending story in itself was quite good and unexpected I cannot help but feel a little empty inside. I had thought there was more to do. Twenty hours is definetely much less than what it took to complete the first and second game and they both have better feeling and atmosphere. They contained more texts and information and they were both harder and more challenging. This third game lacks a bit of soul or is it because I have already played the previous ones ? I don´t know, but the game is still good and I do recommend it but I wouldn´t recommend starting with it because it doesn´t help you much with the previous story.

It was also by far the easiest of the three. I had a pretty easy walk through the game combat wise. I did focus on only my magical skills but if you put enough skill into divination so you reach 30 or more and then surpass 40 in perception, you get a very good mana regeneration bonus which means you can flee from your enemies in the later stages and regenerate enough mana to strike back after just a short walk. Perhapas it has to do with the fact that I am a magician. I don´t need melee weapons or armours that needs to be repaired so I alsmost never had to spend money on such things and ended up with at least 6.000 gold in my pockets.

 Well, over to the ratings....

Gameworld & Story

During these three games the unique world of Eschalon has been built up with different races, factions and powers. The story has been good from the very beginning even though I must say the last series has the weakest part of it. You are not given much information about your part in the main quest. Everything seems to be to stop Malukar from gaining all four cruxes. 

There are almost no information about the world gained from books or other sources. Even the descriptive texts in the message area that tells you of specific areas are far between. They should have used that part more to fill in with more atmospheric information at certain places to give the feeling of a world that is alive. 

Rating: 2.5


Economy

In the beginning you really feel the lack of gold and the first few level advancement keep this at a good and challenging level. But with some invested points into the forage skill I don´t need to spend too much money on food. There are a lot of chests or remains in the world that gives you many items you could sell for money. One thing that spoils it a little is the randomness of chests contents. From something useless to a very powerful mage scroll. It is really worth to reload a lot in the beginning of the game if you want to powerbuild you character. You could turn off this randomness at the start of the game. I didn´t do that. So one could say I did spoiled it a little for myselves not doing that.

Even though I had a lot of money, there are only 2-3 places at which you could buy magical items and they are always worse than what you could find. So I think this is flawed. I had no use for my gold to upgrade anything. It seems there are hundreds of items but in the end I almost found nothing useful. I couldn´t even buy any magical light armour for my mage.

Economy was better balanced in the previous games as I recall it.

Rating: 2.5

NPC & Interactions

There are quite few NPCs in the game if you don´t count all shopkeepers that make up the majority of all side quests you will get. You never have any advanced dialogue trees. In this respect it is much like Dark Disciples. You could always choose all possible dialogue options.

The dialogue and information present is well written though and help building the atmosphere for the game.

The interactions with the environment is better. You could grab torches, pick up explosive barrels and use them at strategic places. There are levers, barrels, remains etc to be examined.

Rating:  2

Monsters, tactics & combat system

There are a few dozen of monsters in the game and they are very well animated. They have some different abilities like stun, poisioning, ranged attacks. Since I myself have been a ranged fighter I haven´t had to meet them in melee so I don´t know how hard it would have got. As a mage I have a powerful nimbus spell that protects me from ranged attacks which was very useful against goblin archers and others. As is expected
Strength affects melee damage, dexterity to hit chance of ranged weapons etc. Different kinds of armour gives different armour classes that are deducted from damage received. They will also degrade over time so you need to repair both weapons and armours.

There are no tactics involved in the fights whatsoever, except that one has to keep the distance as a mage and retreat and let them follow until you have regenerated enough mana to kill them, or you exit the map and reenters again. Some enemies can retreat when wounded but that´s about it.

I do like the simplicity of the combat system though. You get clear information about how much damage you are dealing and any modifiers applying like darkness, bad weather etc.

Rating:  2.5

Magic system

While combat might be fairly simple. Magic is a little bit more elaborated. You basically have two skills that determines wether you would prefer priestlike spells or magespells. The skill divination in combination with high wisdom gives you access to priestlike spells, while the skill elemental together with intelligence give you access to mage spells.

As I´ve said in my previous posts, scrolls could only be read if you have a high enough skill level. And even if you do, you must have a high enough attribute level in wisdom or intelligence in order to learn this spell. Fortunately you could unlearn old spells to give place for a new one if your attribute level is not high enough. Then to cast a spell you have to assign it to a casting level ranging from 1 (lowest) to 6 (highest). The higher the level the more powerful the effect of the spell will be (damage dealt, duration, range etc). The drawback of using high casting power is that the mana consumption is greater so you have to have enough mana as well to make it effective (investing in perception and meditation is the best way to go for that).

This system works extremely well and is well balanced. You could build a character that can cast both priest and mage spells but you would probably not have enough skill points invested in all skills and attributes to make them powerful enough.

My spells of choice as a mage was sparks, fireball, ice-lance, nimbus protection, trapkill and lockmelt. You get a powerful Portal spell but because of the many teleporter stones and the relatively easy game I never missed to use it much.

Rating:  4

Character generation & development

You decide for yourself which kind of character to build by spending skill points and attribute points during startup. There are no class choices at all so you could mix all classes if you wish. But I would recommend specializing since not doing that you might not get strong enough. I only managed the opponents by investing heavily into my magical arts to get the best spells as quick as possible and with the highest amount of mana generation.

At each level up you get 3 skill- and attribute points to spend freely. The system works really well.

Rating:  4

Map design

Each map is very well laid out. It is not very big and you could travel from one end to another in perhaps one minute. The underground complexes are also very well laid out in irregular or regular ways with rooms, corridors etc filled with paintings, torches, chests, furniture, corpses and other things to fill upp the spaces with. There are places you could only reach by accessing it from other maps or by using magic or other means. Scattered around the world are 30 secret places. I managed to find 17 of them when I completed the game.

Rating:  3.5

Manual

The manual is well written and even gives you hints and tips of how to play.

Rating:  3.5

Graphics, Sound and Interface

Even though it was two years ago I played the last Eschalon game I can say that it is obvious this game has the best graphics. The animations is better, there are more details everywhere and small improvments in the terrain can be spotted. It is easy and clear to see what everything is and the game runs very smooth.

The sound effects is clear, goodsounding and adds to the atmosphere. The same goes for the music that is very good and have always been in this game.

I really like the interface and the fonts used. It is crisp, clear, easy to understand and quick. I have to judge every game for its time though and even if this game is better in all respects to most old crpgs, it was released in 2014. I deduce 1 point for that.

Rating:  3

Gameplay

I played this game for two weeks on all my spare time without ever getting tired of it. That if something is a good value and even though I think 20 hours is not much and the game ended too quickly, I can still recommend it. 

Here and there the game forces you to use at least some brain to figure out numbers, avoid traps or finding illusionary walls or secret passages. It gives you the very important feeling of just playing a little longer and just explore a little more of the new map you have discovered. It is extremely easy to play and understand, yet hides some complexity in your character builds and utilisation of skills. The underlying combat and magic mechanism is well done and you always want to buy the best items there are. Too pity there are too few good items to buy but I found a lot of good weapons, useless for me as a mage. 

Yes, it is the weakest part in scale, atmosphere and storywise in the series but it still lands a solid experience and is well worth its money. We´ll see if I will return to the game engine if any third party adventures will be released since the editor is released at the same time as this game.

Rating:  4

Section	Rating
Gameworld & Story	2.5
Economy	2.5
NPC & Interactions	2
Monsters, tactics & combat system	2.5
Magic system	4
Character generation & development	4
Map design	3.5
Manual	3.5
Graphics, Sound and Interface	3
Summary CRPG value	27.5
Gameplay	4