Might & Magic X: Legacy Preview
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Combat (and, just like the old M&M titles, there's a lot of it) is pretty easy to grasp and fairly quick to complete. It's classic "I go, you go". Battles actually have some tactics involved since ranged attacks only go in a straight line and melee only works when you're adjacent to the monsters. The wise adventurer can take advantage of corners to put the fight on a desired footing. One problem I noticed is that the monsters will always get the first attack. They have a line of sight and become active when the party moves into range. Since that movement counts as the "I go", monsters will always get the first attack. You cannot initiate combat, even with bows or spells. Another complication is that once monsters move into melee range, you can no longer use bows. So that awesome archer that you've meticulously developed to be Death By Fletching will dutifully swap to her largely worthless dagger whether you like it or not. I don't know if that's something Ubi will be looking at, or whether it's working as intended. You might remember that MM7 (at least) had an autoswap as well, but you could turn that off if you wanted to use a specific weapon all the time.
There's some story in there, as well as tons of background lore that can be acquired by finding books or by gossiping with NPCs. The demo, in being only the opening region, is a little light on story, but that's to be expected. There's enough groundwork laid that I think it will be adequate for most folks. It won't be a novel masquerading as a game, but most old skool games were fairly thin as well.
My first day with the game was a 12 hour marathon according to the Steam timer. The day flew by. I think my kids got a meal or two, but I don't know that I'm certain. "Just one more..." is the name of the game, just like previous entries in the franchise. It's actually been quite a while since I've been engrossed in a game that deeply (probably Puzzle Quest 1 if anyone cares), so Ubi must be doing something right here.
The sound effects and music were fine. Honestly, I don't really pay much attention to that sort of thing unless they're ridiculously good or painfully bad. These were neither. Ubi did make the brilliant decision to recycle one sound effect. Every time you hear it, you'll smile and know you're playing Might & Magic again. Little touches like that reinforce the feeling that this development team truly understands and properly respects the history of the franchise, unlike the team that created the abomination that was released after MM8, which shall not be named in polite company.
There were several puzzles in the demo. Most of them were "step on the tiles in the right order", but one of them in particular was hard enough to make me take notes.
The reward for figuring out this little brain exercise made it worth the effort. No riddles in the demo, and I don't know if any are planned for the complete game, so one of the charming aspects of the old games might be gone. Of course, the availability of the internet has eliminated the challenge of riddles versus Ye Olde Dayz, so perhaps that wouldn't be a major loss.
