Might & Magic X: Legacy Review
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Gameplay
Like the Might & Magic games of old, and like Legend of Grimrock more recently, Legacy employs a turn-based engine, where you travel through a square-gridded environment using a first-person perspective. You use the WASD and the QE keys to move and rotate your view, you use the spacebar to interact with NPCs and objects (like chests and shrines), and you use the 1-0 keys (or menu selections) to do everything else. Your party always moves together, and there is no "front row" or "back row" for protection purposes.
During combat, your party takes its turn (your party members can go in any order), then enemies take their turn, and then the process repeats itself until your party or your enemies are dead. Characters get to take a single action on their turn, including quaffing a potion, casting a spell, or using a melee or ranged attack. Accessing your (shared) inventory doesn't cost a turn, but movement requires that all of your characters have their action remaining, so you can't shoot and run. If an enemy moves into melee range of your party, then (inexplicably) you're not allowed to move at all.
Sometimes combat is simple, and regular attacks get the job done, but at other times you need to be more creative. As an example, there are times when you run into undead creatures called ravenous ghouls. By default, these ghouls get one attack per turn, but when their health falls under 50% they double their attacks, and if you miss an attack against them or they block an attack, then they get an extra attack. That means if you're not careful, ravenous ghouls might pop off 8-10 attacks in a single turn -- and probably kill whoever they're attacking. So you either need to limit your misses against them, or you need to attack them like crazy and then use a spell like "gust of wind" to blow them back one square where they can't attack anything. There are plenty of offensive and utility spells available in the game, and knowing how to use them can be the difference between impossible fights and easy victories.
Outside of combat, you spend plenty of time wandering around the 140x100 game world, where you can visit towns, dungeons, mysterious crypts, dangerous caves, and more. Towns are your main source for quest NPCs, shops, and trainers. Dungeons are where you complete most of the quests. Crypts are where you solve puzzles, usually by stepping on pressure plates in the right way, and where you receive relics, which are powerful pieces of equipment that gain experience when you do, up to level 4. Caves contain nasty bosses, including dragons and a cyclops. There are also miscellaneous battles scattered throughout everywhere, but enemies do not respawn, so there's a limit to how much experience you can gain in the game (enough to reach level 33 or so).
Once you've fought a battle and need to restore your health and mana, you're given a few options. There are healing fountains you can use, but they only replenish themselves once a week. You can rest at an inn, but that requires you to be in a town. You can camp anywhere in the world (including towns), but this requires "supplies" (which you can only hold in limited quantities) plus a safe location. You can also use potions, but they're expensive, and they're mostly intended for use during battles.
Equipment is pretty basic in the game. There are regular items, "green" items with one bonus, "blue" items with two bonuses, and "yellow" relics that can have three bonuses. There aren't any set items. Equipment can break in the game, but oddly it doesn't appear as if items get worn down before breaking. They just suddenly break, which is sort of annoying because not only is there no way to protect yourself (other than by keeping extra weapons around), the only way to repair broken items is to trudge back to town, which gets tedious after a while (unless you have the "spirit beacon" spell, and then it's quick and easy). Luckily, relics can't break, and you find several during your travels. Magic items also need to be identified before they can be used, but in this case there's at least a spell that can do the job as well as the trudging back to town method.
Finally, the layout of the world is interesting. In most games the enemies are easiest next to the starting town and then get tougher the farther away you get. Legacy follows that pattern a little, but it also throws tough creatures at you all over the place. For example, near the starting town are a pair of dangerous caves that you won't be able to complete until you're around level 15, plus a dungeon designed for level 20 characters. You can also encounter tough enemies without warning while exploring the wilds. This can make the game a little frustrating at times, as you try to negotiate the "safe" places where your party can survive and thrive. I wouldn't mind Legacy's layout as much if there was actually a way to retreat from enemies (there isn't; you can't move when enemies are adjacent to you) or if it didn't take so long to load saved games.
The Story
Might & Magic X: Legacy takes place a few years after the events in Might & Magic Heroes VI, but this doesn't make much of a difference, as the children of the Griffin dynasty are far off on the sidelines (except for Sandor, who you meet), and the world you explore could pretty much be a world in any game. As the game opens up, you're trying to reach the city of Karthal so you can deliver your mentor's ashes to the temple there, but of course life is never that easy. You quickly discover that Karthal is experiencing a revolt and that its gates are locked, and so you have to putter around completing side quests for a while until you're finally allowed to sneak into the city (at the halfway point of the game). From that point forward, sadly, Legacy follows a standard RPG trajectory, where you learn that an evil being is trying to do something evil, and you have to stop it.
Sometimes good writing can elevate cliche-ridden stories so that they're still enjoyable to experience, but Legacy doesn't have good writing. The dialogue is usually just a few perfunctory sentences to give you a reason why you should go kill something, or track down something, or explore somewhere, even when it doesn't make any sense (like when you decide you don't like the "winner" of the revolt in Karthal). There aren't any memorable lines, and there aren't any memorable characters, except for maybe Might & Magic darling Crag Hack, who you find running a pirate town. Luckily, the combat and character development are fun enough that the game works even without a compelling story, but if you're a developer and you want a good game or a great game, then you need all parts of it to click, and not just some of them.
Want an example? For the very first quest in the game, you're asked to kill some spiders under a well. The quest giver makes a joke that at least he's not asking you to kill rats in a cellar... except that he is, and nobody on the writing staff seems to realize that the quests are all but the same. There's just no awareness or life in the text, and even the attempts at humor fall flat.
