Review: Might & Magic X: Legacy (PC/Steam)

In this review, we master our skills in the PC/Steam game, Might & Magic X: Legacy. We find out how well this RPG game plays.

This game was released in 2014 and, as of this writing, is the last game in this large series. For good measure, we played this along with the Falcon and the Unicorn DLC to maximize our experience. Also worth noting is the fact that this game was also the subject of one of our first impression videos as well.

We can now say that we have the complete experience of this series – at least as of this writing. WE played the first game in the series, Might and Magic: Book One – Secret of the Inner Sanctum. That game was passable, but nothing huge. From there, we played Might and Magic II – Gates to Another World. That would ultimately prove to be the only game in the series we didn’t beat and was also only passable.

From there, the series actually got good with Might and Magic III – Isles of Terra. That game got a very solid score and proved to be well worth playing. Next up is Might and Magic IV: Clouds of Xeen. That game got a great score and is well worth playing. Then came the expansion/sequel game, Might and Magic V: Darkside of Xeen. That game also got a great score.

After that, the series moved out of the 16 bit era and into a more general PC era. This started with the game, Might and Magic 6 – Mandate of Heaven. This was also our first look into this series and we were absolutely blown away with how amazing that game was. An excellent game that proved to be the absolute peak of the series. After that, we played Might and Magic VII – For Blood and Honor. That one proved to be a step in the wrong direction for the series, but still a pretty reasonable game.

Moving into the 2000s, we played Might and Magic VIII – Day of the Destroyer. A solid game, though there were certainly aspects that left a lot to be desired. Finally, we played Might and Magic IX. If it weren’t for the bugs, that would have been a great game that showed the series is turning around. Still, it’s a very solid game worth playing. Unfortunately, the company behind it went under at that point, forcing the company to relinquish the rights to the franchise in the process. So, after a long period of time, we finally got another entry into this franchise with Ubisoft at the helm.

You start your adventure at a city called Sorpigal-by-the-Sea. It’s located at the tip of the Agyn Peninsula which is where most of your adventure takes place. You have a party of four characters and are tasked with taking the ashes of your late mentor to the city of Karthal, fulfilling your mentors dying wish. Little did your party of raiders know what adventure awaits in the process of doing so.

The game gives you a number of options when you start. First of all, you can select whether you want to take on the Adventurer difficulty or the Warrior difficulty. For this playthrough, we chose the adventurer difficulty mainly because this is likely the difficulty most players would choose. You can also build your party from scratch or just select the default party layout. Having no idea what changes took place in the process of this franchise being handed to another company, we chose to simply use the default party structure.

Well, we were correct about one thing, this game has changed a lot between this game and the rest of the whole franchise. So, it was a good thing we played it safe with the default character layout.

Generally, the races you can choose from has been a bit more limited than in past installments. You have a choice between human, elf, dwarf, orc, and hybrid. It’s not the most restrictive race selection (the 6th installmentm for instance, only allows you to choose human party members), but it is a little bit more restrictive than others in this series.

The physical attack structure is probably the least messed around with. You still have your standard medium armor, heavy armor, axe, sword, spear, and dagger skills. There is duel wield and two handed skills which are new, however. The dodging skill returns, but instead of your armor class improving without armor, you simply increase your chances of just dodging enemy attacks. A few minor changes, but nothing too significant.

Magic, however, has been changed around by quite a bit. Players familiar with the franchise will be familiar with the earth, fire, wind, water, light, and dark magical schools. Some of the spells within those classes will also be familiar such as stone skin as well. Additionally, there is the limitations of learning spells based on your level of mastery. That, however, is where the familiarity will generally end, however.

Long time players will also remember several other magical schools. Those would be body, mind, and spirit. While the schools like fire and earth are generally a mixture of destructive and utility type spells, schools like body and spirit are generally where you’d expect a mixture of utility and healing spells. This game actually ditches that, surprisingly enough as it removes the schools of mind, body, and spirit. Instead, you might randomly find healing spells in the remaining classes which, of course, will make it a bit more difficult to predict which spell schools to choose when building your party. A number of healing spells are found in the light school, but another can be found in the earth school as well.

What’s more is that a new class was added in known as primordial (or prime) magic. This appears to be a bit of a mixture of all the classes and is what is seemingly spat out if they were all blended together in a weird way. Learning this school, however, is generally worth it as it gives you access to some powerful spells that both heal your party and damage your enemies. So, it’s by no means a worthless class.

Another drastic change is that a number of utility skills are now gone as well. This includes merchant, learning, and even the seemingly indispensable disarm trap skill. Prices amongst merchants are now fixed, bonus experience can only be obtained through companions, and there is only one trapped chest in the entire game which simply requires some solid perception to disarm (or a companion). The ability to mix your own potions is now completely gone. Also, repair item and identify item are also now gone. Those services are performed by shops (a spell can identify items now instead).

In addition to the skills, you also have stats that you can build up. A some of this is carried over from the previous games while some of it is just new. Might is still a measure of melee damage you can perform. Vitality still increases your overall health. Perception is now how much damage you can deal with ranged weapons.

A new attribute is destiny which increases your chances of both dodging an enemy attack and scoring a critical hit. Magic increases the damage of your spells. Spirit, meanwhile, increases your mana capacity. Previously, intellect and personality handled this, but with the removal of a bunch of those skills in this game, the games stats were seemingly reworked in the process.

There are, of course, character classes and different classes open up and lock down different possible skills. So, if you are creating your party, be aware of the limitations of each class as well. Some classes will cap some of your skill tree to, say, expert, while others will unlock grand master tiers. So, knowing what will and wont work is key in building a successful party.

So, you’ve selected your party and difficulty and are ready to tackle the game at this stage. Well, plenty has, in fact, changed in this game as well.

In towns, there are various services. Most of these services are quite familiar to long time players of this series. An armorer will sell items that protect you (such as helmets, boots, and, of course, armor). Weapon shops sell, of course, weapons (such as axes, swords, bows and crossbows). The smiths can also repair weapons and armor respectively. Chemist stores sell potions and scrolls (though they are now the only shopkeeper that can perform the item identification. Libraries make a return, though they are now the only places you can learn spells once you get the proper skill. Temples will still heal your characters. Inns will still allow you to sleep and obtain food, though, with the exception of a companion, technically, inns are the only places where you can obtain food.

Trainers are still scattered throughout the lands and cities. Once you get to a certain level of skill, then you can graduate to the next tier if available. Obtaining the next level can also grant small trait bonuses as well.

One thing you’ll note that is missing is training centers. In previous games, once you built up the experience points, you can go to a trainer and get the next level for a fee. This game removes this feature altogether and you just level up on your own.

As you buy and sell items, you’ll also notice that your inventory has been completely reworked. Instead of each character having their own inventory screen, the inventory is now pooled. This game carries over the single tile item system from the previous game, so size of items now no longer matter. A full suit of armor now takes up as much space as a simple little ring. One grid will house everything. A companion will double your storage capacity, but after a while, you have to limit what you’ll haul around.

Relics make a return, however, they are, for sure, one of a kind finds. So, if you sell one, don’t expect it to spawn somewhere else again. It’s gone from your playthrough. What’s new is that relics can increase in power all the way up to level 4. Some items will increase in either armor or damage dealt as they level up. Many will also offer some pretty solid attributes as well. So, it may even be worth it to forgo a slightly more stronger weapon or armor to level up the relic because it might be the last primary weapon or armor you’ll ever need. It’s decent strategy to have a backup weapon or armor item in the event of breakage, though.

Various NPCs (Non-Playable Characters) will also offer quests. So, it is actually a great idea to simply roam around the town and collect all the quests in the area that you can collect. While the quest log gets daunting after a while, you can also pick the quests off one at a time depending on expected difficulty.

By now, you’ll have noticed that movement is grid based. This is a feature that hasn’t been a part of the series since the 5th installment. Well, this makes a return here and it applies to the outer world and dungeons as well.

when you encounter enemies, you’ll notice the danger indicator at the top of your screen turn red. A great feature of this series has been the ability to run away. If you find our your enemies are far to powerful in an area, you can always just leave and find somewhere else to explore that might be easier. This game breaks that tradition by removing the ability to run away entirely. So, save often because you’ll probably end up dying more often thanks to your inability to retreat.

What’s more is that your movement is also greatly restricted during fights. While it’s expected that you can take a turn by moving, once your square touches an enemy, you can’t actually move. Your only choice is to fight, which greatly restricts your strategy in the process.

One thing to note is that some enemies, such as certain bosses, have the ability to knock your party back a square. In the watchtower boss fight for instance, this means that you can get flung from a high location straight to your death. As a result, you often have to just take damage by charging at the boss just to prevent yourself from falling to your death. Note that some spells you obtain later in the game will also knock your opponents back.

While you do have a great deal of restrictions applied to your ability to fight, you can also use this to your advantage. For instance, if your enemy is several squares away, you can simply duck around a corner and cast all your buffs. This forces your enemy to take several turns to approach and attack you, leaving you with time to build up your defenses.

Another advantage you can get from this clunky battle system is the ability to use bottlenecks as well. Only up to three enemies can fit on one square at a time. So, if you simply move to the other side of a doorway, this greatly restricts even the largest hoards of enemies to simply attack you three at a time. Even ranged enemies are forced to wait for their turn to attack you.

When nooks and bottlenecks aren’t an option, your third best option is to simply run to a corner. This still restricts your enemies ability to attack you all at once. Generally, the worst case scenario is being completely surrounded which means everyone is pummeling you at once. Hope you’re fighting easy enemies in that scenario.

As enemies are picked off, some enemies drop items and weapons. This can be very useful for you. Whether it’s being able to sell items for extra gold or upgrading your existing equipment, every item is an opportunity to further your characters interests. The only real limitation is storage capacity.

Also, each enemy rewards you with experience points. As is traditional in turn-based RPG games, if you reach a threshold of experience points, you gain a level. What’s really odd about this game, though, is that you can actually increase your attributes right in the middle of a battle if you wanted to. It’s weird, but this game actually does permit this if the timing is good.

For every level you obtain, you get four attribute points and three skill points to spend. Obviously, your characters will benefit differently depending on where you spend your attribute points, but do know that there is only so many points to go around. So, spend wisely.

Meanwhile, the skill points, which is weirdly found in a completely separate options book on your heads up display (HUD), can be spent in various trees. If you have a skill that is unlearned, spend one point on that tree and you’ll obtain the novice level. Once you reach the single arrow part of that line of skill, then you must receive training in order to continue. You don’t have to spend all of your points you earn, so if you spend one point to get to an expert tier, you can save those other two points for after you get promoted. Alternatively, you can just spend those skill points on multiple skills while you wait. It really depends on the situation you find yourself in at the time of leveling up.

After each battle, you might ask yourself if you can simply grind in this game. This might be the only game in this whole series where that is not an option. This is because there appears to be absolutely no respawn of enemies. Some entries do feature limited enemies, however, the game also allows you to go to a coliseum and permits you to build up experience points anyway. This game strips that feature out as well (yeah, add that to the list of “features that were removed in this game)”.

Now, the limited number of enemies presents some fundamental challenges. The biggest is the fact that it is impossible to just keep leveling up forever. In the process, it is also impossible to max out all of your skill trees. So, from early on in the game, you need to be stingy on which trees to develop. For instance, if you have heavy armor as an attribute, it actually makes no sense in the long run to develop medium armor as well. Save that for something that is more worthwhile like warfare instead.

Another fundamental challenge is the fact that, for most RPG games, you can simply grind at a certain area if the next area proves to be too difficult. Unfortunately, the best you can hope for is just maximizing your ability to gain experience points before being forced into the next area. So, because of this, you are basically restricted to how you choose to play the game (grind up to make your life easier or do a low level run for added challenge is typically the two big choices for players).

Now, experienced players in this series will think that there is, at least, added bonuses throughout the game. That, too, has been stripped down.

A returning feature is the colored barrels. If you find a barrel, you can break it open for an attribute bonus. What has been removed are cauldrons. For resistances, previous games had things like frosty cauldrons, dirty cauldrons, shocking cauldron, etc. Each type gives a hint as to what resistance you are boosting. In this game, this has been stripped down to an adjective to describe the color. As a result, it can be a bit tricky to remember which color does which (I even encountered this during the first impression video).

Black potions, which are known to increase attributes, are generally removed from the game. In their place are stat raising potions. What actually helps is the fact that you aren’t limited to one drink per party member. You can drink as many of them as you like and you won’t have them wasted – though there are limited numbers of potions.

Treasure chests are also, of course, a feature in this game. They can be found in cities and in dungeons. All of them can be looted without real consequence. However, the capabilities of chests have been reduced. Before, you can swap out items in the chest and have them treated as a temporary storage area. This feature has been removed (I really feel like a broken record here now naming the features that have been removed). Instead, you can only take from the chests.

Probably the only thing that saves item storage space is the ability to stack potions. I’ve gone well over 100 of a single potion type and it just kept going. So, there are small things you can do to save on those precious storage tiles.

One thing that has been removed are horse shoes or four leafed clovers. In previous games, those gave you a bonus attribute point to whoever you want to give it to. This game simply strips that out too.

As you venture deeper into the game, you’ll note that you have four acts. This is generally the main quest line. While the first act opens up a new area once you finish it, the other areas are accessible (assuming you survive enemy encounters, of course).

What is new, however, is the elemental forge. In this forge, there are different areas that represent the major spell types. You have to have an elemental shard to open an area. Once you do, you can take on the area puzzle and try to take down the area boss. Defeating the boss gives you a blessing. In order to complete the games quests more or less completely, you really only need water to be able to traverse water gaps. Still, the other blessings give you some pretty respectable bonuses as well. Shadow, for instance, will permanently grant your parties ability to detect hidden passages which can be huge. At any rate, all of them are worth it to varying degrees as they also grant added resistances.

Eventually, you’ll complete necessary quests and advance to beat the game. Note that if you have the Falcon and the Unicorn DLC, you’ll be automatically kicked over to the 5th, albeit, short, act in the game which strips your ability to access trainers and removes all of your equipment and companions. So, fair warning on that one. Make sure you have what you need in terms of skills before you beat the games final boss.

For those who want hints for preparation of the DLC part of the game, what worked was two characters having Burning Determination (expert fire spell to prevent sleep), the wind blast spell (for the knockback feature against melee enemies), light ward (added defense), celestial armor (also added defense if needed/usable), and implosion (damage). I didn’t beef up the warfare skills of my fighters that well, so those were, apparently, next best things to have. There are probably other useful spells as well that I didn’t have at the time.

Note that the DLC only forces you to be without your standard equipment for one dungeon. Also, sleeping multiple times will restore merchants inventory, allowing your to re-buy critical health and mana potions.

That’s generally the gist of the game.

One disappointing aspect of the game is just how heavily stripped down it is. As mentioned countless times during the review, feature after feature after feature was removed. Because of this, you actually get a stripped down experience of the game. Whats worse is that some features were blended into the remaining features in an odd way which actually makes this game feel a bit more archaic than it needed to be. So, if you are wanting to see what made this franchise so exciting, I can’t really recommend this game because, at best, this is so heavily stripped down, that you are only getting a minor taste instead of the full experience.

Probably the worst aspect of this game is the huge difficulty spikes. In this game, there are two: between the first and second act and between the fourth act and the DLC. The first spike is largely thanks to the next area being exclusively after you fought around for a bit. The problem is, where do you go first? Apparently, you are supposed to find the Lost City. For that, you need to go to the nearby forest next to Seahaven and find a convoluted specific path in the maze of paths just to access it. Otherwise, you are going to be facing off against enemies that will have no problem mowing your whole party down. It is possible to pick off a few enemies here and there and more or less skip the Lost City, but be prepared to spend a truckload of cash on potions to keep your party alive.

As for the other difficulty spike between the fourth and fifth act, this might also be the product of poor planning as well. Generally, the DLC is playable, but only if you basically completed every side quest, every main quest, and stripped the land of enemies as well. Ideally, you’d have the companion that grants bonus experience points as well just to stretch your skills a little further. Once you are in the dungeon and solved the evasion challenges, battles will be tough, but winnable. If you don’t have the right spells, though, you’ll find this dungeon to be downright impossible to play. This is, of course, unfortunate especially given the fact that you can’t really grind in this game in the first place.

The inability to retreat is a really bothersome issue in this game. Even if you do manage to break away from enemies in a dungeon, you can’t really leave without defeating the enemies. While you can, theoretically, heal up, retreat artificially increases the difficulty of the game, forcing you to abuse save and load features in the process. I don’t see this as necessary, personally.

What’s also annoying are the slowdowns and the bugs. Going into certain areas, it’s as if the game unloads a huge area and loads another. As a result, you can sit there for a few seconds while the game loads another area, thinking that the game froze. I can’t help but wonder if there were better ways of efficiently loading assets – especially in a game that seems to graphically dated on release. Those slowdowns appear even on modern computer rigs as well, so it really is the game itself that can be a bit slow.

The bugs I encountered include pink textures for dungeon intro shots as well as a soft lock issue. I almost felt lucky in that it only cropped up once, but during battle, it’s as if the enemy is in the process of moving, but actually doesn’t. Since your party is waiting for the enemy to move, you can’t actually do anything either. This, in turn, soft locks the game, forcing you to reload from a last save. As for pink textures, that is an indicator that the texture failed to load – and that happened a fair number of times for me.

After beating the DLC, the Master Shield Trainer had an error message, though it was still possible to train and leave. This was the only text glitch I saw, though.

what I will say, though, is that there are positive aspects of this game as well. Apart from the difficulty spikes, you do have exploration options available to you for the most part. This is because difficulty generally overlaps among different dungeons, making it possible to have more than one dungeon order. That’s what made previous games work so well and it was nice to see this, more or less, return in this game.

Another feature I liked was the ability to add your own notes to the map. This was especially useful when I wanted to note which chests still had loot in them, but I left it due to inventory restrictions.

I also liked how a number of quests mention a location. This made things a little easier in terms of exploring and determining where I needed to go to next.

What I also liked was just how expansive the game was. One of the big selling points of this franchise is the massive areas to explore. While it might be a smaller area this time around, there’s still plenty of land and dungeons to explore along the way. This really helps give this game an immersive experience.

Generally speaking, if you are going to play this series for the first time, I don’t recommend this game. If you plan on only playing one game in this whole series, then definitely play Might & Magic 6 – Mandate of Heaven. If you want to play multiple entries in this series, start with the third game and move forward chronologically. This game really is only for players who have already played through this series and are wanting to see where this series ended up. It’s still not a bad game, but it’s nothing to get particularly excited over.

A number of the problems include the large difficulty spikes, the heavily stripped down experience, the wonky fighting system that removes your ability to retreat, and some of the bugs you can encounter along the way including slowdown and texture load errors. This game is, however, immersive with a huge area to explore, the hints as to which location a quest can be completed at, even an ability to add notes that can help you remember smaller details along the way.

One of the most painful things about this game is the graphics. The time cycles are probably one of the clunkiest I’ve seen in a game. You have morning, noon, evening, and night. The transition between each daytime cycle is about two seconds. It was really unnatural seeing the sun zip across the sky like that.

What’s worse is the textures, when they did load, were often blurry and akin to late 90’s level of detail. The models, meanwhile, felt like something out of a PS2 game, so many of them were pretty low quality. Only improving things was the fact that there was a huge quantity of different objects to help hide this a little. The draw distance, however, was pretty bad. You can actually see, up close, the textures of trees and bushes morphing before loading a higher quality model. The whole world was morphing as you walked along the overworld. Off in the distance, you can see the hills gradually enter the clipping mask as well. There were even instances where whole large objects fail to load (such as castles and cave entrances), requiring you to move around for a bit before it loads properly.

Probably the only good thing about the graphics were the effects which actually add some decent splash to the game. This is especially so thanks to the higher level spells. Still, that only mildly improved things for the most part.

Audio is pretty hit and miss. The sound effects were largely borrowed from previous installments. So, they still remain to be a decent aspect. Meanwhile, the music is decent. The best music generally comes from other installments and even the Hero’s series. The best music was the larger boss fights which features a cut of the track from Dark Messiah. Otherwise, the music is decent enough, though nothing too memorable. One issue is the fact that so many lines get repeated between characters. When a character gets poisoned, so many of them complain “I don’t feel so good” for instance. Having so many different characters recycle the same lines strikes me as lazy writing.

Overall, this game was quite a sad end to such a great series. The previous installment showed that this game had a huge amount of potential and that the best was yet to come. However, this game seemingly went in a direction of stripping down feature after feature, leaving this game to be a very stripped down variation of what you would expect from a game from this franchise. If this game is the first encounter you have with this series, it’s definitely not representative of what the franchise has to offer.

The game features many pitfalls including some confusing changes to the spell system, stripped down features on almost every aspect of the game, bad difficulty spikes, more limiting options thanks to limited number of enemies, and even some bugs that made the game feel far from an ideal realization of the franchise. The large areas players can explore, along with the numerous dungeons of various sizes, do give this game a very immersive experience. The graphics are quite dated for a game of its time and it’s audio is a bit hit and miss. On top of it all, the DLC is short and, at times frustrating thanks to adding elements that really aren’t part of the franchise (namely the stealth aspect). While it is an OK game, I can’t help but think that this game could have been so much more than the lacklustre result I see today. A fairly mediocre game all around.

Overall
Beat the main quest. Beat the two dungeons in the DLC. Completed the memory lane quest. Found the limbo dungeon and defeated everything except the Ubisoft logo. Characters all at level 37. Final game score: 521,331.

General gameplay: 15/25
Replay value: 6/10
Graphics: 6/10
Audio: 3/5

Overall rating: 60%

Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.