Might & Magic X Teased by Ubisoft, To Be Revealed at PAX East

[Hurlshort]

I hope we get more of these.  It's one of the series I would welcome Ubisoft's yearly model.  

[Darkpriest]

I am over 30h on it, and still have not finished act 2, just found water shard. I've been trying to poke around in places that i am probably too underleveled for, but still this game is still freaking fun... If only I knew how to open chests that require you to put in text, if these descriptions they hold are riddles then I suck at them :D

[Hurlshort]

Earlier I was having trouble beating the Earth Elemental, so I went back to the mainland, touched the earth crystal that boosts my stats, and headed back to the fight.  I love this game.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Is this worth picking up?

[Keyrock]

I just killed Mamushi on my 3rd try (he knocked me off the top of the lighthouse the first 2 times).  I had brought just enough mana potions as I had none left after the fight, though I did have a couple of elixirs and a bunch of health potions.  That's one fight that definitely would have been easier with a mage-heavy party since Mamushi blocks physical attacks so much and deals retribution damage.  Good times.

[Hurlshort]

Is this worth picking up?

 

Yep.

[Keyrock]

 

Is this worth picking up?

 

Yep.

 

Co-signed.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

 

 

Is this worth picking up?

 

Yep.

 

Co-signed.

 

Bought off Steam, installing now.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Is this worth picking up?

Glad to see that you bought it, because I'll be the third signing party under this question!

[Humanoid]

That said, buying Ubisoft games through Steam just adds another layer of complications since Uplay is required anyway, no?

 

30% off for the next day at GMG by the way, comes to $17.50 for the deluxe edition with the code 33M15F-1DGAOD-YLXBYR

 

 

P.S. Don't bother using the GMG capsule installer they give you, just plug the Uplay key into the Uplay client.

Edited January 26, 2014 by Humanoid

[IndiraLightfoot]

5 hours into it now, and this game just grows on you.

My pcs get stunned and poisoned and even killed with ease. Apparently, they were not a team of ghostbusters by level 5. I see...

I love this game for being pretty open and with interfaces that really works for this kind of game.

I also love it for not being overly easy, kind and handholding. One wrong turn, you may very well die because of your hubris.

The loot makes sense and it is easy to compare with equipped items (I hope PE will be like this).

My blade dancer had a sword break on her in the midst of a tough fight. She had to make do with one sword now. What's not to love?

There are a vast number of combinations when you make and develop your characters, just as it should be.

There's fatigue, there are stables for hire, even pack horses.

Most of all, they have got that old-school RPG-feel just right. It's almost like Civilization; just one more turn!

You can't resist to see what's around the next bend. I'm sorry, but Grimrock pretty much sucks in comparison to this. I really hope that Grimrock 2, outdoors and everything, will match this.

 

I love the atmosphere and the ancient shrines with weird blessings. At one time, I got an anti-blessing, which made my party worse!

EDIT:

It's worth mentioning that all the stunning etc of characters make your characters level up out of sync, which I like.

And stuff has to be identified at a cost, and for the first levels I had my front line running around in robes and slippers, basically, coz they couldn't afford any decent armour. Mmm...

Edited January 26, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Humanoid]

Hint for beginners: cure poison is a novice level earth spell and available from the vendor in the starting town.

 

 

Anyway, some more quibbles:

- The ingame journal sucks. I understand the concept of the old school 'take a notepad with you at all times', but I remember the old games automatically recording a lot more useful information than what you get now. Such as what colour barrels do what, which trainers are where, etcetera. P.S. Would also have been nice for the local map to tell you what the local area is called, and be scrollable. P.P.S. I wish it would mark down loot containers that you haven't opened for whatever reason, such as riddles.

- Did the castle 'dungeon' to rescue the governor or whatever. So far I'd say it's been the most tedious part of the game. "Find the brown switch on a random brown wall somewhere in the level" may be an old school design, but that doesn't mean it makes for good gameplay: not now, and not back then. There's a lot to dislike about modern RPG simplifications, but *making things properly visible* isn't one of them.

- The levelling up process can be pretty irritating in that you have to open two separate windows (stats and skills), allocate points in them, close them, then open up the other one. And the windows are *just* big enough that they block you from clicking the shortcut to open the other window without closing the current one.

- The night/day cycle has been slowed down since the early access, but I still think it's quite a bit too fast.

 

In summary, the main thing I'd say about the game is that is succeeds at recreating the old school experience, for better and for worse. In this regard I can say the developers have 'done it right'. But all that approach guarantees is the possibility of a good game, and not a great one. It'd be fantastic if the next step, in a sequel perhaps, is to go back and ask the question "why was it done this way?" to each and every classic design element, keep the good ones and throw out the bad anachronisms.

 

---

 

Despite the negative tone of all the above, I do want to make it clear that I'm having a pretty good time with it.

[Gorgon]

It's kinda ugly for a PC title though. I suspect it was made with future tablet/smartphone ports in mind. 

[Humanoid]

Yeah, for a low tech game the load times are surprisingly long - and it's installed on a fast SSD.

[Keyrock]

Another hint for people starting out:  Level up Primordial Magic to expert early on and buy the Identify spell.  It will save you a lot of money in the long run.

[Hurlshort]

I played with the graphics quite a bit before I was happy with the look.  

[Humanoid]

It saddens me that every encounter is restricted to be an all-or-nothing affair. Aggro some enemies and you will kill them, or die trying. Even if you manage to get some space between you and them, they will pursue you forever, and you're locked out of interacting with anything, including, sadly, zone transitions. I led some enemies on a merry chase to the gates of Sorpigal - y'know, the gates that don't actually have doors on them and are always wide open - but nope, no entry. It's sad because my primary strategy in MM6/7 mainly involved running away in that fashion.

[Keyrock]

 

- The night/day cycle has been slowed down since the early access, but I still think it's quite a bit too fast.

 

I personally think the day/night cycle is pretty close to just right.  It could stand to be slightly longer, but as it is it's pretty well set up to allow you to take full advantage of shrines.  Shrines are not automatically marked on your map, but you can make your own map markers and notes.  I always make a note to specify whether the shrine is active during the day or at night.  Then I plan out my trip so that I hit up a night shrine right near the end of the night, then hit up as many day shrines as it is convenient on the way to a dungeon (or vice versa).  The effects last long enough that getting buffed up from three or four shrines can make a massive difference in the dungeon.

Edited January 26, 2014 by Keyrock

[Humanoid]

Now that I'm reasonably familiar with the fundamental mechanics, it makes it all the more frustrating how poor nonexistent the game's documentation is. Want a listing of spells in each spell school? Nuh-uh. A summary table of what classes have access to what skill caps? Nope. A simple listing of what each hireling bonus actually is? Haha, no way.

 

I've gone on about this before: I understand why we can't have extensive paper-based documentation any more. But for the love of god, make an effort to produce a reasonable substitute. Right now many devs cynically use digital distribution as a transparent excuse not to bother producing anything at all.

 

 

 

EDIT: Another annoyance, though one hard to actually blame the devs for, is that the concept of Early Access games inevitably pollute the usual information sources with outdated information not relevant to the game when it is finally released. Not sure what the solution is, but it's going to be a problem with many more future games.

Edited January 27, 2014 by Humanoid

[IndiraLightfoot]

It saddens me that every encounter is restricted to be an all-or-nothing affair. Aggro some enemies and you will kill them, or die trying. Even if you manage to get some space between you and them, they will pursue you forever, and you're locked out of interacting with anything, including, sadly, zone transitions. I led some enemies on a merry chase to the gates of Sorpigal - y'know, the gates that don't actually have doors on them and are always wide open - but nope, no entry. It's sad because my primary strategy in MM6/7 mainly involved running away in that fashion.

I know, this ended up being a bit contrived. I mean, I'm actually for devs trying to stop area/map-switching as a tactic to survive in games (everything from hardcore-players in ARPGs to players in NWN CRPGs used this tactic), but I think it must make much more sense if implemented.

 

Now that I'm reasonably familiar with the fundamental mechanics, it makes it all the more frustrating how poor nonexistent the game's documentation is. Want a listing of spells in each spell school? Nuh-uh. A summary table of what classes have access to what skill caps? Nope. A simple listing of what each hireling bonus actually is? Haha, no way.

 

I've gone on about this before: I understand why we can't have extensive paper-based documentation any more. But for the love of god, make an effort to produce a reasonable substitute. Right now many devs cynically use digital distribution as a transparent excuse not to bother producing anything at all.

 

You're absolutely right! Even Civilization nowadays don't come with updated in-game digital manuals. It's crazy.

[Humanoid]

I did end up digging the information up, no thanks to the devs and all thanks to Google. And with actual useful information in hand, set out anew. It's a bit unfortunate that the skill distribution is so narrow, such that for many skills there's only one choice of class available if you want to grandmaster it. And grandmastering generally makes a huge difference, potentially by a factor of two or even more. The most egregious is Dark Magic which can't even be learned at novice level by anyone but a Freemage. As a melee character, the only optimal choices are a dual wielding bladedancer or a two-hander barbarian because they're the only ones who can GM both the weapon and the supporting skill. That kind of thing.

[Janmanden]

...In a way I wonder why online games developers bother with making help systems at all and simply doesn't integrate it with proven search engines, google, bing, whatever. I think in this day and age everything eventually ends up in some fanbased wikiepedia or help guide anyway, so why bother confusing players and waste their time with systems that doesn't work? I think their time would probably be better spent reviewing known fan sites rather than making it all up by themselves. It's like every game has to be a self-contained unit, even though it rarely is that anymore. I did that a lot in SWTOR, i.e. wasting time, which felt a bit too much like playing the game itself...

 

Sorry, I drifted off.

[HoonDing]

No iPad version?

[Darkpriest]

Well I finished my first playthrough and it was fun, albeit the game has some flaws. I've clocked over 60 hours and "I THINK" that I've completed every quest and discovered every ruin, tomb, crypt, whatever.

 

I agree that character sheet could simply be merged with skill sheet or at least have button that allows you to switch. It's not that big of a problem once you will remember about keybinds for each "C" - stats, "F" - skills

 

Bows and crossbows are IMO useless. They need some serious tweaking to be viable. Even Warden's skill on Grandmaster bow isn't that interesting when you factor that the same class Grandmastering daggers and Mastering Dual-Wield does respectable amounts of dmg.

 

Strong Healing Magic is a must. I cannot stress how many times Mass heal and resurrect was used and that was on adventurer difficulty.

 

There are riddles and puzzles and its fun. I only found that there is not that many traps in the game, so not really much to worry about.

 

Combat is won and lost by your positioning and target prioritizing. Use of various skills mandatory.

 

You need to read thoroughly the dialogs when you are given quests. Do not skip them and keep in mind something that might be a clue. I once was stuck for a good while because I forgot some hint that one guy gave with the quest and I completely forgot about it.

 

Dark magic requires at least one point. Without it you will not be able to detect secret passages/doors, until later on once you will get a shadow blessing.

 

Some dungeons simply require you to have some sort of light source. there are 3 spells that enhance vision in dark places in the game. Use them,

 

I would not mind some tool of disengaging from combat aside of a "reload".  Lack of this ability makes spamming quicksaving and quickloading almost mandatory features in the game right now.

 

It is a very old school like perhaps even too much, but I really had fun with it and will probably give it another shot once the extra content will appear or even just with another party composition (I used the default party)

[IndiraLightfoot]

Bows and crossbows are IMO useless. They need some serious tweaking to be viable.

 

Strong Healing Magic is a must. I cannot stress how many times Mass heal and resurrect was used and that was on adventurer difficulty.

 

There are riddles and puzzles and its fun. I only found that there is not that many traps in the game, so not really much to worry about.

 

Combat is won and lost by your positioning and target prioritizing. Use of various skills mandatory.

 

You need to read thoroughly the dialogs when you are given quests. Do not skip them and keep in mind something that might be a clue. I once was stuck for a good while because I forgot some hint that one guy gave with the quest and I completely forgot about it.

 

Dark magic requires at least one point. Without it you will not be able to detect secret passages/doors, until later on once you will get a shadow blessing.

 

Some dungeons simply require you to have some sort of light source. there are 3 spells that enhance vision in dark places in the game. Use them,

 

Thank you very much for all the tips!

 

I'm like 8 hours in now, and I must contradict one thing. My low-level party uses bows and crossbows quite often, and they are a life safer, especially outdoors. I can back up the party, and still deal some precious damage against enemy parties (one opponent this ain't that much of a deal). But from your comment I gather higher level gaming will make them obsolete, then?

 

Some tips of my own. Armour does matter in this game. Let's just say I ran into some ethereal dinosaur (guees which enemy?), and my only party member standing like 8 rounds on her own against it (We were not prepared for that opponent at all) was my shield dwarf with heavy armour. It can make a huge difference. Another stat that is easily overlooked is Perception. It actually affects all attacks, so putting quite a few points in this make your party a much more hitting one. Moreover, I'm pretty sure I can confirm that my mage's spells are affected by increased crit damage, so investing skill in that attribute (Destiny?), is a must.

Edited January 27, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot