Might & Magic X: Legacy Preview

There’s a new preview for Might & Magic X: Legacy over at PC Gamer, which offers mixed thoughts on Limbic’s retrosequel. Here’s a snippet:

Legacy is a bizarre sequel. Even with its obviously low budget, feels like it should be a Legend of Grimrock style nostalgia piece from a couple of devoted indies rather than a giant like Ubisoft. At points, it seems almost ashamed to be harking back to the earlier games with actual modern technology on its side, like some grizzled mob enforcer caught ordering a banana daiquiri. “Yes, I’m using Unity to create a real-time 3D world,” it mutters sheepishly, “I’m even using… shaders. But it’s okay! It’s an old-school grid underneath everything! See? And it’s still turn-based real time! Forgive me!”

Just as strangely though, its approach doesn’t simply hark back to the long faded Might and Magic games, but a style that they themselves gave up back in 93/94 with the Xeen duology. In the decade that followed, the series embraced 3D and free roaming just like everyone else, making this an old-school take on an already old-school RPG series. It’s so devoted to it, it keeps it up even when it makes little real sense – specifically, putting 3D world exploration within a grid system. There are reasons grid-based RPGs tended to stick with constrained, locked down areas like dungeons, with even outside areas focusing on dense forests, hedge mazes and ruins that tied into that structure. Here, you quickly have to get used to things like not being able to take a clear ranged shot at an enemy because technically they’re still behind a corner, and the goofiness of angry naga running freely through the world before having to take a moment to politely side-step into the middle of the screen for combat.

Legacy’s heart is in the right place though, serving up a super-combat heavy experience of a kind we don’t see very often this side of Millennium Bug hysteria. There’s a reasonable amount of plot, with an intro so long-winded that it’s a wonder it doesn’t end with the party emerging into Might and Magic XI, a heavy political edge to the specific problems facing the world this time around, and even a few characters around to tell jokes and snark things up. Mostly though, this is less about that side of things as travelling around an attractive enough overworld in search of hidden goodies, delving into dungeons to liberate their residents of anything shiny, and trying not to pick fights you can’t walk away from.