I hope people can see that this is one of the oldest tricks in the book, which is false lengthening or fake difficulty, which makes a shorter game seem longer than it really is. Any good game has no reason to artificially crank up the difficulty to keep people stuck in certain areas much longer than they need to be or spend hours grinding just to get past groups of enemies.
Since this is picked up, I will extend somewhat my opinion on this aspect of game. If we take modern games which contain pointer to objective like new fallouts then , yes it makes game quests shorter, but it also robs game of exploration aspect since you know where to look apriori, which in turn makes gameplay somewhat tunelvisioned since you blindly go to pointer rather than look on sides for objective. Yes it is frustrating at times as mentioned in review, I really was mad at crusaders quest at some point. For example if we check Morrowind where compass is not yet introduced, then we get ALOT of narrated pointers of where to go for each quest, (go to that town, then north then take right path), which adds additional layer to the game, and makes world much more connected rather that compilation of key points we jump between by fast travel. As additional example I would mention WoW where initially there were no pointers and contained alot more travel. By Cataclysm expansion, additions to convenience, like dungeon ques robbed game of any immersion in game and basically capitol became lobby and world was just level we visited once. Sure some exploration in Legacy can become frustrating, but in the end we can always resort to internet. It not age of wizardry 4 when there were no internet and solution to "true" ending could be kept in secret.
It's bit odd to argue on exploration aspect while defending old school games , since game back in 8x and 9x were much more cruel. There was absolute zero hand holding , and in games like Eye of Beholder you could easily make unplayable party or miss vital quest item, or fall in trap from which there was no exit, and there often was zero hints. Legacy could feel cruel and unforgiving for our times when RPG genre have regressed in state of cover shooting while we shoot enemies with auto aim, but compared to true old games it is nothing. We could even take Isles of terra. There are extreme lack of hints what to do. We can easily miss key card in glass case, or how we are expected to know half of stuff short of just systematically scouring the world and gathering the bits and pieces we need for endgame. (Xeen gave much better clue of wha to do, but still they still just told us to go and get credits/energy discs and off you go, with no real pointers where to look). In comparison Legacy is nothing, but even so it is much more than many modern gamers can stomach.
I agree on the music but I have to say that the by 6-8, the music was already irrelevant and I barely noticed or cared about it. Although the tracks in 3-5 were shorter in length, I found those to much catchier and more memorable, something that actually enhanced the gameplay and wasn't just lingering in the background.
Well music is extremelly personal taste matter, but I personally(and I have feeling that most of MM community) would disagree that Midi music of old MM in any way come close to Kings/Romero works of M&M7, whose absence would take away serious chunk of MM experience.
XEEN / Terra had good music for their time but it was sort of 16 bit era music.
All I really see here is a slightly average RPG that will challenge people for many days (although through fake difficulty) and will be forgotten in the years come
Well its personal taste and I can fully accept that people may not like some game, still considering lack of games in said game segment I believe it wont be forgotten that easily. Well time will tell.
The big sites have had their say, and now it is our turn to speak. Just added to our list of game reviews is our in-house review of Might & Magic X: Legacy.
Puzzle I meant in review was one in air forge, which to me was extremely unintuitive.
