Well, if I could pick only one game for you to review, Id choose M&M X.
Yes, I played Wizardry 8 and HoMM V (but this isn't a dungeon crawler, though I haven't finished them. And I've played some of the games you mentioned in the article (see post #7 above): Lords of Xulima, Paper Sorcerer and even some other dungeon crawlers not featured in your article (Legends of Grimrock - finished it).
Might and Magic X uses a lot of resources from Heroes 6, some of which look very similar to Heroes 5. One of the reasons is that it was pitched to Ubisoft as a bargain game that would not need a whole bunch of new resources. That's why I asked. The graphics looks very much like a heroes game.
In Might and Magic X you move on a grid, and unlike Paper Sorcerer or Heroes 8, movement isn't free. Its more like Legend of Grimrock.
You have a ton of character building options. There are 4 races, and each race has a might(warrior), magic(wizard), and hybrid class. There are a ton of skills, but each class excells in some skills. For example the Elven warrior (blademaster) excells in swords and knives, while the Orc warrior (barbarian) excells in maces and spears, and the Dwarf warrior (defender) excells with axes. This is just weapon skills though. There are 7 magic skills, 6 weapon skills, and 11 misc. skills, and each class can grandmaster in 4 skills. So thats a ton of build possibilities for any given party.
The great things about Might and Magic games is that they encourage and reward exploration. Finding certain shrines can raise your elemental resistances or give you temporary combat bonuses. Each skill also has 4 tiers. For example to get to level 5 in a skill you need to be an expert, 7 a master, and 10 a grandmaster. If your class allows you to grandmaster in axe, you still need to find a teacher to move you along from the basic to expert level, and then from the expert to master and so on. Each teacher can tell you where the next teacher is, but only gives the name of a city or region. So to raise skills at some point you need to go teacher hunting. Some teachers also want you to complete a quest before they teach you. You will also get a number of other quests as the game goes by, and these always tell you in vague terms where to go and what to do. The game is filled with secrets too.
Might and Magic X world is very similar to Lord of Xulima, in that it is a huge open world, but some areas you can only enter after defeating a certain tough monster, learning a particular exploration skill, or by completing a certain quest. Like Lords of Xulima it has many unique regions and towns with their own monsters, npcs and flair. Littering the open world are a number of dungeons, some big, some small. This is due to both games being inspired by the early Might and Magic games.
Combat runs similar to Xulima. Its fast turn based, and you really want to finish quickly, because many monsters are glass cannons who can really hurt you if you let them linger too long.
Once you have opened up the entire world, the game can get easy. If you do all the side quests you will have more money than you need by the end of the game, and the last battles aren't overly hard. I'd say that's the only downside of an otherwise very good game.
The story is also not bad, but kind of fantasy clique, like in the Heroes games. I did like the end, though. I thought it a nice twist. Story is kind of secondary though. MMX is a game about exploration, character building, and combat. And all those are done well.
Also the game was horribly optimized at its release in 2014. For a Unity game without modern graphics it ran only on higher end computers. I don't think that should be a big problem now. You also, like for any other Ubisoft game, need to install the Uplay launcher, which some people find very annoying. And now its time for me to go to bed. I'll write something on the other games soon.
