Might and Magic X Legacy + DLC

I searched the forums but seems like any discussions here regarding M&M10 are very old. I just now finished the game and it's DLC, Falcon and the Unicorn.

This game sat on my hard drive for a few years and back in January I decided it sat long enough and wow it's one of those games that served up a lot of fun. Not perfect, but definitely had that addictive M&M continuous incremental party improvement vibe to it.

The DLC, Falcon and the Unicorn was less fun and quite hard at times. I struggled with a lot of reloads not only in the prison dungeon but also the summer palace where a few times I thought "wow can't beat this I'm done." But then I'd get another tactical idea and try it. Eventually, I beat it... but the DLC wasn't nearly as engaging or fun as the main game.

Anybody here play the game? Just curious how popular it was with RPGWatchers since it seems that there's very few threads about the game here.

Played the game at release (without the dlc). I enjoyed it a lot.
A major issue was the balancing of classes and weapons (double attacks were just too powerful). And partly because of that the game became incredibly easy in the end.
This was also one of the reasons why I didn't want to play the DLC actually. I expected everything to just be mowed down as I already felt godlike and like I maxed out all characters.
So it surprises me that you struggled with it. Maybe you weren't aware of the balancing weaknesses, or they actually patched it.

In any case I'd definiely buy a M&M XI if it comes along.

I finished it back in 2015. I played it on the harder difficulty, and I remember it being quite challenging especially in the early going. It wasn't as hard towards the end, but I can't say it ever got easy.

I liked it in general, but the endgame dragged a bit. I remember thinking the final area was just too long and repetitious. I don't think it's a game that I would ever replay.

There's a few good threads on the game here and there.

JDR's character creation tips and playthrough: https://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27331

Couch's "End of a chapter news post" https://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24591

Dt's Review thread:
https://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24024
(Some interesting discussion…)

I thought the game was ok without being spectacular. A significant step up from MM9, but generally inferior to MM's 3-8 especially in dungeon design and item variety/usefulness. That said, I only played it the once through and perhaps would find another party configuration more satisfying, who knows? It'd probably run better on my newer system as well. Naturally, I'd want to support a new game in the series if that eventuality ever arose.

Put quite a few hours in and seemed ot hit a wall with the only barriers being well over my level. That was over a year ago and haven't gone back.
Enjoyed my time on it though.

I played it through twice and really enjoyed it. The first time was in 2014 and I thought it might be one of my favourite parts. I replayed it about 6 months ago, and don't think after a second look that I like it as well as parts 3, or 6-7. I might like it better than 8 or World of Xeen though. I played 8 of the 12 classes, and I really like the variety the classes give you. I might replay it again sometime to try out the Druid, Scout, and Mercenary classes, which I'd like to try. Like you I did not like the DLC and only played it through once. I hated the prison labyrinth. Just stupidly designed if you ask me. Because the enemies use light magic, they have a lot of autohit attacks, which means if you went all out on evasion (a valid strategy in the original game) and went minimum on health, you could have problems with the enemies in the DLC. The DLC is also too linear, IMO.

JDR13 said:

I finished it back in 2015. I played it on the harder difficulty, and I remember it being quite challenging especially in the early going. It wasn't as hard towards the end, but I can't say it ever got easy.

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It was quite challenging in the beginning. Up to a point where you could play into a stuck position when you were too weak.
But if you got a few doube-attack weapons and were able to take some double attack skills, enemies just started to explode in numbers. Also all procs procced off each hit, and you were able to buff them, so…

http://ndnw.net/no-hp-stuff/mmx.JPG

Btw: The one or another might have seen my class sheet
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tkZnDgMPQvY7j8paHChnYJ_dO0g4DxUvroPrcgnSTww/edit?usp=sharing

Kordanor said:

A major issue was the balancing of classes and weapons (double attacks were just too powerful).

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I had both a Bladedancer and Warden in my party that both duel wielded. The bladedancer with swords and the warden with daggers. I was surprised to find that the warden with his daggers was superior throughout the game, hitting much harder and more often. Adding to that, I never found "epic" daggers in my play through while my bladedancer wielded "epic" swords in each hand. It wasn't a problem with my bladedancer's attributes either. I think it was just sort of a sucky class to pick and if I play this game again I'll avoid that one.

Kordanor said:

This was also one of the reasons why I didn't want to play the DLC actually. I expected everything to just be mowed down as I already felt godlike and like I maxed out all characters.

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The first half of the DLC takes all your weapons and gear away and you have to stealthily figure out a dungeon puzzle. The idea wouldn't be so bad except that one mis-step forces you to re-load your game. Even on my fairly quick PC this took about 10 seconds and I must have re-loaded my game on this part of the DLC more times than I re-loaded my game throughout the entire original campaign. It would have been better had the devs simply returned you to your cell if you made a mis-step. Felt like quitting a few times because it got pretty annoying.

After that part, you're still in the prison dungeon, but you get only starter gear and you can only purchase healing and mana potions while the guards will liberally feeble mind, poison, and weaken your party. I had casters who could handle these conditions but if you had a pure melee party I don't even know if it would be possible to continue at that point. Another annoying thing about the prison dungeon is that the first time I finally managed to kill Perron (sp?) one of my toons died... and naturally it was the only toon in my part who could resurrect. I continued playing for a while thinking surely the next part of my adventures would include an NPC who could perform resurrection services... but nope... no such thing. I ended up throwing away a good hour of post-Perron adventure only to return to do that fight against him a few more times until I could do it without anyone dying. That was pretty annoying.

JDR13 said:

I played it on the harder difficulty, and I remember it being quite challenging especially in the early going. It wasn't as hard towards the end, but I can't say it ever got easy.

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Did you play the DLC too? I can't even imagine doing the DLC on the hard setting I barely scrapped through it on normal. I watched a few youtube videos where people had the grandmaster fire spell that would just wreck all the mobs... but I didn't have that spell in my party. But it did get me hunting more for spells I hadn't used much in the main game... one in particular was chain lightening... if it wasn't for that spell, I probably could not have gotten through the DLC... that spell changed everything.

forgottenlor said:

... and don't think after a second look that I like it as well as parts 3, or 6-7. I might like it better than 8 or World of Xeen though.

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Funny... feel exactly the same. M&M 3 holds a special place because that game took full advantage of my adlib sound card (or was it my soundblaster... can't remember). After that 6 & 7 (with 7 being my favorite, but not by a wide margin to 6). Then lastly to 8, which I never finished all the way... I liked 8 but my like for it did not outlast the amount of hours the game required to complete it.

TheMadGamer said:

Did you play the DLC too? I can't even imagine doing the DLC on the hard setting I barely scrapped through it on normal. I watched a few youtube videos where people had the grandmaster fire spell that would just wreck all the mobs.

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Yes, I finished the DLC as well. You don't get the ending certificate otherwise. That castle was a real bitch in some places.

I also didn't have access to fire magic past expert(?) level, and I remember reading that was the most powerful magic.

Base game was loads of fun but DLC made me ragequit.

Yeah I really enjoyed the base game - I thought the exploration and character development was really well done, and had a blast crawling around the island trying to improve my skills and magic etc. I liked the map design as well, which teased you with inaccessible areas that you knew you'd be able to access at some point later in the game. I only played it on the standard difficulty and I didn't play the DLC, which might not have a been a bad thing by the sounds of other comments here. I intend to go back for another run at some point.

It would be great if they did a MMXI, but the impression I got from interviews at the time was that this was very unlikely to happen. MMX doesn't seem to have sold very well and only got mediocre reviews, which was a real shame.

I'm going to start arguing with myself here but I just checked on steamspy and actually sales were about 177k, which doesn't actually seem bad for a game like this. I guess some of those sales will be bundles or discounts though.

Pongo said:

I'm going to start arguing with myself here but I just checked on steamspy and actually sales were about 177k, which doesn't actually seem bad for a game like this. I guess some of those sales will be bundles or discounts though.

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It sold somewhere around 200k units, which was not bad for its budget and might have satisfied a smaller publisher. But that's not the way it works at Ubisoft. From the developer updates I learned that Ubisoft has an internal contest every year, where the winners get to make titles that Ubisoft normally would not make. Child of Light also won this contest. The idea is to allow innovation outside of the standard series in the hopes of coming up with a sleeper hit. The team that pitched MMX sold the committee with the success of Legend of Grimrock, which at that point had sold around 700k units. I don't think Ubisoft lost money on the game, but it wasn't apparently enough to change MMX from a one time contest winner into a regular series.

It also should be noted that Grimrock 2 sold about as well as Might and Magic X, and as far as I know there is no sequel being planned for that either, which is a shame, because imo it was vastly superior to part 1.

According to Steamspy Grimrock II has about 400k "owners", whatever that means in terms of full price purchases, which is more than I thought. Totally agree with you about the game and I'd love to see a sequel - some of the ideas on their forum for a possible part III are really quite good. But yeah it's sadly quiet from the devs…

I played the main game via a friend's account since I don't use ubijunk on my computer. It was pretty good, not awesome or in no way comparable to some of the past Might and Magic games, but it was worth the time. If there ever is a sequel that doesn't require that platform to run in, I would most likely purchase it.

I played it twice with the DLC. On few parts in DLC I had to use some tricks I found on some forums, probably Steam. One was really almost an exploit. But overall, i found it as good than the core game.

It can't be compared to M&M III to IV because of the size and the freedom and the better merging of tricks and puzzling to gameplay. But frankly I preferred many aspects of MMX and found very very hard to replay MM3 after to have play it.

I played it before the dlc and one day will maybe replay it with the dlc (they were kind of late). They never fixed some truely annoying bugs - to be honest the coding side of the game was kind of weak but the overall story/level design was entertaining enough - though nothing earth shattering.