Might & Magic X - Preview @ PC Gamer

PC Gamer has a new hands-on preview of Might and Magic X: Legacy.

While Legacy's old-school approach isn't quite my thing, being firmly from the Ultima class rather than Might and Magic/Wizardry 101, it's good to see it keep its focus wisely tight. It's a type of RPG that hasn't really existed for many years, in or out of the Might and Magic series directly, and while it's yet to show off any of that series' more memorable flourishes (not least mixing up fantasy and science fiction), there aren't many names better suited to jumping into the role-playing time machine for one more quest.

That said, time has moved on, and having a foot planted between then and now doesn't always do it many favours - a particular bugbear in this preview code being that you have to wait for monster animations to finish playing whether you can see them or not. The release version promises to ease that by allowing them to play at up to 300% speed, but it's still slightly unsettling for a turn-based game to find a way of being overly stop/start in design. Other annoyances included not being able to flee from combat, with the party refusing to take sanctuary in a town before finishing a battle even when on their last desperate breaths, and the general difficulty of avoiding a fight when necessary. Hopefully the final version will be a little smoother in these regards, even if the levelling curve feels like it's going to be more of a problem early on, while the party is still struggling to scrape together their basic spells and skills.

Might and Magic X: Legacy is due out on January 23rd/24th, with a full campaign and modding support. It also features the dumbest question in the RPG genre since "Are you sure you want to uninstall Ultima IX?" (Answering truthfully of course makes for a sadly short and uneventful adventure...)