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■ Dungeons & Dragons
Just to give you an idea, the first RPG (Role Playing Game) that I can remember playing was Bard’s Tale II and Bards Tale III. Back in those days, there were no automapping. I had to buy gridpapers and drew my own maps. When I graduated to Dungeon and Dragons, Wizardry, Might and Magic III (and its World of Xeen), I was hooked on these games. So, I’ve always had a great fondness for that type of game, and incredibly delighted to find out that these games are still being developed today.

The summer of gaming continues with Might and Magic X: Legacy! After really enjoying Wizardry, I wanted to play another party-based RPG… and Might and Magic X fits the bill.

After Bard’s Tales III, I went onto playing Might and Magic III, which was so good! I bought M&M: World of Xeen, which is basically Might and Magic IV: Clouds of Xeen and Might and Magic V: Darkside of Xeen. I actually never beat World of Xeen and have always wanted to revisit it. In fact, I haven’t beaten a Might and Magic game since III. I get really close, but sometimes the final boss proves to be too tough or I would lose interests.

Might and Magic X, the tenth game in the series, and the latest game, was released in 2014. I eventually bought it via Ubisoft’s store, as it was the only way to purchased their games back in those days. Since then, they’ve made their games available to purchase on Steam and elsewhere. I am assuming the version I am playing currently has all the dungeons available on the Deluxe Edition as well as the expansion pack The Falcon and the Unicorn… but I honestly don’t know. I got past the first act in the game, which meant that there are no DRM (Digital Rights Management) on the game. Previously, when Ubisoft shut down the DRM servers, it broke the game.

Anyway, I’ve previously tried to play Might and Magic X and only made it to a certain point in the game. This time around, I made it to the second act and working through quests from the second city. The game is actually very hard, despite the fact that I set the game on “Adventure” mode (easy mode). I think on Adventure, it’s more forgiving on giving you gold to purchase weapons and level up (it costs $1,500 gold just to train in Expert – that’s a lot of cash for my game).

This game is cap on experience and money, because once you kill a monster, they don’t respawn… meaning you can’t just farm experience points. Plus, if one or two of your characters died or got paralyzed during a fight they don’t earn the experience. One particular battle against a boss, I barely limped out of the fight with one character (everybody else died). What that mean is only one character got all those points from the boss.

I really like the game so far. I think it’s very challenging at times, especially when you accidentally wandered into an area, you’re not supposed to be in. Monsters can wipe you out with one hit. Once you level up or understand the mechanics, you can take out those same monsters. I love those little triumphs.

My biggest complaint is probably in the character creations… since you are limited to four races: Human, Orcs, Dwarfs and Elves. Since you can only have four characters in your party, you will likely choose all four races. The nice thing is that spells can be learned by all the races (except for Orcs). You need a lot of money to purchase the spells… so I recommend just to concentrate on one or two schools.

The other complaint is that the game’s graphics and controls are very dated. I couldn’t get the game to run full (ultrawide) screen. Controls are limited to the keyboard (no controller support). I wish they would at least address the controller support.

I don’t know how well the game sold, but I suspect it didn’t make its money back on development. I would love to see a new M&M game for 2026.

Update: I finally beat M&MX, after about 60 hours. I made some mistakes along the way, and there were things I wish I had known early in the game. By the time my character reached about level 30, I was pretty much an unstoppable machine. The last two dungeons went on for ages, and I just started throwing things out of my inventory, because there were no towns to sell all those junk. Before I knew it, I managed to beat the final boss and it was all over.

I am re-starting a new game, this time playing with a Barbarian, a Fighter, an Archer, and a Mage. Since I know exactly where to go, this play through should not take that long to finish.