There are SO many comparisons to World of Xeen its ridiculous. The gameplay, the grid system, the turn based combat, the world map, the dungeons, heck even wandering just a bit too far and finding an enemy that is WAY too powerful.

There are obvious connections to older Might and Magic games. In fact one of the spanning quests is a DIRECT link to Might and Magic 8 in a sense. Some of the lore books you find describes the older games too.

I'm maybe halfway through the game, currently doing a promotion quest for my orc. Its thoroughly challenging and I highly recommend quicksaving often.

The Ubisoft thing can be annoying, but after getting used to Steam, Origin, and now this, it isn't that bad. You can turn off the emails and whatnot during the installation of Uplay, so I don't really get a lot of spam. It runs in the background and other than the "achievements" you can get I don't really know its there. If you have a weaker computer I wouldn't suggest it without upgrades.

Overall my experience thusfar has been over the top. When I find myself thinking about the game all day at work that's when I know I've found a good one.

If the game worked as intended, it would be a solid effort for a developer new to MM, with good prospects of future titles. And one day, once there have been a couple of patches to eliminate the current problems, it will probably be looked back on as such. But, in the words of Aragorn, it is not this day.

I can see for people who were lucky enough to navigate their way through the game in the exact linear order they were lead, and didn't strike any issues, they would rate it much more highly. But I grew up from MM2 with being able to go anywhere & do anything, and if you were fool enough to stick your head in somewhere you didn't belong yet, you quickly learned! With MMX, that will ruin your entire game, along with 50+ hours of play, as pretty much ever quest seems to have an issue with doing something before you are told. At best, we were unpaid beta testers for this title which was released prematurely with way too many issues. Hence, those of us who got the game first struck problems that others were pre-warned to avoid. You would think that a publisher would want to reward its most loyal customers, not punish them.

So by all means, once the 2nd or 3rd patch is out, go buy the game and I think you will enjoy it. The graphics are pretty nice, and there are elements of the story that will have fans of the series smiling to themselves. But until then, it's an incomplete title that will fry your GPU and waste your time discovering problems that should have been amended before release.

It's also small - about as large as MM8 before you start visiting the elemental nodes - maybe smaller. So, unlike with previous titles where you got to max out all your main skills & still have enough to ensure your spellcasters also maxed out their weapons & armour, this game is over before any of your characters have even maxed their two or three main skills. Which doesn't do much for replayability.

This game resembles MM4 SO much that it could possibly be considered a remake with new graphics and story from an uneducated (not a fanatic) point of view.

I chose to play it differently than you I think. I finished Act 2, then I explored the ENTIRE world and even completed the obelisk quests before even trying to enter Karthal. By the time I got into Karthal I was level 24 and eating Black Guards for lunch. I suggest oregano with the Black Guards btw. It brings out the best flavors.

Anyway, I just freed Falagar (which is another reference to MM6) and about to dive back into the game. My biggest complaint so far is that it seems the text was never checked for quality. It costs -1 gold to take a horse to Seahaven? That's not right. I have also found about two or three repeated words. That's my biggest gripe so far, and that's not much to gripe about.

To be fair, I have a beast of a gaming computer. This thing was built to play Skyrim high graphic detail mods at Ultra settings, and Battlefield 3 will barely make this thing sweat. For the average person, this game would probably test their computer's limits.I like that though, because it means they understand the importance of graphics. It is by FAR the best looking MM game. The colors and detail are beautiful.

I would still wait. The first patch is out & seems to have addressed some of the smaller issues that were identified early, but none of the important ones: mainline quests, GPU temperature etc (doesn't matter what else your rig can handle, MMX will fry it - and it has nothing to do with the quality or otherwise of the graphics).