Legends of Might and Magic Review

The game features twenty maps. This is a nice number, yet I had some remarks... The maps are poorly balanced, and most maps will give substantial initial advantage to one of the teams, which can really be frustrating. Then, they could have provided us with a map editor! The number of maps and their size don't guarantee long replay value. The entire situation has been slightly improved by placing a number of different monsters which attack both teams all over the map. Their AI, however, is less than commendable: they will either roam around and frantically attack anything they spot, or ignore you while you attack them. They are also present in the multiplayer mode, where they do present useful refreshment, but they can be turned off by the host (unless you are playing the Slay the Dragon mod, where it wouldn't make much sense).

You can also practice the game offline, but the way they did it, well, they might have just left it out. In this mode, you can fight only monsters (if you turned them on), while there are no bots. To make things worse, there are really few monster and they are as stupid as they get. The only reason you might want to start an offline game is to see what the maps look like.

The game uses a modified LithTech engine which is satisfactory, but it doesn't go beyond that in terms of eye candy. You will notice the different level of lighting on different maps. Some are so dark, they are barely playable. Unfortunately, the game has no gamma/brightness settings. The poly count of the models is disastrously small at times, but the objects and weapons look quite good anyway. The characters on the other hand seem somehow rough and incomplete, especially their poorly drawn and animated faces. The monsters are mediocre by appearance. What does really look nice are the surrounding terrains, varied and rich in color.

As for the sound, I really hated the fact that the game has no music, which is a shame as we all know what some proper music can do to a medieval fantasy game. There should have been more sound effects, but the existing ones are pretty good.

All I said up till now might as well be tolerated in a multiplayer game if there wasn't for something else bothering me. If you happen to have a dial-up connection of 56K or less, you can forget about this game. It simply won't work. Then, there are few servers that support it, and not too many players either. The game will maintain your basic statistics while you're on-line, but you lose all your equipment as soon as you log off, which automatically kills your desire to get back to it. The imminent conclusion is that the Legends of Might and Magic present nothing more than a total cock-up, an uninventive and technically poor copy of several games, primarily Counter-Strike, which was meant to achieve a lot and actually achieved nothing.