I'm an old-school fan of grid-based RPGs and played everything back from Dungeon Master when it came out. This showed promise based on the reviews, but after a few hours put in, it's really not living up to its reputation and it's really disappointing. First, the overall feel is very amateurish, in the way the keyboard and mouse sometimes open containers, sometimes not... Combat is incredibly basic and boring relative to the huge complexity of stats and crafting systems which feel a bit useless. Writing is really terrible too, and what really shuts it down for me is the depiction of women, which is immature, stereotypical and misogynistic. One of the early quests is to save a farmer from a band of Amazons. First their graphic is cheaply sexual, when you enter their cave there's a sign that says "Female Empire", the Queen offers you a night of lust and sex to distract you from your quest, to which you answer something along the lines of "Are you insane? Shut up." before killing them all. What more to say.
I'm not sure why everyone mentions Eye of the Beholder or Dungeon Master. Those have a specific gameplay which is focused on mapping and puzzle-solving dungeons, levers, doors, pressure-plates, with lots of secret buttons/walls; plus real-time combat. Legend of Grimrock and countless other games made a fantastic hommage to that. This game is something entirely else really, a specific hommage to early Might & Magic, and it's an almost exact replica of M&M 3, down to the world islands layout, the huts, the division of dungeons in caves/towers/castles, the turn-based combat system, the UI, etc. That's not a bad thing, since a hommage to that specific branch of old grid-based games was something really missing. I've played MM3 I think probably 20 times at least, and I found here the same irresistible, plain, fun. It's not about slowly puzzling out a dungeon. The effectiveness of the formula is about a quick and rewarding loop of exploring self-contained dungeons, finding new gear, solving a quest, going back to town, leveling up, and hop, on to the next dungeon. Simple, fast and addictive, slowly reaching out further in the world map as you grow stronger. Another key element here is the humor. Contrary to dark serious games like EoB, DM, LoG and so on, M&M games were light-hearted, with Monty Python-like humoristic breaking of the 4th wall. All that tone is perfectly nailed here, and I'd say even better than the original which had some juvenile silliness at times. The only thing missing is the sci-fi mash-up, but that's actually ok, I always found it a bit silly too. 4 stars because: - Dungeons are of a too uniform size and design. Most are fine as is, but it could be good to have some really big/huge ones. - Loot could have more variety, especially in the top end. The immunities and resistances systems is cool though. - Art is a bit hit and miss, the colorful retro artistic direction is good, but the execution is uneven. I bought Part 2 and looking forward to it!
