I grew up playing Might & Magic 6-9, immersing myself in a party-based RPG with open-world environment, sharing a common universe and lore together through the franchise. That was from the time with New World Computing as the dev team, before publisher 3DO went bankrupt and the IP was bought up by Ubisoft. I finally got around to play through the first M&M game under Ubisoft, which shares the lore with Heroes 5-7 and takes place several years after the Heroes VI events. And it's grid-based, hearkening back to the classic gameplay core of Might and Magic 1-5 and the peers.

Your party of "Raiders" arrive on Agyn Peninsula of Ashan, getting drawn into a political intrigue following a coup in a major city. The story at first wasn't particularly gripping (and I'm only most familiar with the previous M&M universe), only until I made it to Act 3 and the twist of the plot was unfolding for the better side of it. Each side-quest have their own stories that give some meaning behind (besides XP). One design flaw I found with quests is locations and items related to promotion quests not meant for you. I remember one time I cleared an abandoned mansion and spent a good deal trying to figure out how to solve puzzles, which weren't meant to be because it's part of the promotion quest you couldn't take, depending on your party classes. If devs were still around, they should have these unsolvable puzzles disabled.

Shaping your party at the start will matter a lot to how well you can overcome the obstacles, so I recommend having more than a couple of magic users. I have seen difficulty spikes more than a few times that forced me to reload because I was at the wrong place too soon. Fortunately, I made it to the end of the main plot by finding the working formula of my party. On the other hand, battles at the final levels tend to drag out and are a bit too frequent. I was stuck in a prison break quest due to being overpowered by boss enemies (had to change the stats file to get an upper hand fairly). Your party choices will make or break the game so take heed, if you don't want your game time wasted. What's worse is that there is a bug at one point that prevents from progressing the story, which I have to thank the community for providing the solution by editing one of the files. So prepare to wear the file browser cap if you aim to get the game finished.

If you can get over the difficulty spikes with proper party management, some technical frustrations and are a fan of Might and Magic of some sort, Might and Magic X can still be addictive and fun to some extent. Get it only on sale.