Continuity is big for me. When you chuck out game lore, or bend it over for a royal screwing (Codex of Ultimate Wisdom?), you piss off the fans who've grown attached to that setting.

I loved MM6. I miss Roland and Archibald (at least Corak and Sheltem had closure). Hell, the intro to the movie Serenity reminded me of MM6. DM wasn't a bad game in and of itself, but it was NOT an MM game. Betray me once, and we're through.

CRPG simply means Computer RPG?

Also, BlueMooner that's what I mean.

Dark Messiah was alright. Interesting combat, I guess. Don't forget that 3DO released Crusaders of Might and Magic which was considerably worse. Dark Messiah wasn't the first action game from the series and Ubisoft did a better job than 3DO in this regard.

Now where did I put my SecuRom Removal Tool?

It's funny how some people love it compared to the old HoMMs yet some are the opposite, I wouldn't mind it myself but I'd prefer the older ones for some reason.

Alright!? One of the few FPS games with actual, working and fun meele in existence had... Ok, all right, let's do this game some justice:
Meele combat. It was pretty damn solid. There were interesting parry mechanics if you and your opponent attacked each other at the same moment (CLICK LIKE A MADMAN, yeah, but it's a QTE triggered by attacking the opponent's weapon.) And then there's the bit where each weapon handled in a completely different way - swords handled the same, sure, but katana was faster than a 'normal' sword, fighting with staves is completely different, kind of like fighting using knives. The system was just pretty damn great, it's only downfall was the ability to abuse kicks - easily balanced if you picked a higher difficulty where you could seldom afford to drop your defenses even for that brief moment.

Right, so that's meele. But guess what, vast majority of the game could have been sneaked trough. You could literally play DM as a thief or assassin, both approaches were valid. Harder in some bits of the game, sure, but I've finished the game as an assassin and it was great fun. Oh right, and you could also play an archer. Or a tank. Or a mage. Or a battlemage. Heh, you could combine the skills to create anything, the system is amazingly flexible.

Oh, did I mention magic? Yeah, you could aggrevate your opponents to attack his allies. You could freeze the ground to make the enemies trip and fall off ledges. You could break flasks with the black goo that was then easy to set on fire. If you were clever, you could always use your surroundings, combinations of abilities and items in the world to defeat your opponents.

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic is a gem of a game, and as long as it's out, I don't give a rat's ass about it butchering Might and Magic universe. It's just waaay too good for me to care.
I like V better as well. It just seems to do everything III did, but better.

Dark Messiah is highly underrated and closest I've ever seen a non-shooter to FPS if you get what i'm saying. One thing I like, though it's tiny, is the continuity between HoMM V and it though they're so different. Damn, you've made me want to play, I'll have to rob it from my friend now.

OK, perhaps my appraisal of the combat system was... understated. Dark Messiah had deep and satisfying combat mechanics and after all these years it's what I remember about this game. Your rage post is justified :)

Well not really, it all comes down to opinion in the end. But there's way too many oldschool fans who are gladly going to judge the game harshly just because developers got the M&M reboot universe to work with, and then there's another bunch of modern gamers who are fast to diminish the game because it's too different to their usual playing style - and yeah, if you play it like an FPS, you will die often and you will die fast. It's fairly hard even when you do try to play it as you're 'supposed to' - which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. The game just got a lot of bad ratings for all the wrong reasons.

Wasn't it a buggy mess on release? I only played it after the final patch came out.

I don't actually know, I hardly ever buy games on release. Largely for that very reason.

Personally, I don't think time has anything to do with it. If they made it a great game, there's no reason it couldn't be successful. Granted, it couldn't just be a rehash of what they've done before.

Did you play any of the MM1-9 games? I did, and I was greatly saddened by DM. I even modified it to try to make it better, but the only way I could enjoy it was by thinking of it as a stand alone fantasy game.

Simple answer, no it wouldn't :P It wouldn't even be close. Maybe if they release several perfectly executed Might and Magic games and pour a ton into marketing they'll start to compete with Elder Scrolls but to most people it might as well be a completely new IP.

The first person team based RPG formula has been out of mainstream for too long. It might still be good for indie games, but it is hard to compete directly with the more intensed and action packed RPGs nowadays, unless Ubi can figure out a way to "modernize" this formula.

Basically, there is a reason all those good old RPG IPs being left behind.