A Quest That Became Legend

While it's not as charming as Might & Magic VI,VII,VIII, it is a similar type of game that you absolutely need to play if you loved those. It might look like indie slop in the screenshots but I assure you this is worth playing.
For those that have never played those Might & Magic games, go and try them first on GoG.
Loot is random Diablo-style drops. For advancement, characters get to assign stat points, skill points and learn spells. There was enough going on with this stuff to keep me engaged, and the combat was quite challenging and fun due to the game being very tightly balanced.
While there appears to be many routes to explore, you're very much forced to find the spot that has enemies that you are strong enough to kill. The game is very tightly balanced and I don't think I could have done much out of order, so there's an illusion of freedom which is great, but not quite as open as the Might & Magic games.
The game has combat music but environments only have ambience.. This lack of music is the biggest drawback of the game for me.
I suppose one other gripe I had with it was the final area. Near the end the combat turns into a real slog and sort of a puzzle that you need to get just right to survive each battle, to the point that in the final dungeon I changed the difficulty down to Easy because I couldn't be bothered with what combat had devolved into.
I haven't seen this game go on sale, so its high price point appears to be an unavoidable barrier to entry.

This game is very Might and Magic like in game play. I really enjoy the style of game play. There are a few issue with the game, nothing that detracts from the game play. I would like to see more descriptive info for differnt skills and spells.

This is a free-movement Might&Magic replacement. It is pretty dang good. It is also very difficult. If you are used to today's games, and their hand holding, then you can not play this game. You will save, and save often, and still be frustrated with your inabilities. However, playing on and finding a different path will be rewarded.
Great game! Great developer! Great experience! Highly recommended.

AQTBL is an old-school striped-down RPG with some very clear strengths and some very clear weaknesses.
On the positive side:
The difficulty is tightly but successfully balanced, the encounter and enemy design is great. The classes, abilities and spells are thoughtfully designed with a good variety of effects, creating meaningfully different archetypes. My party consisted of 1 Warrior, 1 Shaman and 2 Sorcerers - a setup I really like throughout the whole game. Thus, the gameplay is good and probably the main reason to play AQTBL.
I would also count the atmosphere on the positive side: in the area design there are more "hits" then "misses". Unfortunately the very first area is one of those misses which might create a false impression of the game's design quality in this regard. I enjoyed the maze-like qualities of many of the dungeon: they are "nice" mazes, that is you can solve them by a simple left-hand strategy. But everything is better then the dreadfully linear dungeons of more mainstream RPGs.
On the negative side, there is the general lack of production value that is not compensated by a strong art direction. Sound and music are very limited: what IS there is actually not bad, but there is just very little of it. For me personally the biggest downside is the lack of a strong world-building and lore.
All in all AQTBL gets a thumps up from me. It has a very limited appeal but if you fall into that audience its a game worth checking out :-)

All in all this is not a bad game and it's worth playing if you catch it on a decent sale. I think his difficulty settings are a bit off as I started out playing the game on NORMAL but it was more like playing the game on HARD. The good thing is, you can change your difficulty settings any time you like. On NORMAL, I found myself just going around all over the place and dipping my toes into other maps just trying to find something I could fight and actually beat so I could power up. It got so bad where I almost stopped playing the game as I was spending more time looking for a fight I could win and was so tired of fighting something 15 times before moving on to another map. I mean, I was searching everywhere and it started to get boring. EASY, IMO is the way to go as I've been really enjoying the game ever since and it's not really EASY but extremely fun since making this change.

Thought I'd post a review now that I had a chance to sink my teeth into the game. I haven't quite completed it (my laptop keeps overheating), but I have gotten to the dwarf tunnels and I think I'm getting near to the endgame.
I picked this game up as I wanted to try something like the old might and magic games. I decided to go with the standard 1 class each (war/ranger/sham/mage) and naturally played the game on hard difficulty from day 1. Pros and cons below:
Cons:
-My semi decent laptop had trouble running without overheating. I'm mostly blaming the laptop, but some optimizations wouldn't hurt.
-Like might and magic, there are skills you can rank up. Unfortunately, the skill rank-up system is not only poorly thought out but not interesting to interact with. For example, shield 4 gives 40% armor and 20% defense. 20% defense on a shield is max of about 10 defense, which if you get towards endgame starts to be 1/3 of one of 5-6 possible stat slots on a ring. Considering shield is using a weapon slot, shield skill feels borderline useless. Further, most of the bonuses for skillups are uninspired (10%, 20%, 30%, 40% dmg). Lastly, training up skills is as simple as finding trainers, no thought needs to be put into using skill points and what skills to max. Overall, I would say this is the worst part of the game.
-I hated being stuck in slow speed while an npc 150 range away was inching towards me. It was really annoying and it forced the combat to be even longer than it normally was.
-Some spells stopped being useful as the game went on. For instance, firebolt was costly and low damage.
-Stats were not balanced. The only two stats that mattered were int (for exp) and speed...and I guess stats to wear gear. At end game I was planning to completely drop int and dump everything into speed for all 4 players to hit 200 speed. Think about it this way. A level 30 character (near end game) gets 150 stat points. 150 points into str with the str skill (+1 dmg per str) would give 150 dmg, 30 attack power, and 15% crit. My war was hitting for about 1k dmg, so all those bonuses are worth around 30-35% dmg. Compare that to speed. 200 speed (4 actions instead of 1) is a whopping 300% more dmg. Part of this issue is exacerbated by how strongly gear scales. It's possible to get 100 attack power on 1 item (that's worth 75 str or so). Therefore, at end game gear made the enhancing stats borderline worthless and action points from speed king. Perhaps if gear scaled way worse or stats scaled way better there could be some argument for other stats, but they don't. If you want to stomp get int early for the xp bonus, then respec for free when you need stats for gear, speed, etc.
-NPC interactions were a bit rough. Not a dealbreaker but it was noticeable.
Pros:
-The fights are fun and challenging. Playing on hard mode, even in the late game I died a few times. Hard mode really made things interesting because there were some spells that I thought were crap (like -resist debuffs) which ended up being very critical to win some boss fights. For example, against the stormwitch she was hitting 85% magic resists, without a resist debuff the mage couldn't hit for anything, and all the +ele damage from items and skills was almost worthless. I had another fight where slimes kept multiplying until there were literally 200 slimes, and I was trying to kill them faster than they could replicate. I fought that fight for like 4 hours, but unfortunately my computer restarted on me. Even so, the fight was super fun and challenging, and made me really respect the oozes after that.
-Many people were saying ranger was weak, but going back to the storm witch boss fight, the ranger was my highest damage character because they could hit from range and they did primarily physical dps. I think this may change at 32 when mage gets to start spamming tier 4 spells, but until that point all classes felt relevant. I did feel ranger was a bit weaker than the other 3, as they had minimal CC and generally speaking did less damage than everyone else, but up to level 30 they didn't feel too bad. I do think for endgame they need better single target dps or more utility. Compared to a warrior, who gets taunt and massive dmg reduction and can also dish out a lot of physical damage, I don't think the ranger adds much. I also think if you're playing on normal or easy difficulty where mobs have much lower spell resists ranger feels much worse, and there's literally no reason to go anything but a 2nd mage if you want more dps.
-I thought the skill trees were fairly interesting and varied. I think more could be done with this but I don't hate what was done, and overall it made for some interesting choices. I do think the tier 4 skills are very hit or miss. A bit more dmg on an attack is not that strong end game, vs getting a paralyze effect.
-Graphics were pretty good, but I don't really care about graphics much so w/e. Even so, some of the vistas were sweet, like the one in the main tomb in the starter area.
-Overall itemization was good. I thought uniques were handled well at T1 and T2 uniques, but when it got to T3 uniques I wasn't happy. T3 uniques completely obsolete all other gear that can drop or be bought, which means if you have a T3 unique you can just ignore that slot unless it's another T3 unique. For example, I found a 260 AC unique chest for my warrior, and before that had never seen above 205 AC on any rare chest item (that's with me rerolling for 2 hrs). T3 uniques should be handled in a way where rares can be better if rolled really well. However, this game doesn't have end game designed that way, which reduces the chance for insane rares like you would see in diablo. Still, I overall enjoyed the gear system in this game and it was quite a bit of fun to play with it.
-Tier 4 spells were insanely good but insanely expensive. I can't remember a game that actually made me want to have more max mana, but this game is one of them. But once again, wisdom for mana was worthless, because you could get 800 mana from 1 item, so why waste skill points on wisdom when you could get speed? Overall though, having the T4 spells be so good but so expensive was very interesting, though I'm sure at 32 with mage that'll break the whole dynamic and just turn mages into insane OP powerhouses. To be honest I'm not a fan.
-I liked attack power, dmg, elemental dmg, spell power, etc., and how all of that interacted. It was relatively complex and there were tradeoffs to what to stack. I also thought it was interesting how defense got worse as the game went longer and hitting 1200 AC was so much more impotant, especially when monsters had a fair bit of pierce dmg.
-I thought taunt was really nice. I also like how I was forced to reach for +2 to skill duration to get taunt to permanent on status.
-Dungeons were pretty fun and interesting to get through, though I would have liked to see traps in the game or secret areas.
-I liked the skills that chars got as they leveled, but why not any at 25?!
-I thought the ambush mechanic was overall interesting.
Overall the game was fun to play and the fights were challenging, especially on hard mode. There were times I had to think outside the box to win fights, such as setting up fire walls, debuffing enemies, kiting, and conserving mana. I also liked the gear system and thought the world was interesting to explore. I almost never used potions, but when I had to use them I kept some reserved (normally mana). I also wouldn't really consider this an open world. It was not possible to get to some areas before you could beat the mobs blocking you. At best, I'd consider this more of a false open world. If you don't follow the prescribed path (especially early on), you won't be getting anywhere. Even so, I think for 1-2 playthroughs this game is definitely worth it, though I can't see myself playing it more than 2 times. But, with one play lasting around 100 hours, that's not bad for $30

At the very beginning it gives an impression of a basic indie RPG that leaves much to be desired. But as one progresses, the game gradually exposes itself to be a hidden gem for anyone who likes classical RPG/dungeon crawlers.
The character skills, the combat system, the loot/equipment, and the world all have more depth than it initially seems.
As for the visuals/graphics, they are really good for an indie game.
I had lots of fun playing this, and it took me almost a 100 hours to finish the game.
Cons: low quality dialogues with NPCs, and single combat music track