Lords of Xulima

Introduction

Lords of Xulima is the first game from Numantian Games, a small Madrid-based studio that built its debut around a style of RPG that had mostly disappeared by 2014: the first-person, turn-based party crawler in the mould of Might and Magic and Wizardry, where six custom adventurers explore a hand-drawn overworld one painstaking step at a time. It entered Steam Early Access on 8 August 2014 and spent three months gathering community feedback before its full release on 14 November 2014. More than a decade on, it sits at a "Mostly Positive" 78.8% across 717 Steam reviews, a score this review's sample shows is earned by a specific, well-liked strength pulling against an equally specific, well-documented set of frustrations.

Six races, real builds, and the throwback atmosphere that justifies them

What the positive side of this review's sample keeps returning to, independent of how recently the review was written, is how much genuine weight the game gives to character creation. A player assembles a party of six from six distinct playable races, each with its own stat leanings and thematic identity, and the skill and attribute systems that follow give those choices room to actually matter over a long campaign. "Classes are very diverse and the amount of customization in their leveling makes it very satisfying," reads one representative review; another, more measured account calls the combination of first-person isometric exploration, traps, riddles and secret chests something that "would be a venerated classic" had it released in the 1990s instead of 2014. Several reviewers make the Might and Magic III comparison unprompted and specifically, which this outlet reads as a deliberate, successfully executed design goal rather than an accident of genre overlap.

The food system and the RNG complaint that recur the most

Set against that praise is a pair of complaints that show up across this review's sample with enough independent repetition to treat as real design problems rather than a handful of players bouncing off an unfamiliar genre. The first is a food-supply mechanic requiring regular provisioning trips back to town; one recent reviewer who quit after 1.5 hours names it directly as "the deal breaker," calling it "tedious, annoying and not fun" even while praising the game's battle animations in the same review. The second, and more frequently cited, complaint is combat randomness: reviewers independently describe enemies landing criticals far more often than displayed hit chances would suggest, with one writing plainly that "enemies are stronger than you almost always and almost never miss... they crit often, you dont." This review can't verify the underlying hit-chance math from the outside, but the complaint's consistency across reviews written years apart, from players with very different total playtimes, suggests it's describing a real, felt pattern in the combat system rather than simple bad luck.

A specific wall a meaningful share of players never get past

Several negative reviews in the current sample don't describe general difficulty so much as a specific, named obstacle: the Tower of Sorcery, where one reviewer with over two hours logged describes trying the same fight against spiders "20 times" before uninstalling the game outright. Others describe a broader version of the same problem without naming the exact location — reaching a point where their party isn't strong enough to clear the next area despite having exhausted all available experience and gold in the current one, and having to consult an outside guide for an "optimal party arrangement" just to keep progressing. That pattern matters for anyone considering the game today: this isn't a story of players quitting early out of impatience, several of the reviewers describing this wall had already invested meaningful hours and genuinely wanted to continue.

An ending that divides even the players who loved the journey

A smaller but distinct thread in this review's sample concerns the game's ending specifically, separate from any complaint about combat or pacing along the way. One reviewer who marks the game as not recommended writes that they "really loved this game while playing" and remembered the difficulty curve fondly for years, but specifically warns newcomers away because of how the story resolves, writing that the ending "made it feel like everything I did was worthless." This review did not find enough independent corroboration in the sample to call that a dominant complaint, but it's worth flagging as a genuine outlier risk: a player who sinks 60-plus hours into the game's strongest feature, its character progression, may still come away feeling the story didn't honour that investment.

A small DLC gripe worth flagging separately

One more specific, low-frequency complaint in this review's sample is worth noting on its own because it's easy to verify rather than a matter of taste: one reviewer reports reaching most of the way through the game before discovering that one of its Steam achievements is locked behind The Talisman of Golot, the game's paid expansion, not available through ordinary play of the base game. That's a narrow complaint compared to the food system or combat RNG above, but it's the kind of detail a completionist buyer specifically would want to know going in, and this review found no indication Numantian Games ever addressed it.

Verdict

Lords of Xulima is a well-made, specific throwback that does exactly what it sets out to do: it recreates the first-person, party-based dungeon crawler of the Might and Magic era with real character-building depth and a genuine sense of old-school atmosphere, and this review's sample bears that reputation out even among players who ultimately marked the game down. What it doesn't do is soften that era's harshest edges — a food system several reviewers call needless busywork, combat randomness that reads as genuinely unfair rather than just difficult, and at least one specific difficulty wall that stops a real share of players for good. Recommended specifically to players who already know they want this style of RPG; everyone else should expect the genre's old frustrations to show up unsoftened alongside its old strengths.