So, my own pros and cons of MM6.
The good things:
New Sorpigal is one of the best starting areas of any CRPG.
So much to explore. And lots of "hooks", like the Obelisks, Dragon Towers and Pedestals, which really make you wanna explore to find out more.
Score is (partly) dependent on time used. I regret not using a Gate Master or developing my Water master faster, as I could probably have shaved off 2-3 months and hopefully breached the 100,000 score.
While combat is not very tactical, it still is mostly fun, especially casting AOE spells outside. The upside of the huge number of enemies, especially compared to MM3-5, is that casting Inferno inside is correspondingly more rewarding.
Excellent loot system, and there was always potentially better items to find. Not quite as extreme as MM2, though.
Unpredictable dungeon sizes and layouts, from one small room to a huge pyramid.
So many quests and sidequests.
Need to find trainers and meet the restrictions for training.
The not so good things:
Only 1 race, 6 classes and 4 characters was further dumbing down of the M&M games.
Bad monster AI or "detection". Monsters seem to be only triggered by distance, along any axis, totally disregarding walls and floors. Also, if located in small rooms, for some reason they will hug the sides of the door. Not sure if the latter is due to monster being "smart" or just poor pathfinding.
I didn't use Alchemy system very much, mostly because the benefits of the Healing and Mana potions were so small. Should have been some mid level potions that restored 100+ or full Health and Mana. Also, most potions were soon redundant due to spells, cheap temples and stat bonuses becoming rather meaningless.
Temple healing is ridicilously cheap and effective. Every time you're low on mana and/or health just Teleport out, pay 40 Gold to get full HP and Mana, and Teleport back.
Repair system. Would have been more point in it if you couldn't reapir stuff in mid combat and even using no time on it.
Last Dungeon was a decline difficulty wise when it came to combat. At this stage the demons could hardly touch me (Titans and Dragons still were nasty, though) and I just blasted them, occasionally casting Sparks against huge numbers.
Too difficult to get to Castle Stone. Weird that there's no transport there at all.
General comments:
I explored most of the game, except the Dragon Riders Cave, Agar's Laboratory and the last parts of a couple of dungeons.
Did all quests, except turn in Mordred.
Forgot to do all the Arena challenges.
Didn't realize I could use the ship Queen Catherine to travel to Hermit's Isle until I had already explored the isle.
Forgot about the Well than exhanges XP for money. I had more than a million gold at the end of the game. Training costs were not a real problem;
Expert Merchant (and one Master) + selling all loot I found prevented not affording to train.
I never bothered with Master Light and Dark Magic due to extreme Reputation fluctuation.
The spells are just too costly, and the effect too small in my experience. Shrapmetal did less damage than Sparks. Prismatic Light rarely worked (Inferno was much more reliable). Incinerate generally worked better than Dragon Breath. Sun Ray did solid damage when it worked, but usually Implosion was more reliable. Seems high level monsters have higher resist to Light and Dark than to Elemental. Mass Distortion rarely worked either (very effective against Cuisinarts, though), again making Implosion and Incenerate generally more reliable.
The character portraits were not as annoying as I remembered.
Overall an excellent game, but suffered somewhat from enemy HP bloat in the later stages. But the game was shorter than I though; I only used 2.5 weeks to complete it, but then I had played it twice long before (without completing it), which surely helped.
I'll try putting few dozen skill points I was saving for blaster into mace. Also adding a bunch of levels (currently at 73) by clearing Titan Stronghold, Temple of Baa, probably Nighon as well (Rocs were pretty hard for me when I met them in Celeste).
I once played a game where I killed the dragon there and then save scummed lots of relics and artifacts from him. It was interesting playthrough but once is enough, it's better the classic way with shit gear, dying on rats in Harmondale.
