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Might and Magic The Might and Magic Discussion Thread

What is the best Might & Magic game in the series?

  • Might and Magic: Book I

    Votes: 17 2.3%
  • Might and Magic II: Gates to Another World

    Votes: 29 3.9%
  • Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra

    Votes: 59 8.0%
  • Might and Magic: World of Xeen

    Votes: 180 24.5%
  • Might and Magic: Swords of Xeen

    Votes: 5 0.7%
  • Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven

    Votes: 208 28.3%
  • Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor

    Votes: 128 17.4%
  • Might and Magic VIII: Day of the Destroyer

    Votes: 26 3.5%
  • Might and Magic IX

    Votes: 10 1.4%
  • Might and Magic X

    Votes: 73 9.9%

  • Total voters
    735

Sceptic

Arcane
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Joined
Mar 2, 2010
Messages
10,871
Divinity: Original Sin
What do you need Etherealize for?
Going where you want to be without having to go the "long" way around the walls (you just go through them).

If you do want to see a good interview with JVC, he was interviewed by Matt Barton on Matt Chat a while back.
Or the Codex interview with him :M
Matt's is excellent too.
 

Strange Fellow

Peculiar
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Jun 21, 2018
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4,013
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Got a lot done today. Mapped out most of Castle Dragadune and the City of Gold, both of which were a lot bigger than I expected. I also visited the Volcano God and solved his riddle, which felt damn satisfying, as I tend to be absolutely hopeless when it comes to these kinds of puzzles. My party is now level 13/14, and the chance of suffering a TPK in combat encounters has become a lot smaller, as I can usually manage to run away if worse comes to worst. Still, it happens occasionally, and when it does it's always bloody annoying, especially when I've accrued a lot of XP. I wonder how high level my party would be if this game had had unrestricted saving.
Anyway, just now I looked over my notes and noticed the fountain that turns gold into XP, which I had completely forgotten about. So now my party has no money, but my Sorcerer made two levels and can cast lvl 7 spells. I had a short peek at the astral dimension, which as far as I can tell is filled with a lot of force fields and precious little else. The random encounters seem manageable, though, so that's next on my list of places to explore. I'm expecting it to be a huge pain in the ass.
 

Strange Fellow

Peculiar
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I'm expecting it to be a huge pain in the ass.
It was. The fun kind, thankfully.
mm_123pje67.png
:yeah:
I wasn't expecting to finish the game already. That wasn't anywhere near the most difficult area, combat-wise. Still, a worthy final dungeon.
There's a lot of stuff I haven't done, but I'm going to accept this victory, because I think I've had my fill of this game for now.

Overall, this was a very enjoyable game. Sceptic really hit the nail on the head when he said that it works as an amalgam of the best CRPG franchises of the 80s. At its best it succeeds perfectly in combining the apparent vastness of the overworld exploration of Ultima, with the spelunking of Wizardry and its ilk. Its biggest strength by far is the quality of exploration; every zone and every dungeon feels distinctive and contains something unique. A lot of credit has to go to the compartmentalization of the world into fixed-size 16x16 grids, which made it easy to tell when I'd missed something, and at least in me seemed to encourage a kind of completionist collect-'em-all attitude, via the fact that zones could be more or less "completed." It's very gamey and very fun. The dungeons were decently large and varied, and though I would have appreciated some properly devilish mapping challenges (or maybe they were there, and I just missed them), most were fun to go through. I was also surprised by the number of sidequests, both given directly in the form of the Lords' quests and in the form of riddles scattered about the gameworld -- I expected something a lot more bare-bones.

Also impressive was the character system. I was expecting another half-baked AD&D knockoff: useless stats, useless thief, useless spells, you know the drill. But the classes are all unique and play differently. The only slightly boring class was the Paladin, who was just a straightforward Knight/Cleric, in contrast to the Archer, who in addition to being a Knight/Sorcerer also has the ability to use missile weapons in melee. My Robber ended up being fairly useless in combat, unfortunately, but that may have been a result of my rolling crappy stats for him. However, he was invaluable when it came to opening doors and treasure chests, of which there were a lot. I don't know if the disarm chance depends on class, or if it depends exclusively on the Luck stat, but I'm happy with the way things turned out. The spell lists were also good, with a decent variety of buffs both in and out of combat, as well as utility spells like Fly and Surface. I would have liked some more exciting offensive spells, though, as the best course of action for my Sorcerer in combat was usually to spam the best available direct damage spell, while my Cleric was on permanent healing duty. As for the stats, they all seemed to make an appreciable difference, and finding stat-raising locations felt like a big deal. I do wish I had bothered to roll for more than 5 END on my sorcerer, who ended the game at level 13, with 33 HP. I got a lot of use out of Raise Dead throughout the later stages of the game.

Now for the not so good stuff. The balance is completely out of whack from the beginning all the way through to the mid-game. There were several occasions where I entered an area, got wrecked, and decided to avoid it for a while, only to come back later and realize that I'd merely been screwed by the RNG, and I could have tackled the zone sooner. This ties in with the fact that enemies' abilities rarely vary, and the only real difference between them is how much damage they deal, and whether or not they have AoE attacks. There are some clever designs, like the wasps and exploding spores, which have low hitpoints and low damage, but can be counted on to kill any unconscious characters with their constant AoE spam. Mostly, however, it's the usual spamming direct damage, focus-firing the low-HP enemies. The debuffs were, on the whole, very underwhelming, both when I used them myself and when I had them used on me. The exception was Sleep, which was very handy in the early game, but lost its luster fairly quickly after leaving Sorpigal. Maybe I'm asking too much of the game, but some more incentive to vary my tactics would have been welcome. Then there's the resource management, which is all but non-existent. "But," you might say, "that's true for every RPG ever!" While that is true, the restricted saving, combined with the food mechanic and the gem costs for casting, seems to me to represent a real effort towards creating a well integrated resource management model. This makes it all the more frustrating when the game fails to make any of this matter beyond the very early game. A real missed opportunity.

Nonetheless, I had a lot of fun with this. I feel compelled to compare it to Proving Grounds, as they're both the first entries of what are arguably THE two series of western dungeon crawlers. This was a cool game, but overall I prefer Wizardry, which is a tighter, more focussed and more balanced experience. This is probably the more underrated of the two, though. Anyway, I'm planning on taking on the sequel, but I'll hold off for a while, because I feel sure that I would burn out if I were to play it right away.

TL;DR: Good gaem, thumbs up.
 
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octavius

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 4, 2007
Messages
19,184
Location
Bjørgvin
Congratulations!

So, how many Black Boxes did you find?
And did you defeat the Volcano God and Dragon Town?

If you were lvl 13/14 earlier today you must have skipped quite a lot; my victorious party were lvl 18-21.
 

Strange Fellow

Peculiar
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Jun 21, 2018
Messages
4,013
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Congratulations!

So, how many Black Boxes did you find?
And did you defeat the Volcano God and Dragon Town?
One, no, and no, respectively. The black box contained a bow of power, which meant that by the end my Archer was my best damage-dealer with both physical attacks AND magic, since the damage of Fireball/Lightning Bolt scales with character level instead of caster level, and my Sorcerer was lagging behind the rest. As I said, I wasn't actually expecting to finish the game this soon, but I feel like quitting while I'm ahead. There were a few things I was planning on doing, and I'm keeping a save file from before I entered the Sanctum in case I feel like wrapping up some of the loose ends.
 

Strange Fellow

Peculiar
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Messages
4,013
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
There's a lot of stuff I haven't done, but I'm going to accept this victory, because I think I've had my fill of this game for now.
Remember when I said this? I lied!
If I had known that the last dungeon was in fact the last dungeon, I would've held off on completing it. I've decided to do that anyway, because it feels like I've left half the game unfinished, and it really did become a lot of fun these last few levels.
Anyway, getting access to 7th level Sorcerer spells was a massive boost to my party. I now eat Black Knights for breakfast. Found another Black Box, which contained X!XX!X's Sword (for the uninitiated -- yes, that is the correct spelling). I can't really put it to good use, however, as my Robber can't equip it due to alignment restrictions. I also defeated the Lich in B-2 and got the Holy Plate. A quick scan of the item list reveals that there are a whole bunch of uniques I've yet to find. I forgot to mention the excellent itemization in my comment above, but that would be another major positive.
Just now I defeated the Grey Minotaur in the Fortress in B-1, which was a tougher fight than either the Knight or the Lich, but only rewarded me with a measly 2500 gold, which I have no use for at this point. That was disappointing. No matter; Dragon City awaits!
 
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Agame

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Insert Title Here
I am wondering if its worth playing M&M 9? I know it is considered to be a terrible pile of garbage but I have played all the others so I feel like I should do it for the sake of completion...

Does it have any redeeming features, or will I hate myself for playing it? The character system does look kind of neat with the branching promotions...

And there is this gem from the man himself (J V Canegham) in the manual:

"If you’re an old-time fan of the Might and Magic series, then you’re in
for a real treat. We’ve taken your excellent suggestions and used them to
make what we think is the best Might and Magic game ever."

"The best Might and Magic Game ever"

:what:
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
Some people like it, despite the bugs. I also think there's a community patch that fixes some problems, but I'm not sure. GOG constantly has sales of the M&Ms (or you can pirate it), so you don't lose much by trying it out. I haven't played it, though, so I can't give you any concrete advice.
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,087
Location
Bulgaria
I am wondering if its worth playing M&M 9? I know it is considered to be a terrible pile of garbage but I have played all the others so I feel like I should do it for the sake of completion...

Does it have any redeeming features, or will I hate myself for playing it? The character system does look kind of neat with the branching promotions...

And there is this gem from the man himself (J V Canegham) in the manual:

"If you’re an old-time fan of the Might and Magic series, then you’re in
for a real treat. We’ve taken your excellent suggestions and used them to
make what we think is the best Might and Magic game ever."

"The best Might and Magic Game ever"

:what:
Well its only redeeming part is that it is a MM game,unlike MMX. It is playable and ok. If you are true fan of MM you could try it out for prestigious grognart points.

Also this:
 
Joined
Apr 3, 2006
Messages
1,386
I am wondering if its worth playing M&M 9?
Well you could do that ... or you could whack your own ball sack with a ping pong bat for ten hours. Telling new members to play M&M 9 should be some form of Codex hazing ritual.

Does it have any redeeming features
The uninstall process worked correctly. I also vaguely recall some ok dungeon design in between the CTDs. The insidious thing about M&M 9 is that there are enough glimpses of a real game buried beneath all the shit that it might encourage a player to persist in the hopes the thing gets better as it goes on. Don't. Don't persist. Just uninstall and move on with your life. Put the whole sordid experience behind you.
 

T. Reich

Arcane
Joined
Apr 15, 2013
Messages
2,714
Location
not even close
MM9 is a sad mess.
Play it for completionism's sake, but do not expect anything good from it.
Even the normally stellar sountrack of M&M and HoMM series is rather lackluster here.
 

Strange Fellow

Peculiar
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Jun 21, 2018
Messages
4,013
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
MM1: I just found out that the 7th level Cleric spell Divine Intervention ages the caster 10 years. That explains why she keeps dying in her sleep. And here I thought I could just spam that spell with abandon :|. What's more, Divine Intervention seems not to work when she slips from her starting alignment of Good. Same goes for the Turn Undead spells. Resetting alignment is a pain-free affair, though, so that's not a big issue. It's still a neat feature, because I didn't think alignment mattered at all.
Another interesting thing is that my Cleric is a she now. I noticed that my characters seem to have undergone a collective sex change at some point; those who used to be male are now female, and vice versa. I have no idea when or how that happened.
At least Portsmith is less of a hassle this way... :?
 

Baron Dupek

Arcane
Joined
Jul 23, 2013
Messages
1,870,765
I am wondering if its worth playing M&M 9?
I liked it more than MMX Legacy despite being clunky and ugly like sin. Engine is awful but still better than Unity.
Character developement is nice except hunting for masters and GMs - you need to clickspam on all these badly textured clones around the town.
Good riddance, you gonna miss MM6 system.
Dungeon crawling and combat was better tham MMX too.

Play if you don't have anything else to play, otherwise average russian RPGs provide more entertainment.
 
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No Great Name

Arcane
Joined
Jan 24, 2014
Messages
572
Location
US
Strange Fellow Have you found how to reduce your party's age yet? Also, I don't know about Divine Intervention since my cleric never reached that level before I beat the game, but you definitely can't use Turn Undead if your Cleric's alignment is Evil. I'm fairly sure you can still use it while Neutral, but it's been a while and I don't quite remember.
 

Agame

Arcane
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Mar 29, 2015
Messages
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I cum from a land down under
Insert Title Here
I am wondering if its worth playing M&M 9?
I liked it more than MMX Legacy despite being clunky and ugly like sin. Engine is awful but still better than Unity.
Character developement is nice except hunting for masters and GMs when you need to click on all these badly textured clones around the town. Good riddance, you gonna miss MM6 system.
Dungeon crawling and combat was better tham MMX too.

Play if you don't have anything else to play, otherwise average russian RPGs provide more entertainment.

It does sound like the only feature of worth are the dungeons, that gives me a tiny reason to play it some day...

Its a shame the graphics are so :prosper: I am a big fan of MM6 - 8 2d sprites + 3d levels. Why oh why did they have to waste time on making a new engine that looks worse than the old one.
 

Luzur

Good Sir
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Feb 12, 2009
Messages
41,392
Location
Swedish Empire


Hi Hoy.
wink.gif


I've started to learn Unreal 4 engine few weeks a go, and naturally (because I am in the middle of my mm6 gameplay
big%20smile.gif
) , I wanted to see how New Sorpigal would look inside it.
With the help of Grayface editor, I was able to extract whole level, bring it to 3DS Max, clean it up a little (mostly smoothing groups), and I was able to then import it in Unreal. Oh man, I was happy then.
smile9.gif

Thanks Grayface!

The Goal:
I am not recreating the game. Nothing programming related. I don't have the knowledge, and time to do it.
All I want is to see how New Sorpigal could look, if it is polished by today graphic standard. I will make exe file, that I will share, so anyone can download and walk on the level (I guess the size will be few GB's... but.. oh well
smile9.gif
)
Eventually, if I finish the whole level with satisfying results, I'll try to make day-night switch, and will try to make some function like the "rest" in the game is, so when you press "h" hours are passing by quickly. I don't know, shouldn't be hard... but who knows...
At this point, I have zero knowledge about unreal blueprint (visual programming editor).

Anyways, I started with replacing the textures.
Here's the example:
Textures.jpg


Most of the ground textures is finished, I've made 1024 res textures.

Then I added some free foliage (trees mostly), from free unreal assets in the assets store.
I played with light... collision object... then I place some more objects (more in the video bellow)
And here it is, the first video update:
https://youtu.be/3gsHRmS3ZcM

Sorry about fast mouse movement. When I was recording everything was like slow motion.


That's it, feel free to suggest anything, to like it, or dislike it, to give ideas... etc.
Cheers to all!
 

J_C

One Bit Studio
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Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
It looks great because he kept the blockyness of the buildings, and just added upgraded textures.
 

Darth Canoli

Arcane
Joined
Jun 8, 2018
Messages
5,687
Location
Perched on a tree
So, i tried Swords of Xeen.
First thoughts, it really looks like Xeen, which is nice but also a shame because i prefer Isles of Terra color palette.
Still, it's solid, after an hour of gameplay or so (most of it rolling new chars), i reached the "first" real city and realized it sounds differently than my Xeen and Terra configurations, the arrows don't have the metallic impact i had on those. (and i can't find the config ini : gog version ^^' )

On the other hand, the CC impact does, which is probably worse.

I found this list of MT-32 compatible dos games
and Sword of Xeen isn't there.

So i decided to get back Terra first.

I'll be trying to configure munt 2.3 amd64 i downloaded weeks earlier to play Isles of Terra and i will check this thread thoroughly for any links but in the meantime, if you have some configuration hints / links on hand, please send them my way.
 

newtmonkey

Arcane
Joined
Aug 22, 2013
Messages
1,725
Location
Goblin Lair
Darth Canoli
I am 99% certain you can just drop the install.exe from Worlds of Xeen into the Swords of Xeen folder and run that to configure sound options. (That's what I did to configure Sound Canvas music/sound effects for the GOG version).

[Edit] I just tried using install.exe (copied from WOX in the SOX folder) to switch to MT-32, and it seemed to worked fine. I got proper door opening sounds, etc.
 

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