Might and Magic The Might and Magic Discussion Thread

[Curratum]

The butthurt in the last few posts has been hilarious.

Grow a fucking pair of balls and write this shit down, if you don't feel like writing it look it up online, don't fucking whine about MUH GAME DESIGN and BUBU I DONT HAVE TIME ANYMORE like a filthy fucking cunt. Deal with it (or don't) and go back to whatever popamole garbage you usually play, just stop posting inane shit in a mostly incline thread about games that came out before you were fucking born.

I almost typed up a long reply but this shit is so stupid, I just can't deal with it. And I try not to deal with inflamed jobless neckbeards anyway.

 

[Edmund Spenser]

If even inflamed, jobless neckbeards have the foresight to read in-game text and use their memories to track important information, what does that say about your inability to do so?

 

[Bocian]

Pretty good comeback vladislav, I'm sure you thought it up all by yourself drinking vodka alone in moms basement :p

How about you fuck off already wherever the hell you crawled out of, you retarded faggot? You shit up the thread with some idiotic, wannabe-wise-guy comments and yet you can't even insult me directly. All you can do is whine some pathetic remarks like above, you limp-wristed cunt. Wishing you to kill yourself would be too considerate.

 

[Micormic]

Pretty good comeback vladislav, I'm sure you thought it up all by yourself drinking vodka alone in moms basement :p

How about you fuck off already wherever the hell you crawled out of, you retarded faggot? You shit up the thread with some idiotic, wannabe-wise-guy comments and yet you can't even insult me directly. All you can do is whine some pathetic remarks like above, you limp-wristed cunt. Wishing you to kill yourself would be too considerate.

Well stanislav I'll be sure to take your comment under the most serious consideration. Since 'I shut up the thread' and 'whined pathetic remarks'.


With English skills like that you should write a book; Pavel goes to cigarette factory, tries to blow up car and burns lips.

 

[Darth Canoli]

About going back and forth for expert trainers, then masters and grand masters, it was part of the fun back then, bores me to death nowadays.
In MMX, for example, the poor travelling features (1 spot for lloyd's balista as far as i remember) is very annoying as well as having to travel through the whole cities to check all the shops, it's fine once when you're discovering it, afterward, you should have a place where you can check all the shops for each city, it's time those games stop living on their reputation and improve their game mechanism.

As for the poll, i enjoyed MM3 very much as well as MM6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 but mostly 3, 6 and 7 i guess. 10 would be in the list without those shenanigans (i got bored spending 75% or the game time travelling and checking shops )
Not sure which one to vote for 6, 7, 3 ?
Not sure which one introduced the arcomage game, was it not the 7th ?
Was a really nice touch.

Maybe it's just me but playing RPG or any other game isn't half as fun as it used to be, most of the time, the best part is character creation (when there is a good one), i rarely get very far, in some rare cases through half of the game and extremely rarely through the whole thing.

 

[Covenant]

About going back and forth for expert trainers, then masters and grand masters, it was part of the fun back then, bores me to death nowadays.
In MMX, for example, the poor travelling features (1 spot for lloyd's balista as far as i remember) is very annoying as well as having to travel through the whole cities to check all the shops, it's fine once when you're discovering it, afterward, you should have a place where you can check all the shops for each city, it's time those games stop living on their reputation and improve their game mechanism.

It's funny isn't it - in some of the very earliest RPGs I played, the city would just be a menu screen: select A for the Castle, B for the Weapon Store, C for the Inn, etc etc. When things like Might and Magic VI came along and you could walk through a real 3D town with houses, each one with different inhabitants or shops with wares to offer, I remember thinking as a kid that it was amazing. Exploring each nook and cranny and finding horseshoes or a quest from a guy in the back room of the inn, it really drew you into the world.

Yet nowadays I play a modern RPG and whenever I'm in a city I constantly find myself missing the days when all the busywork was handled by a menu. There's nothing exciting or immersive about walking down a city street anymore and talking to a dozen market vendors, particularly when half of them are selling shit you're invariably going to have no interest in (food, for example). It's been done a million times - most importantly, by real life, and the novelty value of recreating that in a game wore off long ago. The only virtue things like that have left to offer is being quick, simple and non-intrusive. Despite their other faults, the Etrian Odyssey games are leading the way with this nowadays. I can go back to town and sell my loot, heal up/rest, save the game and get back out adventuring with no loading screens and just a small number of button presses. That's exactly what I want. Yes, Bethesda, I know you're chomping at the bit for me to walk into some building full of forges with cool glowy heat effects and the sound sample of an authentic blacksmith hammering away at his wares, but honestly there is no need.

Cities/towns are the main offenders in this regard because there tends to be no challenge expected there. Combat is limited, if present at all, and most of the 'gameplay' is reading gobs and gobs of flavour dialogue and making choices that affect absolutely nothing, interrupted only by checking 30 barrels and cupboards to get a few gold pieces, a couple of magic rings, and ingredients for the crafting/potion/resource system that is so tacked on and pointless that it can be pretty much safely ignored for 95% of the game.

They hit the perfect balance back in the World of Xeen, I think. Each city was simultaneously a dungeon of sorts, so walking around and learning where everything was never felt like busywork. Plus there were riddles and puzzles, like the sun dials in Nightshadow. You had to walk to the shops, but movement was instanteous and the maps were small, so it'd rarely take you more than a few seconds so long as you had a half-decent memory for where shit was. Minimum interrupted from exploring new areas and killing enemies - the meat of the gameplay.

Menu-based cities are unlikely to make a real comeback, I know, but I can't help but wonder at what we could get in exchange for all those chatty beggars, city guards, and generic empty houses. Who knows, maybe if the developers weren't wasting their time on all that shit we might have gotten that extra class, or dungeon, that unfortunately ended up on the cutting room floor. I'd certainly take that over whatever it cost to squeeze in 'ROWDY CUSTOMER', 'DRUNK CUSTOMER', and 'GENERIC BARMAID #5 WHO SELLS CHICKEN AND ALE'.

 

[Alkarl]

I wouldn't mind a hybridization of the two, ala Mount & Blade, where the game will let you faff about in town if you'd like, but if you'd rather not bother, it also will give you a menu option.

M&M's 6-7-8 might benefit from this treatment.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Blackguards is also good in this respect.

 

[Dorateen]

1 spot for lloyd's balista as far as i remember

Ah, yes. Lloyd's Balista. That classic, iconic spell of the Might & Magic series. Always a favorite.

Spoiler

It's Lloyd's Beacon. And in Might & Magic X: Legacy, they changed it to "Spirit Beacon", since apparently Corak's old assistant is not part of that universe.

 

[fantadomat]

A lot of talk about how hard those games are,i even had to double check to see what thread i was reading. It is baffling how people could connect difficulty with MM games,only hard games are mm1&2. MM6&7 could be harder for a new blood but they are not something that incomprehensible,you just have to use some basic logic. I personally never had real problems with the starting dungeons in MM6,it is a challenging fun for a first timer. I will never forget how i got my ass handed by the liches in Free Heaven . MM6 is a lot harder for first timers while MM7 is "harder" in more consistent way. I MM6 an experienced player could become beast in the first 5 levels,it is a lot easier to become op fast. I cleared all the dungeons in a ingame day or two. Could clear the New Sorpigal area and its dungeons in one go. MM7 on the other hand could deliver challenge for longer time even to veterans,mainly because of how gated skills are. For example you have to be wizard (a lot of running around),have master air magic and invisibility spell,and skill points for master level to be able to get town portal spell.

 

[Baron Dupek]

"Spirit Beacon"

Ah yes, teleporting spell in M&M X Legacy that's completely useless because you need to get ouf from the depths of the dungeons to use it.
And it's not like there are deep dungeons but loading times betweent them take some time (Unity, not even once).

 

[octavius]

So I installed MM7 from my old disks.
It's version 1.1 and I think the last official patch was 1.2.
Playing in hardware mode crashes the game, and I can't turn off music or adjust the volume in any way. The latter was a problem in MM6 as well, but could be fixed by editing the ini file, so probably the same with MM7.

I've downloaded Greyface Patch 2.0.
Do I need the 1.2 patch?

Any other mods worth considering, or does GP cover everything?

 

[Great Deceiver]

I think 1.1 was the last official version for MM7. I haven't had any problems running Greyface's patch (can't alt-tab though). What version of Windows are you on?

Regarding music, I think it's better to rip the tracks and enable MP3 playback in the .ini through Greyface's patch. Have you tried that?

 

[Sacred82]

Can you disable the Haste fix independently when using Greyface? That kind of makes me reluctant to use it. You can already get bow speed up to machine gun speed without haste working correctly. I dread the effects of adding haste on top.

 

[octavius]

Installing GP fixed the crashing when in Hardware mode, but parts of the intro are black, and in-game it looks better in Software mode. And I think it actually looks worse than MM6.
Like in MM6 I could turn off the music by editing a line in the INI file to read: PlayMP3=1.

Anyway, the consensus seems to be that the Hardware option is inferior, so I won't bother trying to get it to work.

 

[Curratum]

Why does fucking MM8 crash every time when I enter Escaton's palace in the Plane Between Planes? Isn't this like the fucking endgame? How did a 100% reproducible crash survive in the final build / patch?

 

[Sinatar]

Why does fucking MM8 crash every time when I enter Escaton's palace in the Plane Between Planes? Isn't this like the fucking endgame? How did a 100% reproducible crash survive in the final build / patch?

100% reproducible crash on a system that didn't fucking exist when the game shipped. You act like you have some universal issue that effects everyone, news flash, it's just you.

 

[octavius]

Has anyone tried this (http://dege.freeweb.hu/) with MM7? Maybe I am blind but the game seems to look better.

Yes, MM7 looks better with this.

I have Win 7 and a simple Intel HD Graphics 4000 card.

Vanilla MM7 crashes in Hardware mode.
With Greyface patch it works, but looks worse than Software mode.
Software mode looks worse than MM6.

With Glide wrapper there's some glitches in the menus but it looks nice in-game. No jagged lines anymore.
With Dircet X wrapper there's no glitches and it looks in-game the same as the Glide wrapper. Only downside is that the dgVoodoo logo is showing in the lower right corner.

Definitely seems to be worth it.

Still deciding on which classes to play, so I haven't actually started playing yet. Leaning towards Cleric, Sorceror, Knight, Monk going darkside.

 

[Edmund Spenser]

Just remember that in MM7, Dark is more suited to Magic parties and Light more suited to Might parties. Hybrid parties are fine but two members will always outperform the other two.

 

[Great Deceiver]

With Dircet X wrapper there's no glitches and it looks in-game the same as the Glide wrapper. Only downside is that the dgVoodoo logo is showing in the lower right corner.

You can disable the logo, in the dgVoodoo control panel it's in the DirectX tab, last option on the lower right (uncheck dgVoodoo Watermark).

 

[Curratum]

Holy moly, just beat MM8 today, fun times. Now to figure out how to play 6 and 7 without the dragon cheese...

 

[madrigal]

Holy moly, just beat MM8 today, fun times. Now to figure out how to play 6 and 7 without the dragon cheese...

Get the fly spell and attack monsters from range using turn based mode and flying high to dodge all enemy attacks.

 

[T. Reich]

The biggest MM6-8 cheese is 4-caster party anyway.
MM8 takes it to the logical extreme with 4x Liches (and a Cleric, to heal and buff the party). 4x4 armageddons (at the very least it's 60 dmg per cast = 960 total damage) just before midnight, then repeat on a new "day". That means every outdoor location is now completely clear of any mobs, and you got insane exp and ez loot in a matter of minutes.
Indoors, you simply set spark on autocast, with occasional helping of shrapmetal/fireball/dragon's breath depending on the dungeon architecture and mob composition.
MM7 is largely the same, you simply get 1 fewer caster (sorta - you just pick a druid to do your cleric-y things for you, while he can still cast offensive spells). Well, and armageddon only being available to a dark side party. But I'd pick the light side buffing spells over dark side offensives any time of the day.
MM6 is largely the same, but the mana costs of everything high-end are just insane. But for that you get the lloyd's temple cheese. Oh, and most mobs have wildly varying damage resistances and immunities, so you actually have to pick your spells accordingly, but it definitely breaks the monotony of powergaming relative to MM7/8.

 

[fantadomat]

Amazing,at the end of the game you can kill shit and call it cheese......
MM games a lot of cheese in them,like the corner melee killing or just staying out of their melee and hitting them with melee. But playing with specific party for ours so you could kill shit that you already killed to level up is not cheese in my book.

 

[Curratum]

Holy moly, just beat MM8 today, fun times. Now to figure out how to play 6 and 7 without the dragon cheese...

Get the fly spell and attack monsters from range using turn based mode and flying high to dodge all enemy attacks.

I figured out I can bait attacks in fly mode and move up and down to dodge them in the Plane Between Planes in 8...