Might and Magic The Might and Magic Discussion Thread

[Machocruz]

I have to give the edge to 6. I started playing both that and World of Xeen a year and a half ago. Xeen is a little too directionless for my taste. Part of it was probably from relying too much on the in game quest log, which only gives the most basic of information about quests. I should have been taking notes from NPC dialog. Not crazy about the forced exploration you need to do to find some of the dungeons, I would have preferred a Morrowind type journal; maybe it would take away from the game, I don't know. The lack of real-time(?) NPCs doesn't bother me at all in Wizardry, but it made the world of Xeen feel hollow.

Still damn good, but 6 is more fleshed out. Dungeons look like actual places, spell and equipment information is easier to access, and I like having NPCs walking around towns.

 

[Varnaan]

Dragons, which are basically 'I win mode'.

I'm so tired of seeing this notion over and over again. It's simply wrong. Yeah, dragons may have some advantages in early game, but late game they're worse than liches, clerics & dark elves and that's like the 1/3 of the game classes. And they're not that much better than knights, trolls & vampires either, like, their only advantage is ranged attack (they deal less dmg, though) and that high fireball spell they have.

I believe this notion comes from the fact that a lot of players, me included, dropped the game after a few hours and never got to experience the late game, as someone who started the series with World of Xeen when it came out I felt extremely underwhelmed especially with PS:T and Icewind Dale being released the same year.

 

[DaveO]

While there are limits to effectiveness for the Dragon in MM8, anything without some sort of status effect or high damage ranged attack(I'm thinking of the crystal dragons inside Escaton's crystal) won't do much. You have a ranged attack which never misses and can't be resisted, and that coupled with allowing movement during combat pretty much makes the dragon a steamroller.

 

[Stabwound]

I've been playing MM6 finally, but one question: is there a way to play windowed with a bigger window size? I usually wouldn't complain but the play window is literally about 1/6th of my screen. There must be some way to stretch that shit out somehow.

Also, do you have to keep notes on trainer locations and whatnot manually? I don't mind doing it, but I'm surprised it's not logged in the journal, since it looks pretty extensive and MM4/5 logged almost everything you'd need to know, including puzzle hints.

EDIT: Answering my own question #1 I found this http://grismar.net/shiftwindow/ which does resize the window, but bizarrely doesn't work well with the game. With the mouselook patch, everything works fine while walking around, attacking, interacting with items, etc. But when you disable mouselook to control the cursor, all hell breaks loose. All of the interface hotspots are way off to the point it's unplayable. For example, you hover over a character icon, but clicking does nothing; you have to move the mouse about 5 inches over its head to hit the actual hotspot. Infuriating.

Still looking for suggestions. I'd love to play this game but I need to play windowed and everything is like watching ants in regular windowed mode.

 

[Stabwound]

Well, I'm about at the end of my rope here. I've tried a few programs that will resize/upscale the window, but all of them fuck with the game's hotspots. It plays perfectly with the mouselook mod enabled, but once you disable it to navigate menus, all hell breaks lose. I don't understand why. I guess maybe everything is hardcoded in a weird way and expanding the window throws it all off.

Not that it matters, the game is still highly playable in fullscreen. Just much less convenient for taking notes, chatting while playing, etc. Oh well.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Also, do you have to keep notes on trainer locations and whatnot manually?

Unless you happen to have a fantastic memory, yes.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

I was beginning to feel that MM3 was too easy and not at all challenging. The lack of challenge made me miss MM1 and MM2. Then I went inside the Ancient Temple of Moo and had my butt handed to me three times in a row by the evil wizard and his necrotic band. Respect reestablished. I went to the local temple, buffed up all six party members via donations, then killed him and took his stuff. Now I'm going to head back to the recently cleared Baywatch and take on the caverns. Onwards!

 

[Darth Roxor]

I thought my band of bros in mm8 was very much unstoppable. Then I entered the plane of fire. FFFFFUUUUUU THAT WELCOMING COMMITTEE

Also, whoever designed the Murmurwoods ought to be shot

 

[Darth Roxor]

Cool stuff. Better than MM7, on a couple of bases.

1. It's shorter. Yeah, in one way that can be read as a flaw, but at least it's better condensed.

2. MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH LESS ANNOYING FUCKING MONSTERS like those motherfucking mana draining devils, instakill titans and dragons, ALL COMING IN FUCKHUEG MOBS. The only ones in MM8 were those stupid terror blobs in the last map that are immune to everything except dark/light.

3. Less annoying maps - navigating around Bracada Desert is still giving me nightmares.

4. Better journal/general info keeping.

5. Five party members!


Six down, three to go - 1, 2 and 9. So yeah... now on to the next part. MM9!

 

[DaveO]

Good luck on MM9, Darth Roxor! I'm not certain how well the game works on Windows 7, although I have heard of problems.

 

[MessiahMan]

I got MM9 working, with only minor hiccups (black screen error that was fixed, I think by alt-tabbing out and back into the game) but MAN is that game irredeemable shit. It's a step backwards from 6, 7, and 8 on so many levels.

 

[Phineas]

So what are the glaring flaws of M&M8 (which I haven't played)? Why is it regarded inferior to 6 & 7 by KKKonsensus (which I have)?

The ability to have Dragons in your party is cool in concept but its horrendously unbalanced early on in the game. Also, some of the areas are literal death traps such as the Murmur Woods.

That said, it still kicks ass.

 

[Phineas]

is there no way to fix MM9, any cool balancing mods or something? it is such a shame that both Ultima and M&M finished on such a sour note

As they say, you can't polish a turd. The game's lead designer, Tim Lang, said in an interview in 2004 that he was "really surprised that people are still playing Might and Magic IX". When even the lead designer won't defend his own game, you know its an irredeemable .

 

[MessiahMan]

is there no way to fix MM9, any cool balancing mods or something? it is such a shame that both Ultima and M&M finished on such a sour note

It's not worth the cost in sanity (insanity?) The game needs a new interface, better character system, story (and given the minimalistic stories Might & Magic is known for, that's saying a LOT), and even though I'm not a graphics whore, even those are eye-searingly bad.

 

[octavius]

is there no way to fix MM9, any cool balancing mods or something? it is such a shame that both Ultima and M&M finished on such a sour note

It's not worth the cost in sanity (insanity?) The game needs a new interface, better character system, story (and given the minimalistic stories Might & Magic is known for, that's saying a LOT), and even though I'm not a graphics whore, even those are eye-searingly bad.

Some of the graphics is MM9 is so laughably bad that they would look bad even on a ZX Spectrum.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Ah, I forgot about MM8's one huge con:

No blasters and terminators.

wtf is this shit

 

[DaveO]

Don't forget that MM9 was part of the "one release a year" mandate that started with MM7. You can't realistically expect to have a new engine and a flawless game in 12 months. If they had stayed with the MM6-MM8 engine, the game might have had a better chance to be more than the Obvious Beta that is MM9 in the newer Lithtech engine.

The draw to MM6-MM8 is the story tie-in with the Heroes series. There still is a story tie-in to Heroes in MM9. The lands of Enroth are totally destroyed due to the two Blades of Doom actually clashing. Beyond that point, I think there is little that links the new setting to M&M or Heroes.

 

[Mastermind]

2. MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH LESS ANNOYING FUCKING MONSTERS like those motherfucking mana draining devils, instakill titans and dragons, ALL COMING IN FUCKHUEG MOBS. The only ones in MM8 were those stupid terror blobs in the last map that are immune to everything except dark/light.

7 gives you free skill points once you get to eeofol. Game would be shit if my 2 cleric 2 mage party had nothing to mow down with dragon breaths. M&M7 is the second best FPS ever made (after doom 2).

 

[Luzur]

is there no way to fix MM9, any cool balancing mods or something? it is such a shame that both Ultima and M&M finished on such a sour note

well, you can patch it abit better with TELP's 1.3 patch (a 1.4 patch making it even better was planned but put on hold forever by Bones.) which fixes alot of stuff.

 

[Stabwound]

I finally held back my gag reflex and sunk my teeth into MM6. Here are my initial thoughts:

I am shocked to say that this is an amazing game so far. World of Xeen has been my favorite by far but MM6 might actually top it. While still basic compared to Wizardry, I love the skills and equipment system improvements over MM3-5, and it feels like an awesome open world sandbox game. Kind of like a proto Morrowind. I don't count Daggerfall, because no one played it like an open world game; they just quick travelled between dungeons. I absolutely love open ended games where you can (mostly) freely travel anywhere you want, get your ass handed to you in a deadly dungeon or maybe even come up with a cunning plan to steal some sweet loot and make it out alive. Fuck level scaling. FUCK it to death. It's a cancer on this type of game and Bethesda should be ashamed of themselves for such an idea. (Yeah, I'm sure someone did it before them, but you get the idea).

What I don't necessarily like is how you can't mark things on the map directly, so I've taken to screenshotting towns and labelling them myself in MS paint. Not to mention having to keep a massive log of where the trainers are, since random people will just tell you where they can be found. Truth be told, though, I love having to keep a notebook full of clues. It's my favorite part of the old Ultima games, for example.

But fuck, this game has impressed me much more than I thought. I started playing and before I knew it a few hours had gone by. That's pretty rare for me. The combat is pretty... iffy. But once I figured out you can make it turn based, it helped my opinion a lot, even if the turn based is clearly an afterthought.

But the graphics are still absolute diarrhea and it's a shame how much better this game could have been with good art direction. It's like a Picasso painting in a bad way. And why do all of the women NPCs have male voices? I laughed out loud the first time, but now it's starting to get annoying. It's also kind of a pain how there are so many identical roaming NPCs that might have vital information and are easy to miss, because they're clones are wander around like they're on crack.

On another note, Greyface's mouselook/WASD patch makes this game playable to me. I remember trying it years ago and I just couldn't do it. Big props to Greyface for his work.

I feel lucky to be able to discover games like this for the first time 15 years after the fact.

Oh, and by the way, can I train any character in any skill like MM3-5? I was kind of worried about that when creating my characters, since you are only allowed 2 skill choices. Damn, I should probably find a manual.

Anyway, back to this masterpiece.

 

[Stabwound]

5 hours later and I'm still loving it. I can't believe I might end up liking this more than World of Xeen.

My biggest and really only gripe about the game is that the automap in the overworld is pretty atrocious. I'm playing windowed so I can type up notes and label a map beside the game while I play, but I have to zoom in on the thing to tell what I'm looking at. Being able to write your own map notes would make this so much easier to play. Even the towns in MM3-5 had recognizable buildings, but MM6's automap is just blobs no matter how you zoom. And unlike MM3-5, the "fog of war" doesn't show exactly where you've been, just the general area. Drawing over the map in MS paint is getting old fast. That and I have a terrible memory, so it's pretty much a necessity. And the trannie NPCs running around everywhere are getting to be a pain in the ass.

But yeah, other than that and the combat being a step back from MM3-5 this is a really excellent game. Shame on me for not playing it earlier. The freeroaming turned me off compared to Xeen, because I'm a grid blobber fanatic for life, but it actually works in this game.

By the way, how exactly do you learn skills? I've found master and expert trainers, but not people that will give you the initial skills. I hate googling this stuff because it's too easy to accidentally read something about "MASTER TRAINER THAT TEACHES YOU EVERYTHING FOR FREE" kind of bullshit. I like to figure that cool stuff out on my own if possible. I hope you can actually learn skills you didn't take at char creation. Perhaps I should peruse the manual.

 

[octavius]

Yeah, MM6 is a great game. Definitely an incline compared to MM3-5, IMO.

You learn skills by assigning skill points manually. You get skill points when leveling up, and you also get skill points from horse shoes.
At higher skills levels you need trainers to increase the skill. Finding the trainers is some of the fun in MM6.
And yes, there are "hidden" skills.

 

[visions]

I think he meant how he learns new skills for his chars. Iirc guilds and such could teach them: buy a membership in a magic guild, now you can buy the associated magic skills for your characters from there, besides buying spell scrolls. Besides magic guilds there were guilds where members could learn new martial/misc skills. One that I remember was Berserker's Fury or something.

 

[Luzur]

I think he meant how he learns new skills for his chars. Iirc guilds and such could teach them: buy a membership in a magic guild, now you can buy the associated magic skills for your characters from there, besides buying spell scrolls. Besides magic guilds there were guilds where members could learn new martial/misc skills. One that I remember was Berserker's Fury or something.

New Sorpigal has all the starter skill ya need.

 

[MessiahMan]

And why do all of the women NPCs have male voices? I laughed out loud the first time, but now it's starting to get annoying.

I do believe that the male voices are greetings emanating from the highlighted male player character in your party, not the NPC.