Might and Magic The Might and Magic Discussion Thread

[Darth Roxor]

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.

This.

 

[Stabwound]

Haha, okay, well that explains the tranny thing. And also the skill thing, I think. Thanks.

 

[Luzur]

yeah thats your highlighted PC thats greeting, not the NPC.

 

[Stabwound]

So is giving everyone a bow the generally accepted way of playing MM6? It feels like I can just machine gun everything down now, or at least enemies in the first part of the game.

Some of the flaws are starting to get to me now, like the really shitty automap and how you'll run into just a massive clusterfuck of 50 wizards running around throwing fireballs at you. When you start comparing the polish of MM5 to 6 you see the areas where it was a huge decline.

 

[visions]

So is giving everyone a bow the generally accepted way of playing MM6?

Yes. I don't see any point in not doing it.

 

[MessiahMan]

It won't last, though. You'll get weapons that are worth wielding, spells that don't suck, and your bows and arrows will quickly turn to pea shooters.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Well worth it in the beginning though. I can't imagine fighting my way through the tedious hordes of copy pasted goblins and other faggots without having bows. They save a lot of aggression.

 

[Gozma]

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.

Fuck now I gotta play this ugly fuckin game too

 

[octavius]

Everybody says MM6 is so ugly.
I checked the credits of the games at Mobygames.
Looks like Julia Ulano was the main person responsible for the artwork on MM 3-5 and HoMM 1-2, with Bonita Long-Hemsath as second.
The number of artists grew significantly with HoMM2 and even more with MM6. Julia and Bonita were still art directors for MM6, but most of the artists had been replaced for MM6.
Interesting that it was two females that were responsible for the artwork of the golden era of New World Computing. HoMM 4 was the last game listed for both of them, though.

 

[Sceptic]

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.

You do realize this is the first, starter, tutorial dungeon, right?

Don't forget that MM9 was part of the "one release a year" mandate that started with MM7.

IIRC that was MM7 and MM8. MM9 was developed in 6-9 months. Yeah.

I am shocked to say that this is an amazing game so far.

And I am equally shocked to find out you're not a retard after all

Seriously, I sang this game's praises like 20 pages ago. Took you long enough. Though better late than never.

BTW the game gets MUCH better later on. Just wait until you get into the really good dungeons.

 

[octavius]

So is giving everyone a bow the generally accepted way of playing MM6? It feels like I can just machine gun everything down now, or at least enemies in the first part of the game.

Just like Doom, eh?

Sceptic

 

[Sceptic]

You have successfully ignored octavius's blatant trolling attempt.

 

[Stabwound]

To be honest, the combat and encounter design is starting to get to me. It's annoying as fuck how you walk into a room and there are just 50 cardboard monsters going apeshit on you. The game is cool but the new car smell is starting to wear off. I must preferred the MM3-5 system; it just seemed better thought out and more coherent.

 

[Jaesun]

I think yet another.... is seeing the light.

 

[Darth Roxor]

To be honest, the combat and encounter design is starting to get to me.

Learn to abuse the bugs. It's the only way to derive (massive) fun out of MM6's horrible combat.

 

[Hobo Elf]

To be honest, the combat and encounter design is starting to get to me. It's annoying as fuck how you walk into a room and there are just 50 cardboard monsters going apeshit on you. The game is cool but the new car smell is starting to wear off. I must preferred the MM3-5 system; it just seemed better thought out and more coherent.

How can you get bored with it now? You still have 2 other games to go through with the same combat!

 

[octavius]

To be honest, the combat and encounter design is starting to get to me. It's annoying as fuck how you walk into a room and there are just 50 cardboard monsters going apeshit on you. The game is cool but the new car smell is starting to wear off. I must preferred the MM3-5 system; it just seemed better thought out and more coherent.

You mean nice, easy and bland?
Oh well, maybe you'll come to your senses again when you can Fly and carpet bomb enemies with Meteor Shower and Starburst.

 

[suejak]

There have to be other people out there who love pixelated graphics. Gaming visuals saw their peak in about 1995.

 

[Stabwound]

Well, you can't tell me that the encounter design and combat is one of the plusses of the game. The exploration is fun, but the game has many declines from MM5.

Learn to abuse the bugs. It's the only way to derive (massive) fun out of MM6's horrible combat.

Haven't found much of a way to abuse bugs so far (please don't spoil me) other than arrowing enemies with some insurpassable object between us. Or shooting them when they stand around a corner or through a wall. Which I wouldn't consider to be that fun.

There have to be other people out there who love pixelated graphics. Gaming visuals saw their peak in about 1995.

Might and Magic 4 and 5 5 are some of the best looking games there are, period.

 

[octavius]

Well, you can't tell me that the encounter design and combat is one of the plusses of the game.

No, but it's still better than the combat of MM3-5, IMO.

 

[Stabwound]

We'll have to agree to disagree. While MM3-5 combat is pretty basic, it flows much more smoothly than the monstrosity that is the MM6 combat engine.

 

[DaveO]

If you travel and explore around, you can find a way to get a number of levels. This will help against the tougher opponents. Also, focus on one skill to advance for the casters. I won't say which schools of magic are worth your time or not.

 

[ohWOW]

I stopped playing MM6 some time ago. That random hordes of crap enemies spamming you with fireballs and arrows are just too goddamn annoying and pressing attack/attack/attack and waiting till they all drop dead isn't fun.

Dungeons are fucking neat on the other hand. Would love to erase that shitload of shit outside to enjoy the actual game.

 

[Pope Amole II]

If anyone is bothered by hordes of enemies in mm6, just play as a full caster party - like, 4x sorcerers with mystic & spell master hirelings (at least for the first 30 levels or so - after that, perhaps teacher & instructor become better). With the amount of high powered meteor showers & starbursts & fireblasts & fireballs your party will be able to churn out each turn, trash mobs won't be a problem.

 

[NecrosD]

Have only played and finished Cloudside from World Of Xeen so far and I have to say it was a fun game though slightly too easy, though it could be because I did part of Darkside as well. Have to say loved the exploration in the game - loved just exploring the world and completing the various quests and dungeons. Game also definitely had some good puzzles in it.