Might and Magic The Might and Magic Discussion Thread

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Pope Amole II]

That's hardly a cheat but nah, no need. You're getting Foulfang from the obelisk treasure and that's better than any natural vampiric dagger. Before the Grayface patch, you could even dual-wield them as the vault would respawn yearly. On the other hand, with Grayface the Dagger's damage is buffed considerably (that tripling of damage from skill mastery never scaled and was permanently stuck at 10%; now it does scale) so it sorta evens out.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Blake00]

ahh man I miss all the M&M games.. need to replay them at some point.. but never enough time lol

 

[Pope Amole II]

Decided to do another quick one:

 

[Darth Canoli]

I didn't bring a thief along for quite some time, the thief promotion quest (steal a vase from Lord Markham's Mansion) is quite hard, at some point, i got two of the toughest guard at once, can't remember their names but they're clearly paladins buffing themselves and they killed the thief; stupid mistake, weak heal next to the end of a turn while he was unconscious and of course, they killed him; but luckily, one was close to death and fled which offered some breathing room.

Fuck, i was sure i could slip in there invisible but i couldn't or maybe i had to click the door again and again ...
Also, Markham mentions a servant's back-way but i couldn't find it.
Anyway, got the vase.

M&M VII goes quite fast when you know what to do.
I already chose Bracada's arbiter, kept Harmondale for myself and reached Celeste.
Also tried walls of Mist for the Priest of Light promotion but you probably need a GM Air for a longer invisibility duration, also, that dungeon is twice too big for its own good (i gave up for now, doing a second promotion round for everyone else first, then GM everyone and everything and i'll come back)

About the merge mod :

• It doesn't change a thing except you can choose classes from all M&M to start with or start as a peasant and get promoted to whatever you want later.
• It's stable with few bugs (mostly some display glitches, more than in the originals and one bug when getting Celeste's Town Hall bounty, debug message but no crash)
• The quest to cross to other worlds isn't intrusive, you can cross from Halfway in when you reach Envenmon Isles.
• Getting a bounty spawns the bounty monster somewhere which is a nice change, i usually don't bother with bounties.
• There's some new options and fixes besides Grayface's ones (and it's compatible with grayface patch which you can apply on top of the mod)

Replaying all three of them recently, I can tell Might & Magic VII is way more focused than M&M VI, i would advise anyone to play VII before VI for a first playthrough and to play VI only if VII was enjoyable, probably 6 months to one year later though.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Finally reached the lands of the giants, at this point, i'm going to stockpile mana potion and Armageddon until nothing moves, Titans are not a threat but the demons are a real pain for my already promoted twice lvl 40+ party.

I'm going to try to complete 7 within the merge and let it rest for a while before attempting to jump to VI or VIII's world.

 

[octavius]

Playing MM2 again, and this time I've noticed some differences between the DOS and Amiga versions.
I played through Middlegate and its dungeon many times back in my Amiga days, and I remember the three square building south of the Magic Guild always held 3 Men-At-Arms and IIRC the two other squares were empty. In the DOS version all three square have random, level scaled (at least the amount) enemies.
Similarly in the secret room at the back of the tavern would have some Acidic Blobs (really nasty for a lvl 1 party), but in the DOS version it's random.

So why would the Amiga version be different?
The DOS version I'm using is the abandonware one.

 

[Luzur]

Playing MM2 again, and this time I've noticed some differences between the DOS and Amiga versions.
I played through Middlegate and its dungeon many times back in my Amiga days, and I remember the three square building south of the Magic Guild always held 3 Men-At-Arms and IIRC the two other squares were empty. In the DOS version all three square have random, level scaled (at least the amount) enemies.
Similarly in the secret room at the back of the tavern would have some Acidic Blobs (really nasty for a lvl 1 party), but in the DOS version it's random.

So why would the Amiga version be different?
The DOS version I'm using is the abandonware one.

Dunno but i guess memory limitations?

 

[octavius]

Playing MM2 again, and this time I've noticed some differences between the DOS and Amiga versions.
I played through Middlegate and its dungeon many times back in my Amiga days, and I remember the three square building south of the Magic Guild always held 3 Men-At-Arms and IIRC the two other squares were empty. In the DOS version all three square have random, level scaled (at least the amount) enemies.
Similarly in the secret room at the back of the tavern would have some Acidic Blobs (really nasty for a lvl 1 party), but in the DOS version it's random.

So why would the Amiga version be different?
The DOS version I'm using is the abandonware one.

Dunno but i guess memory limitations?

Thinking more about it, I remember a bit similar difference between the Amiga and DOS versions of Civilization.
In the Amiga version the same parameters (starting civ, map size and such) would always yield the same map, while the DOS version was truly (in practice at least) random.

Anyways, my guys are now lvl 13, have won about 450 fights, and I've become rather disgusted by the level scaling, which is worse than I remembered it to be.
Except for some fixed encounters and arena fights, the only enemies I've had to use Time Distort to get away from are Demon Soldiers, which are not only very tough individually, but there's usually 20-25 of them, and they can also use archery. So they have replaced the Crazed Native as my MM2 arch enemies, at least for the time being.
By playing carefully, and not explored Forests and Mountains yet, I have avoided any party deaths thus far.

 

[Desiderius]

I've played 6-8 (and maybe 9, don't remember) and picked up the rest on a GoG sale at some point. Tried 1 I think and couldn't really figure out what was going on (similar to Gold Box these days regrettably).

Should I do III next or IV (or IX/X)?

 

[Butter]

I've played 6-8 (and maybe 9, don't remember) and picked up the rest on a GoG sale at some point. Tried 1 I think and couldn't really figure out what was going on (similar to Gold Box these days regrettably).

Should I do III next or IV (or IX/X)?

Depends how long an adventure you want. There's no reason to play only IV, so you'd be committing yourself to the much longer World of Xeen. I think III is hour-for-hour a better game, but there's something to be said for the epic quality of WoX.

 

[octavius]

III. It's better than World of Xeen IMO, but is just as user friendly.

 

[Desiderius]

The better question is III-V or just hop in at IV.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

III. It's better than World of Xeen IMO, but is just as user friendly.

Not quite. The mapping in WoX has some nice QoL improvements which can make going from WoX to Isles of Terra a little trying.

But regardless, your question seems to be is III worth playing, and the answer is a resounding yes. It's a very good game (I would rank the "WoX engine" trilogy V>III>IV). It also has the added benefit of telling you whether or not you will enjoy the massive adventure of WoX; if you don't like Isles of Terra, you definitely will not enjoy WoX.

 

[fantadomat]

The only part of the old MM games that hasn't aged well is the inventory/itemazation. It is the only thing that puts me off from replaying them more frequently.

 

[Eisen]

I hope someday, someone make a MM4-5 open source remake with QOL fixes

 

[octavius]

I hope someone will make MM1 and MM2 remakes that have no level scaling, only area scaling.

Actually if you know how you can probably hex edit the games, since at least some of the areas are area scaled.

 

[Blake00]

I've only played MM3-8 back in the 2000s. I tried to start at MM1 & 2 on PC but despite being a retro gamer they were just a bit tooooo old for my liking so I started at MM3 and absolutely loved it, MM4 & 5 combined into World of Xeen was also brilliant (picked up a nice World of Xeen boxset in good condition the other day too). So yeah while the first 2 might be hard to get into I think you're really missing out if you skip 3-5 and start in the 3D era at MM6. So start at MM1 if you can but if you find it too old then start at MM3 haha.

It does annoy me that I haven't played 1-2 so at some point when I do replay the series I'm thinking I'll go play the console versions of 1-2 as they look quite nice. The NES version of MM1 appears to be the nicer looking one (albeit still lacking colour), while the SNES version of MM2 appears to win that one too. Then play 3 onwards on PC as usual.

I've never played MM9 as I was disappointed in the changes it made but I've seen over the years there's a good fan patch for it that might make the experience less painful lol. In fact over the years I've seen some interesting fan patches for MM6-8 as well which I'll have to check out too (do they allow modern resolutions? as I'd love that).

MM10 from ubisoft looks pretty cool and back to MM3-5 kinda of gameplay but with more modern graphics so that should be interesting, although I hear it's a bit on the short side.

Ahhh.. one day.. one day lol..

 

[Darth Canoli]

The only part of the old MM games that hasn't aged well is the inventory/itemazation. It is the only thing that puts me off from replaying them more frequently.

The sound effects definitely aged, you get used to the inventory management (not the lack of space through), SE were the only thing preventing me from completing a replay and i've tried a lot before i found dosbox-x.

I agree about III being the best game, by far, even with WoX huge world appeal, WoX is only for those loving III so much they can't get enough of its worse moments (red dwarf mines from IV, dozens of small mines from V)
Also, i don't have anything against V art style but the color palette is something else.

Quality-wise, there's a couple of locations and quests i would take from IV and V to make Isles of Terra the best blobber ever created.

 

[fantadomat]

I've never played MM9

MM10 from ubisoft looks pretty cool

MM9 is better than MM10. It just lacks something that the old ones had,it is very tight design that doesn't let for player's freedom,it doesn't have any optional areas and fights since you need all the exp and weapons you can find,you never outpace your enemy or being able to grind. Generally it lacks the freedom of older MMs.

 

[fantadomat]

The only part of the old MM games that hasn't aged well is the inventory/itemazation. It is the only thing that puts me off from replaying them more frequently.

The sound effects definitely aged, you get used to the inventory management (not the lack of space through), SE were the only thing preventing me from completing a replay and i've tried a lot before i found dosbox-x.

Did you play the GoG version,for me it runs fine and the SF are ok. You could always just mute the game listen to some podcast or creepy monster encounter stories like me .

As for the INV,yeah you could get used to it,but so you could get used to mostly anything,doesn't make it good.Items getting destroyed if you have too much in INV,not being able to see the stats of them and having to learn the meaning of all the magic and material stats,the constant breaking of shit and the high price of fixing it,etc etc. MM6 was a clear incline in a lot of aspects. A remake of the older ones in a MM6 engine will be glorious thing to play. All that said,i still replay them once a few years,still very good games that hold up.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Did you play the GoG version,for me it runs fine and the SF are ok. You could always just mute the game listen to some podcast or creepy monster encounter stories like me .

As for the INV,yeah you could get used to it,but so you could get used to mostly anything,doesn't make it good.Items getting destroyed if you have too much in INV,not being able to see the stats of them and having to learn the meaning of all the magic and material stats,the constant breaking of shit and the high price of fixing it,etc etc. MM6 was a clear incline in a lot of aspects. A remake of the older ones in a MM6 engine will be glorious thing to play. All that said,i still replay them once a few years,still very good games that hold up.

I don't mind switching the music off but playing without SE is just sad.
Dosbox-x fixes this though.

M&M VI engine is good but early Might & Magic exploration is something else, you don't see farther than a couple of tiles (4? 5?) and with all the mountains and woods, sometimes, you can't see more than 1/2 tiles away, it makes exploration way more tense and interesting, a bit like in Arx Fatalis where a monster can surprise you every corner and where growls makes you feel like you're being hunted.

 

[fantadomat]

Did you play the GoG version,for me it runs fine and the SF are ok. You could always just mute the game listen to some podcast or creepy monster encounter stories like me .

As for the INV,yeah you could get used to it,but so you could get used to mostly anything,doesn't make it good.Items getting destroyed if you have too much in INV,not being able to see the stats of them and having to learn the meaning of all the magic and material stats,the constant breaking of shit and the high price of fixing it,etc etc. MM6 was a clear incline in a lot of aspects. A remake of the older ones in a MM6 engine will be glorious thing to play. All that said,i still replay them once a few years,still very good games that hold up.

I don't mind switching the music off but playing without SE is just sad.
Dosbox-x fixes this though.

M&M VI engine is good but early Might & Magic exploration is something else, you don't see farther than a couple of tiles (4? 5?) and with all the mountains and woods, sometimes, you can't see more than 1/2 tiles away, it makes exploration way more tense and interesting, a bit like in Arx Fatalis where a monster can surprise you every corner and where growls makes you feel like you're being hunted.

Yeah,they are good games as they are....i just want to play more MM6 like games .

That said the not seeing far makes the archery kind off weak,while the meta in MM6-9 was pretty much archery.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

MM9 paper dolls are an insult to the franchise. The game is not as bad as often advertised though.