Might and Magic The Might and Magic Discussion Thread

[Darth Roxor]

The ending itself? yeah, it wasn't great, but I didn't mind because the entire endgame sequence in the central pyramid was awesome. And the ending was such an obvious "to be continued". And, to be fair, it was better than 2's and 4's endings combined. Not to mention BOTH were Kill Foozle endings.

Actually, I didn't even like the whole deal in the central pyramid that much. Funny thing is, I stumbled upon the end-game area completely by accident, when I didn't even have the keycards yet. I'm going through the pyramid, busting walls left and right, when suddenly "CORAK & SHELTEM" lolwut. 'Wait, this is the endgame area? Meh'. And by '4's ending', do you mean killing Xeen or the epic fight between Corak and Sheltem? Because yeah, killing Xeen was anticlimatic as shit (slash slash, bye bye superoppressor... wait a second...), but I count 4 and 5 as one game, so whatever.

You gotta admit the (optional) huge band of Terminators was a pretty awesome fight.

Just more implosion spam. Meh. But I liked the statues saying 'thanks for playing' and 'only true masters can get this far'

 

[Sceptic]

And by '4's ending', do you mean killing Xeen or the epic fight between Corak and Sheltem? Because yeah, killing Xeen was anticlimatic as shit (slash slash, bye bye superoppressor... wait a second...), but I count 4 and 5 as one game, so whatever.

It's actually one single slash. ONE. Which is probably the main reason I hate 4's ending so much. (I sometimes have trouble seeing 4-5 as a single game because I played 4 before 5 came out. On the bright side, the HUGE speculation about the pyramids, the 4 reflectors, Darkstone and the Sphinx kept us quite busy for a whole year)

The final showdown between Sheltem and Corak? After 5 games and 7 years? HELL YES. I think I was at first a little disappointed that after all this I'd just be an audience, but the fight is so great and it got postponed so many times that there's a good sense of finality. Reuniting the world in the WOX ending was also very satisfying. All in all the entire closure of the arc was very well done.

 

[Darth Roxor]

It's actually one single slash. ONE. Which is probably the main reason I hate 4's ending so much.

Which is pretty strange because I remember clearly that I needed two slashes, and everyone says that's impossible 'cause he dies after one *shrug*.

(On the bright side, the HUGE speculation about the pyramids, the 4 reflectors, Darkstone and the Sphinx kept us quite busy for a whole year)

Well... good that I actually started playing the M&M series barely a year ago, and got my collection of 1-6 from GoG, which means I didn't have to wait a whole year

 

[Zomg]

It's one slash on adventurer and two on warrior... elite difficulty level balancing

 

[Sceptic]

It's one slash on adventurer and two on warrior... elite difficulty level balancing

Pretty sure I played WOX on Warrior... maybe I'm just that good

Well... good that I actually started playing the M&M series barely a year ago, and got my collection of 1-6 from GoG, which means I didn't have to wait a whole year

Hey waiting for games we thought would be good and that actually DID turn out ot be good was a great thing. I remember the wait for MM3 too: lots of talking about how it was so different from 2, all the good features packed into it... I miss those days. Now we get "this is the new shit" trailers

I blame John Romero.

 

[Stabwound]

I started up MM3 just to try, and geez, they sure don't give you many choices in character portraits. You can't really even have two characters of the same race without them looking identical. Not a huge deal but still annoying.

btw can you import MM3 party into MM4? I don't remember any option for that in MM4 but I could be mistaken.

edit: I forgot you could delete the premade characters to use their faces.

 

[Zomg]

Can't.

I think the portrait thing is why they got rid of hirelings in Xeen, there are 10 hirelings in MM3 taking up valuable portrait real estate.

 

[Sceptic]

btw can you import MM3 party into MM4? I don't remember any option for that in MM4 but I could be mistaken.

You can't. Your MM3 party is supposed to be the same one from MM1-2, but the MM4-5 one is a completely different set of characters (though you only find this out in MM7).

I think the portrait thing is why they got rid of hirelings in Xeen

Xeen gives you enough trouble with accumulating enough money without ANOTHER money sink. Besides with the way they redid the spellcasting system (no unique Druid spells) you don't really need them anymore.

 

[Luzur]

dont forget the MM3 intro, it was the first time i heard nice, clear voice recording.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jaltgefc0Y

 

[Stabwound]

What amazes me about the (early part of the) MM series is how good the games look and function compared to others at the time. Compare MM3 to Wizardry 6, which were released around the same time. MM3 is still amazingly good looking even today, even the animations and such are basic but look great. You have a diverse world to explore in MM3, while everything looks exactly the same in Wiz6, with CGA graphics. Even the interface of MM3 is vastly superior to Wiz6 and still holds up today. Hell, even compare MM2 to Wiz5, both of which came out in 1988. Wiz5 is still rocking the wireframe dungeons, while MM2 was already in full color.

Having said that, Wiz7 is easily superior to MM6+. MM3-5 look so much better than the later games in the series, it's funny. I can't really stomach early 3D anymore, and MM6-8 really look horrendous.

 

[Ruprekt]

Anyone know how to get the redbook audio working for world of xeen?

 

[Sceptic]

Anyone know how to get the redbook audio working for world of xeen?

In DOSBox? it should work fine straight away. Do keep in mind the CD tracks are speech, not music. And the speech SUCKS.

 

[Fowyr]

You have a diverse world to explore in MM3, while everything looks exactly the same in Wiz6, with CGA graphics.

You mean you play Wiz6 in CGA? But it have EGA mode.

Anyone know how to get the redbook audio working for world of xeen?

DOSBox mount have special parameter to emulate CD-drive. -cdrom or something.

 

[Stabwound]

Okay, I confused EGA and CGA. The graphics still look really bad compared to MM3 though.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

So I picked up the 1-6 pack from ZOG, and decided to start with 3... but the manual is in fact a bizarre LARPy story that doesn't really explain many of the mechanics. Like, say, character creation. Will the 4-5 manual suffice, or is there a better manual/beginner's guide kicking about somewhere?

 

[Sceptic]

You can use the WOX manual, or you can ask about what's unclear and I'll do my best to answer.

 

[Zomg]

I never read any of the manuals.

The icons on the right side of the interface are kinda self-explanatory and you should get what they mean by fiddling with them. The gargoyles and stone heads and things around the viewport aren't just decoration, if you cast certain spells or get certain skills they start moving, which tells you stuff like whether the box you're about to search is trapped or shows that you have an effect like levitation running.

Just use the pre-made party, there's nothing relevant self-made characters are gonna add to the game and their stats are about as good as 15 or so minutes of sperg rerolling that you will never get back.

The main min-maxy thing you'd want to know is that you get bonuses to things for stats, like HP from endurance or damage from strength or whatever like you would expect. And in M&M you typically can get enormous increases (temporary or permanent) to stats in-game. So, you have to think about how you will distribute those stat increases to your dudes. Each point is worth much more near the bottom of the scale - going from 15 to 25 strength might get you like 4-5 points of bonus, but eventually you might only get 1 point of bonus for 25 stat points. I forget the exact conversion rate unfortunately.

Otherwise you can just bang on the game till u understand, M&M is not complex.

Edit - Er one obscure thing, the temples in the game have a "donation" option. You can donate to the temple repeatedly and after a certain number of donations they cast several useful buffs on the donating character. The obscure thing is that the number of donations it takes to get the buffs depends on the day of the week, one donation for onesday, three for threesday, etc. And the power of the buffs is equal to the number of times you donated.

 

[Sceptic]

The icons are all pretty useful actually. The "gate" mouth indicates enemies are nearby, the scratching gargoyle indicates a secret door (only if you have the skill), the winged gargoyle animates when levitate is on...

The starting party is relatively well balanced, with 2 exceptions: you'll need a druid or ranger at some point for waterwalking (unless you get it on an item) and archers are very, very useful (they're fighter/mage hybrids).

 

[Damned Registrations]

Technically you can just teleport around instead of water walking.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Going with the premade party - played around with chargen for a bit, I love making characters too much to settle with a premade party but I eventually just went with it. Thinking of dropping the robber for a ninja or archer, how useful is thievery? Also, does alignment matter?

 

[Zomg]

Going without any source of thievery would be a huge challenge game type pain in the ass I think, but ninjas are functional. Alignment means almost nothing, I think you get slightly different amounts of XP from certain quests.

 

[Sceptic]

Don't even think of skipping thievery entirely, though you can get by with a ninja. Alignment will affect a trio of quests, though not in any significant way so just mix and match. You could drop the Barbarian for an Archer if you don't want hirelings, as more sorcerery would be very useful (especially Lloyd's Beacon).

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Fair enough. Played through the first town, beat the rat king thing and freed the... ghost thing. I don't think I'm going to try to understand what's actually going on here. Pretty cool game so far, though, and damn pretty for its age.

Still debating dropping the robber and taking a ninja, it'd allow me to drop one of my other melee bros and take an archer too. One thing (mainly regarding druids), is ageing really a problem? My friend's a M&M7 fan and remembers struggling through the last few areas of that as a kid due to all his characters being about 84, so I'm wondering if I'll run into the same issue/if this actually matters. Seems like it might be a problem for druids if they're not used sparingly.

Also, is there any way to tell how much damage I'm actually doing?

 

[Ruprekt]

Have you printed out the map?

Having the map for a M&M game on the desk while you play is 50% of the experience.

 

[flushfire]

world, cuz i got the game for free with a mag :D