The Incredible Brilliance of Might & Magic (VI)

MM 9:

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Kings Bounty is similar to Heroes of Might & Magic!

We are talking about the Might & Magic CRPG series here.

Ah crap. I tend to mix those up. Thanks for the clarification, HiddenX!

King's Bountry is still a great game though :)
 
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Whats funny is i cant find a singlevideo of. This game when clicking on the video tab on google. It completely got overshadowed by. Heroes of might and magic VI.
 
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Whats funny is i cant find a singlevideo of. This game when clicking on the video tab on google. It completely got overshadowed by. Heroes of might and magic VI.

I found this to be the best one, narrated by Matt Barton the Old School RPG Superfan :)
 
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Whats funny is i cant find a singlevideo of. This game when clicking on the video tab on google. It completely got overshadowed by. Heroes of might and magic VI.

Go Directly to YouTube and search for Might & Magic VI The Mandate of Heaven and you'll find lots of videos.

On a side note, I'm currently in Free Haven, Level 17 toons. Finding some nice gear in the shops here and finally some expert trainers in a few skills I need upgraded. I really love the paper doll - wish more devs would go back to that paradigm instead of just putting a check mark next to items you are wearing in your inventory list.
 
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Level 11 myself and crawling through a dungeon that is dark and full of terrors....and I'm loving every second of it! After this I just might play more games from the 80's and 90's, they honestly appeal far more to me than most of the new stuff.



-Carn
 
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I liked Mandate of heaven too but I don't consider it a masterpiece as many seem to imply here. I absolutely loved the game until its last quarter or so. I totally hated the "desert" part where you happen to fight thousands of titans or something like that with a blaster (or whatever was the name used ; it's been a while !). That was completely ridiculous IMHO and ruined the overall impression the game had given me so far. I tend to classify M&M6 on the same rank as I do for Lands of lore. Similarly this one sucked me in for half its content then disappointed with a flawed second part.
 
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Just rebought the entire series up to 7 on GOG (sale). Playing World of Xeen right now. Enjoying it so far but death is coming more often then I last remember. I do miss the Fly spell...my favorite part of Might and Magic VI was fly + Meteor Shower.

I loved the blasters! Much better then any bow.
 
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On average, I'd say I replay MM6-8 about once per year these days. It used to be more. I consider MM7 the best of them, but they're all brilliant, no doubt about it.
 
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On average, I'd say I replay MM6-8 about once per year these days. It used to be more. I consider MM7 the best of them, but they're all brilliant, no doubt about it.

Still on MM6. This is my 2nd playthough of this game. Never played it after the first time I played it when the game was first released. I'm level 40ish now. Can't even beat 'squire' level in the arena. I guess I've made a gimped party. But it's still a lot of fun.
 
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Level 32 here and the hardest mob I've encountered so far was a Minotaur King, and we beat him like he was a redheaded stepchild. It seemed tougher at lower levels, but when you've got fire mastered at like rank 15, it is quite devastating. Still having a blast, not really finding any spectacular loot so far, the best items I have are ones I've enchanted myself.



-Carn
 
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I just finished playing MM6 and it was a lot of fun and a worthwhile game to replay. That said, here are my criticisms of the game:

-The first 2/3s of the game is paced fairly well. But there are a few bottle necks where it seems like no matter where you go the fights are too difficult requiring that you go grind in lower level areas. Sometimes I didn't mind doing this but sometimes it was annoying.

-Gear drops are useful for the first 2/3s of the game but then drastically drop off during the final 1/3. There should have been more gear tiers given the length of the game. You do start finding relics and artifacts during the last 1/3 of the game but a lot of the excitement of gear drops wanes during this period. Enchanting helps, but enchanting is a monotonous exercise in saving and reloading until you get an enchant you like.

-Condition removal spells should just affect the entire party when they are cast at Master level. Having to constantly micro manage conditions for individual party members really becomes a drag given the length of the game.

-Some of the non-combat spells should really somehow be usable by any party member. I got master level in repair item with 1 of my characters. But this is a pain in the last 1/3 of the game where there are 100s of fights with monsters who damage equipment quite literally each combat round. You end up in an exercise of constantly moving equipment, one by one, to the character who can repair so that he can repair them, then moving them back, then re-equipping them on the toon. After you've done this a few hundred times you start considering to just fight mobs who break items while naked. The 'Blessings' concept of M&MX sounds good to me after having gone through this with M&M6.

-It was unclear to me why I couldn't get master level in light and dark magics. I had to consult the internet to find out that my karma affects had to be at certain levels. Then I had to find out on the internet how to get those karma numbers moving. I suppose if I had read more of the NPC dialogs that provide lore for the world I might have picked up on this myself. So this is partly my fault but it could have been clearer through the game too. This is an awesome website to help you along while playing by the way.

-Castle Darkmoor & Dragonsands. Oh how I loathe thee. Darkmoor for it's 'eyes' that constantly dispel your buffs and Dragonsands for the dragons who break everything during each round of combat. Conceptually I don't mind dealing with the ideas of being dispelled or having equipment break. But given the number of mobs that must be dealt with and the frequency of dispels/items breaking you are lucky if you haven't ripped all your hair out by the time you get through it.

-Some of the general quests should have been better explained. The Arena quest, the seer quests (to travel to certain locals and pray at alters during certain months of the year for permanent buffs) to name two. I never finished Lord level of arena, even in late game at L106. Just not dealing with an arena of Golden dragons after playing Dragonsands... no thank you had enough.

-At a certain point along the main quest line, near the tail end, quest entries in your quest log stop and you play the final parts of the game with no quest whatsoever. This was a little confusing about what to do. Not sure why they did the quest log so well for 99% of the game then totally dropped the ball right at the end. They were likely in a rush to ship...

I re-played M&M7 last summer so I am now moving on to M&M 8 - an installment I never finished and I'd like to actually finish M&M8 for once.
 
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I just finished playing MM6
I salute you sir, that's something I've never achieved despite M&M 6 being in my top ten personal favorite RPGs of all time (for the dungeon design alone) and having started over at least six times. There's just a brick wall the character progression hits a some point coupled with an upswing in combat difficulty which slows the game down to a crawl. M&M 6 is a rare case of an RPG campaign that could benefit from being a bit shorter.
 
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I re-played M&M7 last summer so I am now moving on to M&M 8 - an installment I never finished and I'd like to actually finish M&M8 for once.

The party is overpowered in MM8, to make the game interesting/challenging I recommend to play with less than 6 characters.
 
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I salute you sir, that's something I've never achieved despite M&M 6 being in my top ten personal favorite RPGs of all time (for the dungeon design alone) and having started over at least six times. There's just a brick wall the character progression hits a some point coupled with an upswing in combat difficulty which slows the game down to a crawl. M&M 6 is a rare case of an RPG campaign that could benefit from being a bit shorter.

I agree that's what I was talking about with the 'bottle necks.' There are a few times where I couldn't work on anything in my quest logs or even new areas because I was totally outclassed. So this meant going around grinding for a while to gain levels. At earlier points in the game I didn't mind this so much as it is fun to open cans of whoop-ass on monsters that were tough earlier on. But in the latter part of the game you just start wanting to be finished. I don't remember these bottle necks as being as much a problem with M&M7.

Another hassle as the game gets into its last 1/3 is the constant management of broken gear. The concept of gear breaking and needing repair is fine with me. But the mechanics of repairing just aren't suited to the constant need to repair. Unless you skill up every character in your party in the repair item skill - then it wouldn't be so bad. But while you're playing, it always seems like skilling up one character with this ability is all you have skill points for. Though in the end, I had plenty of skill points to spare to give the repair item skill to everyone - but I didn't know I'd have all those free skill points earlier on, so I struggled the whole game repairing items with one toon and dragging items back and forth and back and forth ugh…

The party is overpowered in MM8, to make the game interesting/challenging I recommend to play with less than 6 characters.

I'll keep this in mind. Not sure how M&M8 will grab me this time. Having an overpowered party might be just fine for me if the game starts to drag like it has in the past. I'd like to finish it this time just so I can say I've played M&M6-M&M9 and completed them all.
 
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I also really don't like the last part of the game, and also the story is never any good.

Still everything else is great!
 
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MM9 is like buying your favorite chocolate bar and discovering they've switched the tasty delicious brown with an entirely different kind of brown.

Hilarious ... yet sad ... yet true ...

MM6 is another game I was very late to playing for the first time, but is totally brilliant to the point where age had no impact on my getting totally immersed.
 
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MM6 is another game I was very late to playing for the first time, but is totally brilliant to the point where age had no impact on my getting totally immersed.

I really enjoyed M&M 6. Over the years I regularly re-played M&M7. But M&M6 I played one time to completion back when it was released and never returned. So playing it again in 2013 it felt brand new (well, except for the dated graphics) because I forgot basically all of it.

I really enjoy 6 & 7 and I am currently enjoying my play through of 8. These games are hard (though not as hard as say Baldur's Gate, Drakensang, or Temple of Elemental Evil - well those are harder for me at least), do very little hand holding, provide a continual sense of character improvement, & reward exploration.

When I contrast some of these games of yesteryear with contemporary games, it seems obvious that the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of easiness (under the guise of 'accessible') and it has been forgotten that difficulty, when done right, offers a great sense of accomplishment and satisfaction when overcome.

I also get a sense from these forums and some others that people are really craving a return to more 'difficult' games that do little or no hand-holding. Recovering your corpse in EQ1 was sometimes maddening, I was constantly lost and trying to fix my position in Gothic 3, and keeping my own detailed notes while playing U7 felt like it slowed me down… but in hindsight the absence of hand-holding really offered a sense of accomplishment when I beat those games.

Maybe the pendulum will swing back the other direction, maybe just a little. I'm hoping so.
 
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late last year I had a yen to play Acromage (I had the game but it got lost on an older PC). So I fired up MM7 and got hooked. After I finished 7 I went to GOG and got 8 and finished that. (I have the CDs for all the M&M games so it was cool playing with the color manuals and maps).

For a long time Might & Magic 6 was my number one game of all time. It was eventually replaced with Gothic 2, which I think will get replaced by Skyrim.

While the Elder Scroll series has a bumpy history for me (Skyrim and Morrowind great, Daggerfall good, Oblivion was Meh) I loved all the Might and Magic games . . . even Might and Magic 9 (although the lack of flying in 9 was a huge disappoinment). And don't forget the brilliance of the Might & Magic sound tracks. For me the game music in the M&M series is timeless. A couple times a year I spend an evening in YouTube listening to the scores of the various M&M games.

As someone previously pointed out the story in the games is not really that memorable, although it's good enough to carry you through the various games. But it's clearly the game play that wins the day. And it's game play that's fun.

While I agree with Mad Gamer about his analysis of Might and Magic, I'm not so sure it was the difficulty of earlier games that made them more compelling. I think because the tools were so limited back then they had to try harder to make the games more fun. Better game music, more and better puzzles, more imaginative use of the limited graphics, less voice overs. Maybe since the developers had to use more imagination to tell the story, we had to use more imagination to play. Which in turn created a more immersive game. Maybe????

I have two Might and Magic VI game disks and just last week purchased M&M 1-6 on GOG. I was tying to decide my next game to play, R.O.A. or Legend of Dawn (both new buggy games) but I just might go back to M&M 6 or Gothic 3. At first I was going to Gothic 3 due to the latest patch, but I know for certain I will have fun with M&M 6.

Might and Magic VI may no longer be my number one game of all time but when it was number one, number 2 was far behind. It will always get my respect and love.
 
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