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>>3956136
I've completed full playthroughs of III, IV+V (World of Xeen install), VI, and VII. Started, but did not complete VIII--it forced "building" your party as quickly as possible, which was pointlessly stressful for an obsessive mind like my own, and the trade good system felt abusive even when played completely straight). Have played I and II for novelty's sake, but they both felt strictly inferior to Wizardry. I had planned to finish both HOMM III expansions and then play MM VIII back in Summer 2024, but had some major life derailment a few months later, am still recovering, and haven't had much time for games.

In terms of the series, Might and Magic III, VI, and VII are must-plays for RPG enthusiasts. The stories of each are the most connected, each game takes a different approach to the same generalized system and thus avoids feeling repetitive. Aside from the general fun of exploration and leveling, I appreciate them for being more casual plays as compared to the rest of the genre. I'd describe them as quintessential genre games--ultra-fun, lightweight, and unapologetic.

I'd recommend a blind playthrough of World of Xeen (IV and V installed together) to dungeon crawler enthusiasts or RPG developers.

I'd recommend VIII to fans of HOMM III and RPG developers.

IX looks bad and was hated.

X looked like a big dose of nostaliga. I'll add it back to my list and maybe get to it after/if I get back to finishing up VIII. Still hanging by threads atm.

>>3956136
As for your playthrough, no magic and no alchemy seems like it's going to make the late game interesting. Are you planning for Champions or Black Knights? How far along are you?

I've always wanted to do an all sorcerer hardcore (single-save, no reloads, continue play upon death, as was intended) run of VI.

>>3956356
I've only started, but I've already left the Emerald Island. I'm running a party of 4 dwarves, who hate anyone else who isn't a dwarf, so I'll be definitely joining the dark side.

As for the lack of alchemy, I'll just try to stock up on as many potions as I can, buying out the alchemy stores anywhere I go. Insta death/eradication enemies I'll probably either just avoid or cheese through. But I'll see once I reach that point in the game, for most enemies the raw damage output of my party members should be enough to mow them down in a few hits.

I've already done a good amount of low magic playthroughs, so I finally wanted to go for this challenge after all these years and play through with a full knight party.

>>3956345
Nice and agreed. Despite VIII's flaws, it's still an interesting game, but I guess that's probably also just the childhood nostalgia speaking there.

Nice. I've yet to finish a WoX playthrough, but I've finished the Clouds part, so technically I've finished MMIV. Since then I've sadly lost my save file, but I want to get back to a WoX playthrough eventually and also play through MMIII. MMVI and VII I've played through so many times that it's hard to keep the track.

VIII is nice for the fact that the Merge/World of Enroth Mod runs on its engine. WoE also has a multiplayer mod now, which is incredibly fun, but I kind of wish I could run through MMVI WoE multiplayer with the original spells.

I count myself among some of the few people who liked MMIX for how it was so bad it was good. The game was incredibly undercooked, but it had some nice ideas. I guess if you're really into the Might and Magic series and are just way too desperate for more, you can probably give it a shot.

Good luck with X/VIII and life in general.

>>3956136
for blood and honor and ass more like

Right now I’m waiting for OpenEnroth to fully support Might and Magic 7, and then I’ll replay it. I hope adding support for MM6 and MM8 won’t take that long after that either.

>>3956356
>I count myself among some of the few people who liked MMIX for how it was so bad it was good. The game was incredibly undercooked, but it had some nice ideas. I guess if you're really into the Might and Magic series and are just way too desperate for more, you can probably give it a shot.
I wish someone would make a proper restoration patch/mod for it and actually finish it.

>>3956591
I remember sort of talking about this with Tim Lang, the lead designer of MMIX way back when he wanted to create his own spin on the blobber genre.
He mentioned that they had ambitions such as having NPC routines and other such stuff in MMIX, something akin to Ultima or Gothic. I guess you can still see some of the rough drafts for the vision they had there, but realistically with the kind of situation NWC/3DO was in at the time, it would've even been surprising had they managed to ship a functioning game without all these new extra fancy features, which they've not, e.g. see how incredibly busted the toxic cloud or divine intervention spells are.
But still, they still managed to implement some new features, such as reintroducing multiattacks (ditched since MM6), introducing breakable objects, introducing actual swimming, etc. Frankly, these are some of the features that made me like MM9's dungeons a lot, despite how terrible the game is otherwise, there's some pretty solid level design in many of the dungeons.
It's just sort of a shame that back in the day, the TELP patch didn't really go any further than just scraping what they could from the end release, iirc they did have plans to reintroduce alchemy, one of the features that had to be scrapped due to time constraints. Well, one can only hope that someone out there would be willing to pull this off one day.

>>3956136
Look, I'm just gonna be real with you, I love that illustration style, it's classic and kino and whatever.
But what the FUCK are those poses. Seriously. What are those models even fucking doing.

>>3956136
>abandoned for more HoMM games
HOMM games are more fun than Goldbox-like games .though latter HOMMs sound like shit and i didn't play them.

overall the games were more Magic than Might.

plotwise, i consider Xeen to be the "real ending".VI to the HOMM plots all sound like really halfass fanfiction to me, but i don't care much for story in /vst/srpg/ .

>>3956566
mean

>>3956762
You know, when you put it like that, it makes sense. I've never really thought about it that way though, maybe because I've played through the Enroth trilogy of RPGs first, as opposed to the majority of people I know, who have usually played a HoMM game first.
But again, it makes sense since the first 5 games had some kind of continuous plot, while the individual games in the Enroth trilogy are much more self contained RPG campaigns, with the minor overarching plot of the Kreegan threat.
>>3956670
Wait until you see the Might and Magic VI intro.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbCOib5DWjE

>>3957600
Except those are fully digital models which were made and animated in the fucking '90s... that little barely two minute clip demonstrated an amazing tour de force of what was cutting edge technology and technique in digital animation.
The OP is not digital animation or digital painting or digital anything. It's an oil painting. A traditional oil painting. Which has been an artform for thousands of years. Figure drawing has been an artform for thousands of years. The artist was very clearly classically trained and is a highly polished professional.
That's what makes the models' poses so weird. The artist knew better, but someone on the production team told him to depict them that way.

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>>3956670
>>3957610
The image was painted by Boris Vallejo, one of the most popular and influential fantasy illustrators, especially in the 1980s. A lot of his work features lightly clad men and women fighting monsters in similarly weird poses.

>>3957610
>amazing tour de forc
absolute disgust. my dudetachis.

>>3956504
Well, now about that full knight playthrough.

I've just finished it now and it was a breeze, endgame was boring, but the ending of MMVII is overall rather week gameplay wise. Murdering Robert The Wise turned out to be incredibly easy as well.
I guess when your party is full of characters with GM armsmaster, it's only to be expected, because at the end of the game, even the chunkiest enemies in the game, that being the red dragons, usually fell down in about 20 hits.
When it comes to enemies who have insta-death attacks, having a master healer hireling in my party did the trick, since they can heal all conditions except eradication once a day. It did stretch the in game time a lot, but I couldn't care less. I had a scholar in my other hireling slot, which made sifting through loot while dungeon delving a lot more convenient.

Next time I'm tempted to try something like a full druid party or some other challenge. But for now, I can happily say that my yearly quota for replaying Might and Magic VII have been fulfilled for this year.

>>3956504
>>3959711
I appreciate the positive regards--in all honesty, they are greatly appreciated.

I finally have a few spare moments to write some kind of reply--I know this is a slow board, but I didn't want to leave it too long. I'll be able to write out more in a piecemeal fashion in the coming days that I will post later this week.

Congratulations on finishing up your full knight playthough! I completely forgot about hirelings, which were probably essential in preventing massive frustration. Armsmaster, especially at GM, was most certainly a massive boon, too--one of those positive additions in VII that helped improve the performance of melee classes into the late game, no doubt. Have you tried all knights in MMVI?

Do you play MMVII every year? What are other RPG's you like, and what makes Might and Magic special compared to them? I've been reflecting on this series for the past week now and have some thoughts to share, but it's not often I get to talk to MM fans (ditto Ultima and Wizardry).

Thanks for making this thread, by the way. It's refreshing to chat about these mainline games that are, at this point, overshadowed by their spin-off series.

>>3961031
Well, it's really as simple as this - it was among first of the videogames I've been exposed to as a kid, together with Flash games, Diablo II, Warcraft III and HoMMIII just to name a few , so there's a great deal of nostalgia at play here. Pretty much all of my siblings have played Might and Magic VII though. And yes, I play MMVII pretty much every year, every now and then I also play some other entry or play the World of Enroth mod. Last year I've also played this really cool mod called Amber Island, which pushes the Might and Magic VIII engine to its limits. It's still in development and new stuff keeps getting added, the dev is a really nice chap as well and is willing to listen to feedback.

But apart from the nostalgia, I just find the series very comfy and I really love the atmosphere and the way this game manages to immerse you in its game world despite having incredibly primitive graphics by late 90s standards, this was especially noticable in MMVII with the way the overworld changed throughout different seasons and in some regards also as you progressed. This is also something that I also really liked about Gothic 1/2.
It isn't very demanding when it comes to having to think too hard, but at the same time, the series demands more brainpower than most of your run of the mill Diablo style ARPGs while also not being as frustrating as Wizardry (which is a franchise that I'd really like to get into, but I always sort of just lost interest)

As for what kind of other RPGs I like to play, well I've already named a few and overtime I'm trying to chew through my CRPG debt (been meaning to get into Ultima for a while now), but I'm generally quite big on immsims (I absolutely adore System Shock 2, Deus Ex and Prey) and I've also played a few ARPGs (Grim Dawn, Torchlight)

>Thanks for making this thread, by the way.
You're welcome! I'm always to talk with someone who knows this series.
Fans of the series tend to be rare, but they're lovely folks.

>>3961229
I had hoped to have more available time to write this past week, but was unfortunate in those regards up until this evening. With The Taxman satisfied for another year, I’m now sitting with a tall beverage (with a few more chilling themselves), setting a tone with
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ToJv9m6Udg,
and will try to catch up on as much as I can and put together most of my notes into something more coherent before getting too tired or otherwise distracted.

Reducing the entirety of the human interest in games and game-playing to a handful or so of motivations, mine are best described as "somewhat escapist"--trading the complex, consequence-laded problems of reality for the comfort and safety of inconsequential problems--and "overwhelmingly experience-driven"-- perhaps self-explanatory, but I often turn game-playing in a multi-media experience with writings, drawings, journals, and maps, and consider the "highlights" of the medium on the same order of importance as early films, early photography, and early novels. I know I’m the exception in opposition to the rule--most play games for lack of other activity--so I find such brief disclaimers helpful to contextualize my views on such topics.

Of the "Big Three" series "cRPG’s," I have the most experience with Might and Magic, which is almost exclusively a result of their ease-of-play and lack of unavoidable necessity for physical copies of manuals, maps, code-wheels, etc. Assuming all will turn out well in these coming months, I plan to dedicate some time, space, and money in the next year or so to refurbishing or otherwise obtaining a DOS/Win3.1 machine and a Windows 95/98 machine (and, later, a WinXP machine), ideally collecting some or all of the components from previous family computers languishing in storage. Perhaps with the sole exception of early-3D titles, old games are so much more rewarding to play on "proper" hardware, especially classic, turn-based RPG’s.

>>3966008
I was introduced to Might and Magic in the early 2000’s during the summer before I started middle school by means of a family member that introduced me to the world of “warez.” Of several games, all of them standout titles by both current and contemporary standards, Might and Magic III and Might and Magic VI were included. While I did not complete VI at the time (initially, a result of my notes being thrown away by a parent; later, the result of uninstalling the game, forgetting I only had a CD-R of the “Play” disc), I am somewhat confident I completed III that summer, or at a later point in middle school or high school, as I recalled the general pacing and locations of the game when I replayed it a decade later, including the ending of the game. It was an enjoyable, if turbulent summer. Soon, though, DSL, Morrowind, Xbox, and entering a new world of “teenage” freedom and pursuits (which started for me early in middle school) would crowd out my pursuit of the Might and Magic series, which even by then was basically over, with IX already released to poor reviews and 3DO soon to collapse.

It wouldn’t be until well into my college career in Winter 2013 that I discovered GOG as having a rather serious catalog, and thus the opportunity to revisit those childhood Might and Magic experiences, get back into PC gaming in good conscience following Steam’s decent into strict DRM policies, as well as finally playing the “Heroes III” spin-off many people seemed to love.

I had remembered MMIII from my childhood as:
>What if we made Wizardry, but…
>… players can see the enemies on the map?
>… it’s comparatively trivial in difficulty?
>… it’s more lighthearted than philosophical and grim?
>… it’s warm, bold colors and whimsical animations?
>… experience, gold, and level gain is strictly limited?

>>3966009
While it has been a decade since, my understanding and appreciation of games and design has massively expanded, and I’m not an expert whatsoever on DRPG’s/”blobbers,” I did want to suggest Isles of Terra as a solid entry point to the genre, especially given its connection to Might and Magic VII.

I haven’t given this concept a great deal of consideration, but I might describe MMIII as an example of what I’m just going to lazily term “positive accessibility,” while a game like Skyrim would exemplify the “negative” of the concept, suffering tremendously--as both a game and an experience--for its accessibility. Isles of Terra, however, is a rare example of reducing a game down to the essentials of the genre--exploration, puzzles, loot, monsters, quests, leveling--and gaining something positive as an end result. The only difficulty to be overcome is to resist the temptation to save-scum loot rolls (I regret not knowing better all those years ago). Having had the game on my mind this past week, I have been tempted to revisit it when I have more time available in the coming weeks, as it isn’t a massive investment, nor does it require any significant amount of preparation or preplanning—and it could be a fun experiment to do an ironman playthrough given the rather unique (given my somewhat limited experience with games from this era) system of in-game party management and character creation.

Classic Wizardry is not something that can be played casually or without some amount of mental preparation; it’s intentionally designed to be difficult and, fairly soon after, malicious. Playing it as was intended in current year is an experience that is only realistically accessible to a tiny minority of RPG enthusiasts willing to meet the games on the terms they set for the player, which in many ways is a challenge that transcends the game itself.

>>3966010
As for Ultima, I have tried several times over the last decade to break into the series, making at different times and places some amount of brief headway into I, IV, and VII, but have ultimately come to the conclusion that it basically demands a physical copy of the manual for the game, a proper setup to accommodate the “feel” of the game, and obviously the right attitude and disposition going into a playthrough. I’ve simply never had all three of those conditions met at one time, and have thus never continued for long with my attempted playthroughs so as to not sour the experience. I would strongly suggest checking out Moonring, though, as an extremely satisfying and “modernized” homage to classic Ultima.

After Isles of Terra, I’d quickly go on to play HOMMIII for the first time (and would return to it again and again in later years). I’m going to pass over discussing HOMMIII in any significant amount of detail, as it’s already established as the crown jewel of the entire series, one of the best games ever made, and one of the most timeless and endlessly replayable games. It’s one of those games anyone deeply interested in video games as a medium needs to have some “sufficient” amount of experience with to have any hope of being taken seriously, especially so now as it doesn’t require old hardware to enjoy. The only “criticism” I can offer is that a significant player investment is needed to get to an appropriate level of play to truly being to grasp the core experience of the game, which I would argue is that near-sublime, unique, and essential experience of truly “playing the map”--which, given your experience with the title, is probably something you understand.

>>3966012
I’ll have time to pick this up tomorrow (I finally have a day off, for the most part), so I can get a brief overview of my experiences with the other games out for some context before asking you about related topics and hopefully being able to respond more quickly and in a conversational manner.

>>3966012
>the conclusion that it basically demands a physical copy of the manual for the game,

the PDF files are just fine.
also play the Underworld 1 and 2 , and maybe Arx Fatalis.

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How does the agility stat work in other versions? In the NES version it affects not just the character but the entire party and if high enough compared to the other side can grant several turns. Allegedly in the Famicom version it's broken and doesn't do anything at all so I wonder if they over compensated when they fixed it.

>>3966013
>I’ll have time to pick this up tomorrow
Now I feel like an asshole for so boldly assuming I'd have such time available--I should probably just refrain from making such pledges when there's so much coursing through my life that evaporates my available spare time. I don't see a point in writing out the brief, trite comments, either, so I'll just try to post when I can, and leave it at that. I definitely won't let the thread die.

>>3966049
>the PDF files are just fine.
Printed out, sure. On a second screen, I guess, if it's not too distracting or immersion-breaking.
I prefer to keep things consistent, with all notes and such being either wholly digital and worked on a second device, or completely handwritten and drawn in a notebook, notepad, journal, etc. Since purchasing all of the GOG versions of those games eight or so years ago, ideal circumstances simply haven't materialized--no need to bore you with details.
But before you scoff,
>You don't have to play Morrowind with the in-game map always small and set to "local," using only the giant, physical map of Vvardenfell (and Solstheim) to guide your adventures
>You don't have to play TIS-100 with the "manual" printed out
>You don't have to play EXAPUNKS with the "zines" printed and stapled
... but you really, REALLY should.
Like I wrote earlier, I value immersion to an extremely high degree and don't bother even starting a game unless I'm satisfied I'll have a good time in that regard.
>also play the Underworld 1 and 2 , and maybe Arx Fatalis.
I have all three on GOG, as well as all of the singleplayer Ultima's--I'll get around to them eventually. Almost started Arx Fatalis a few times for the past decade--something's always come up.

>>3966133
>How does the agility stat work in other versions?
The stat is "Speed" in the DOS/PC versions, and it works as intended as far as was apparent in III-VIII.
All of these old games often had some rather serious issues that were never fixed--some of my "favorites":
>The Diplomacy system in Master of Magic is completely non-functional
>The Dodging skill in Daggerfall increases your chance of getting hit as it develops (as if the game was ever really "playable" at release anyways)
>Stealing an item in Morrowind permanently and irrevocably flags all items of that type as stolen