What a difference!  After struggling through Ishar 1 and Might and Magic 1, I decided to give Might and Magic 2 a spin.  It's going to be very difficult for me to go back, especially to Might and Magic 1.
 
Everything is improved. The graphics are more colorful, the NPC interactions are streamlined something fierce, you can identify items fully now, you can get special items in stores on certain days, and what's best: there's an auto-map, and the leveling process is all but painless.
 
In the first Might and Magic it took several play sessions before I was lucky enough to find decent equipment, and there were many times where I was fairly poor and within a few days of not having any food to heal with.  While that poverty made me appreciate it greatly the first time I got a nice wad of cash, Might and Magic 2 does you the favor of actually not taking forever for your party to come upon some decent equipment, gold, and experience.  After stumbling through the still-hostile town I found it easy to get into compartmentalized trouble.  Unlike when I first played this in my Genesis/Mega Drive days, I knew that I wasn't supposed to avoid killing these guys. If they were attacking, they were bad, end of story.  Made things much easier.
 
The Genesis version WAS better; I think since it was ported they had the time to add some upgrades, including higher resolution graphics with more colors, and a few other tweaks that I wish this version had.  They're not deal breakers though, and I find I'm having a lot of fun with this one.  An added bonus is that the DOSBox emulation doesn't need tweaking like it does for many of the other games I've played (including Xeen). 
 
 I'm actually enjoying myself.  It's weird.