After I wrote the Might and Magic X blog post I was thinking in maybe writing something else, but I was unsure of what. I thought in maybe how about some thoughts on the Sword Art Online Alicization Lycoris? Which is quickly turning in my GOTY, but I need to play it more was I might need more time to reflect on some stuff, while I also wait to see how patchs and expansions will push the game.

Since one of my earlier blog post about the Warhammer online MMO, I though maybe in how about Granado Espada?

Why? While I did play a lot of MMOs, of them, there was one which I keep trying to return, often bouncing back and forth, and it was Granado Espada.

At first sound like a great idea, because I played a lot of it and even had stored lots of screenshots, which unlikely happened during the Might and Magic article, where due an HD failure I lost a lot of stuff, I still have mountains of screenshots well safe. More, I have a can try to say about the game, specially with the frustration due some weird design issues and hitting a wall in the game progress.

But, you see… while I was writing the first drafts an idea pop up: how about one last return? Just to pick some screenshots I might need and maybe refresh my memory.

Now if you look for Granado Espada you will find two of them (but there is more), one was the version I did originally play, which is in the hands of T3Fun and the other is hold by IMCGames and it’s often more know as Granado Espada SEA (as is meant for SEA region, but it is open to everybody).

It was this moment I thought of how about instead of trying to play again the T3Fun version, how about to start fresh on the IMCGames version? So that what I did and that how this article which was meant to be a single piece, might be several (ok, at best maybe two or three at best).

Because replaying the game in the SEA version (for making things simple I will call it IMCGame version) did a lot more that refresh my memories, it also allowed me to see what changed overtime and a lot changed. Meaning that even realized that my original draft might include outdated information. Also replaying give me two more things: One I can compare both versions and also I can get a better hold of the game story and plot (not that I could really understand it, because it all over the place).

So this first part will be mostly a short explanation overview about what is Granado Espada, the plot and setting and the main features, the next posts I will explore in more depth the plot, visuals (which I need a whole part for) and game itself.

So, let’s begin! But first:

What is Granado Espada anyway?

Granado Espada, is a Korean MMO published by Hanbisoft, from the same creator of Ragnarok Online, Hakkyu Kim, released around 2006 (worldwide only in 2007).

There is, or there were, several versions of the game around. Right now you mostly like run in either the T3Fun version, which originally was under K2 Network hands, which was responsible by the distribution in NA(during this period the game was subscription based, also the name was change to Sword of the New World), which later changed name to Gamerfirst (also here the game become free to play), it was during this period that I first played it. Later in 2012 the game change hands again going now for T3Fun. Somewhere during this confusion, the game name return to be called Granado Espada.

Now the one which replaying, like I said earlier, it is the SEA version under IMCGames.

Before I explain the setting I need to explain some of the game most unique features:

Instead of creating a character, you create a “Family” which will be a collection of your characters, some of them which you can create (often called “stock” characters) based in four classes: Fighters, Musketeers, Scouts, Elementalists and Wizards. There isn’t much customization, you can only choose between two type of faces and name.

Now the other part of your list of characters will be NPCs which you recruit (often called RNPC, which stand for Recruitable Non Player Character). Most of them came from quests but a few ones, which came from events or the game shop.

Of them you make a party of three characters, a feature which the game call “MCC” (Multiple Character Control) which you play kind like an RTS, by either giving direct command to each one in real time or setting a “behavior”, such as “attack everybody around you”, “collect stuff in the ground”.

In a certain way, this is a game you can and mostly like will, AFK it — Just throwing your characters somewhere and setting them to auto attack. You can even alt-tab the game and do something else! You might notice the game advertise this as feature main feature. Oh, in case you wonder you can also auto collect loot, but this requires a pet which requires food, that can either obtained in game or in the premium shop.

Characters have “stances” which is a set of skills they can use, depend on of their equipped weapon (also, a weapon can have several stances available, like a sword could be wield in different ways), Stock Characters have a huge selection of this, while RNPCs often have a small selection, but it made of unique stances. They improve their stances by using weapons, the better they get, the more skills they unlock.

Something which I skipped is a short explanation about the stock characters:

• Scouts: Healers, Support and maybe DPS, but more important is the healing, since they can auto heal.
• Fighters: Not much different from what you expect here, they are more close quarter fighters, but they do have instances which they use pistols.
• Musketeer: Long range and DPS.
• Warlock: Magic users with focus in area of effect spells.
• Wizards: Magic users with focus on buff and debuffs spells.

I might also explain briefly the difference between the versions, because while both are sort the same with a couple differences that I could notice:

• Events: Each version might have different events going on.
• Visual/Costumes: On T3Fun version character visual could change either by equipping certain armor or costumes; on the IMCGames, only costumes change visual.
• Market (aka Auction House): For some reason in the IMCGame you can only gain access to the Market very late in the game, while T3Fun is available soon as you start playing (maybe).
• Naming Conventions: And this is where things get weird, overall names of the character and place look the same, but for whatever reason, certain places and character have complete different names. As example, there is an island in the game called Bahia in the T3Fun version which for some reason is called Gigante on the IMCGames. Another strange case is Feng Ling (T3FUN) a RNPC which on the IMCGame version is called Soso. There is a detective RNPC, which the name changed a lot, right now is Gertudes (T3FUN) but once I think in some server he was called Jean Pierre, but at least right now on IMCGames he is called Grutudes...

A World of Adventurers… and endless confusion and weird tones.

Before we start, just some disclaimers:

• The game translation is far from good in any version and I don’t know the original text, so a lot of stuff can get lost.
• Like many MMOs stuff is often add, retconned or change as time passes and it hard to figure what was meant to be originally or not.
• This part is an overview, I will try my best to explain more in detail in the next parts.
• Like I said earlier, I did hit a wall during previous attempts to play, so there is stuff which I don’t know yet, because I haven’t reached or have access.

The setting for the game was fairly unique for its time (2006) and for a MMO, begin a fantasy world during the sort the equivalent of the navigations period (and a bit beyond it) however several events play in a very different way and a lot of stuff simple didn’t happen or maybe even existed at all. I did found an interview with Hakkyu Kim on Gamesutra (https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/129932/from_ragnarok_to_the_new_world_an_.php), which sort give us what maybe was the original vision for the game:

So for Sword of the New World, how did you come up with such a distinctive style? It seems very different from any of your titles before?

HK: I personally really like Europe. And when I first visited London for the ECTS conference, I was deeply impressed by all the beautiful architecture and the environment and I thought to myself, “I want to bring that to life on the screen.” That’s how everything started for this game. And another thought that I had was this: “I want to own that city.”

The setup is: Ferrucio Espada and Gilberto Granada from Oporuto (think fantasy Portugal) find a continent they didn’t know, which end being called Granado Espada. However, Vespanola (fantasy Spain) invade Oporuto and take over. Like I said is fantasy world which is sort inspired by our world but things unfold in a very different way, as example: Vespanola defeat Bristia (fantasy England) in a sort inverse scenario of the defeat of the Invincible Armada.

Now while this setup and foundation suggest a very straightforward fantasy world based on our world, as time passes (and expansions were added) and layer were added in the plot and theme, the setting tries to build it own identity and deviate itself more and even create it own twists as the analogies fall a bit behind.

As I mention the navigations and the setup you might think this is a game about colonialism, and the answer is yes and maybe not really. Because the whole colonization theme is kind dropped out really yearly on, serving mostly as the main background for the game first arc, which involves more stopping several people from the Orpesia exploiting the new world for the own goals. From there the game suddenly is no longer about going to the new world but going back to the old world as most expansions are set there. The first story arc of the game is about facing Viscount Montoro and the Ten Vespanolan Nobles, from there the next arc suddenly about what going in Bristia which is under Vespanolan occupation. Later arcs appear to be about stuff in Orpesia, from visiting the game equivalent to the Vatican (Armonia) and later the game stand in for France (Illier).

I know that you might be also wondering of there is natives? Yeah, and they are sort doing well and also are very important to the main plot, as they are sort the only ones really aware of what going on, to a point where while people in Orpesia didn't know about them, they know about Orpesia! In fact, they know so well that they are aware of its politics.

The game does have equivalent for other region of the worlds, such as Errac (A sort of Mayan/Aztec civilization, which two very important RNPC came from, also when you find Errac, is when they explain a lot of the game background), Abissinia (I think is meant to be north Africa, also two important RNPC came), Targa (I guess is meant to be the Ottoman Empire, again RNPC came from there) and Korea, Siam, Japan and China (you find RNPC from all this regions too). The game dialogues and lore sort suggest everyone is very friendly to everybody (most times).

Several dungeons you visit in the game in the new world are stuff build by pioneers, such as: Torche´s Mansion, Joaquin Prision, Al Quera Moss (which despite the name was meant to be sort of cathedral).

Even when you visit stuff which is meant to be something already there, is often very fantasy like with no real equivalent, like the Castillia Mines, which have some out of place greek ruins vibes, there is something about a civilizatiton of peaceful giants which the antagonists maybe destroyed (I don´t remember the details right now) or the Witches of Bahamar, which are fantasy like witches (the quest where you meet them, is all about one npc begin manipulated in to confront them only to realize his error, as they criticize him and the whole colonization stuff). Important note, there is something about Altria, which I haven´t reached yet, so I can´t tell.

The enemies are go from dinousaurs, monsters to undead and so on.

I hope this enough to give a overview of the game, next… well I plan to write maybe about the game music and visuals, two areas where the game shines a lot. Later, depending on how I progress in the game I try my best to write about some highlights of it plot and about its mechanics.

Links to all posts:

Granado Espada - Overview (Part I)

Granado Espada - Visuals and Early Game (Part II)

Granado Espada - Issues and Bits of Progress (Part III)

Previously on Granado Espada (Part IV)

Granado Espada - Adrift (Part V)

And it all make sense…

You must likely hear the news about that Arthurian inspired game being cancelled on Ubisoft and Hascoet hate for fantasy, which make sense of the way Ubisoft treat Might and Magic franchise.

Might and Magic X, almost didn’t happen, because, from what I heard and could understand, Ubisoft had no interest and the developers and Limbic had to fight get it done and in a way was almost a hobby project from them and there are signs of this struggle in the game itself in at least two ways, but don’t worry, we will talk about it. Despite giving the greenlight, Ubisoft, begin Ubisoft, pulls the plug and cut support to the game just one year after its release.

The point is: Might and Magic X is a very good game with some issues which I cover in this article. But in the end it does gives the series a better closure.

Nature of the World

Might and Magic 10 world is a throwback to the earlier games (and also to Grimrock) begin a grid base game. However, while earlier games the world space was represented by several maps side by side, in MM10 you have a single large map divided in areas, with no loading between them. Only dungeons, caves and cities exist in separated maps needing some loading.

In comparison to previous games, the world does feel more small and sort linear, meaning you have areas feel more limited to explore, either by geography or enemies acting as gates or until you got access to some special abilities later on. Because, instead of having spell such as Fly, Walk on Water or Teleportation, the closest thing you got is the Elemental Forge quest which give you certain blessing which allow you to reach certain areas. However, even these areas feel limited, as example: the blessing which allow you to walk over water only works in a handful of spaces. Later, the blessing of air, allow you only to use certain teleports spread around the map. While the blessing of earth, just remove some natural barriers.

While the word is grid based, the game itself is full 3D, meaning that trees, mountains, objects aren't sprites, but full 3d objects, something which extend even to enemies, which often are reused models form the Heroes games. What really is going on, is that you have a standard 3d world, but your movement is limited by a grid, something which show the limitations of Unity at certain points (we talk about this later), but it also works since the developers managed to produced very good light effects.

Now the abstraction of space still present, often a city still represented by a single square in the open world map, meaning you sort have a light clash between things being represented in literal fashion (as 3D objects) and other begin abstractions, such as cities begin a single square in open world map (or slight more, like Karthal).

The world only feature a handful of cities: Sorgipal, Seaheaven, Karthal and Crag. Because it small world they very closed together, but like I said earlier, you can't access them, until certain moments in the main quest, due either enemies begin too powerful and fast travel being locked until a certain condition.

All this “gates” (geography, enemies and so on) often cause that skills trainers are often locked behind something which you can't reach. Something which extend even to promotion quests, some of them you cannot complete until almost the end of the game, like the Archmage quest, where in one hand you need to find the npc which give the quest and in the other reach the place where the quest will happen, both of them only happen very late.

Sometimes the game want you to go certain places instead of others, like once you explore enough and can see Karthal in distance, you might think of going there. However, the game sort want instead you go to Crag, which is eastern side, something you might don't know, given that I think no one ever says where Crag is.

Trying to go Karthal, like I tried to do, might mean facing monsters which are too powerful for you, because you can't walk much around outside due the lots of Black Guards around it and even taking the sewer route mean facing annoying Face Huggers. But, if you just keep going east, you soon notice the enemies are a lot weaker.

I noticed this also while exploring the Lost City, a place which you return a lot. The first time is defeating an enemy there, later for finding the Elemental Shards, used to visit certain places in the Elemental Forge. For some reason, battles in the third level of the Lost City are much harder that the ones on the fourth level, the one where you meant to go (since is there you find one of the Elemental Shards), enough to sort make look like you aren't meant to be there right now.

Moving from this let’s talk about the interior spaces such as the dungeons and cities. Beginning with later: they are overall very good, Karthal is a bit to big and the slum section is unnecessary complicated to navigate, but that is minor stuff. The dungeon design is also very good even featuring some puzzle based dungeons in a shout out to previous games.

Ruleset

While the game itself is a throw back to the early titles, most of it ruleset share most of the mechanics and terms from Heroes of Might and Magic game published under Ubisoft, while sort trying to be similar to the M&M in the NWC era. In a nutshell, this mean you have general frame similar to MM 6–8, specially with the skills and how the upgrade and you even have a class promotion (sort of, but it not the same thing), but statistics/terms/themes large came from HOMM 5–7.

This however, can lead to lots of confusion, since many times descriptive text on a skill or spell might not exactly work how you expect due terms from HOMM 6–7 being kind vague, so you end with stuff such as “Destiny” as a main attribute, a skill called “Warfare” or “Magical Focus”, “Arcane Discipline” which function is not immediately clear.

When a skill is upgraded from one level to another, they gain a perk or something, however, many times these gains are often minimal in comparison to previous games.

Promotions are back, but they don't change your maximum skill level. What they do is give you access to one of more special skills, some are quite useful like Druid Elder’s Nurture (which is improved version of the regeneration spell) or one of the Paladin’s skill: Lay of Hands (a healing spell which heal the whole party). Also, the promotion quest are mixed bag, some of them are very easy, such as the Druid Elder, others might be locked behind certain moments in the game, like the Archmage, since it is unlikely you can reach their spots until much later on.

But where some confusion might reign in how the game split the races and classes during character creation and how it spread the skills and their maximum levels, meaning their roles often might not be what you expect.

The problem is also that the UI during character creation, while tell you the maximum level a class can reach in skill does not tell that this means really, so someone might reach Grandmaster in Magic Focus or Fire, but it does not tell you what they gain or each level or what spells are there.

In a quick glance you might see that you can choose between Humans, Elves, Dwarves and Orcs, which so far is kind straightforward, all of them have a special trait or ability. Now each race have three classes they can choose, so Humans can be either Mercenaries, Crusaders or Freemages, Elves could be Blade Dancers, Rangers and Druids, Dwarves can be Defenders, Scouts or Rune Priests, while Orcs could be Barbarians, Hunters or Shamans. And over all their roles are quite clear, however…

Sometimes things can get a bit confusing, you might think the Mercenary is a fighter, right? Except that looking at his skill distributions are a bit strange, you might notice, that Mercenaries can't reach Grand Master in any weapon skill! In fact the skills they can reach GM is, Dodge, Medium Armor and Warfare, so you maybe think he isn't a good fighter at all. However, this is enough to make him a very good damage dealer. In my game, the Mercenary was the character which dealt most damage, even more that the Paladin, which could reach Grand Master in Sword.

Why? I am not 100% sure, maybe because mercenary don't have many skills to spend, they can reach their maximum level in them way faster or simple improving skills to Grandmaster maybe don't improve that much. Also, he could combine a weapon skills with either Dual Wield of Two Handed skills (in case was Two Handed). Other class might not be able to do the same thing, due to many skills to spend on.

Then you give a quick glance at the Rune Priest, and think is your typical cleric, expect, from what I heard this class is a damage dealer and one of the best, because also he gains some very good special ability later on and plus they reach GM in Fire, Earth and Light.

The Freemage, is the trickiest one, since by all standards, is the magic user, you might be surprised that he can't access Grandmaster in certain magic schools, such as Fire, instead he mainly had Primal and Dark. Becaus he is mostly a debuffer (which is the main effect of Primal and Dark spells), however he is also useless during boss battles, why? Because all bosses are immune to almost all debuffs.

Some times classes get access to stuff which most don't make sense use it at all, either skills a such low level such as Mercenaries which can learn Air Magic and even Arcane Discipline at such basic level, which make almost no sense to use it. Other times, you might be unaware, that Magic Focus is one of the most vital skills, since it powers up even more your spells, however to access it, your character instead of normal weapon, will hold an orb or a staff so spending point in weapon skills for magic user is sort useless.

Spells in the game feel strange: buffs have weirdly short durations, making them feel useless and too trick to use, since you might have waste several turns recasting them, due the short duration. In fact, you might cast a buff spell before a combat only to it end soon as you make contact with the enemy. Other spell feel so vital, specially Regeneration, that you sort wonder how to play without it, or even is upgrade version, Nurture, which only Druid Elders can use.

Damage spells often feel unreliable, many enemies will have high resistance to almost all times of magic, bosses, like I said are immune to all debuffs and have even higher levels of magic resistance. Even when you pile up bonus to your skills, spells either fail or do little damage. To be fair, in my game I noticed something curious, whenever I cast Thunderstorm and then cast Chain Lighting, somehow the damage was absurdly good. And to make things confusing, my level in Magic Focus wasn't that high.

No Room to Maneuver

Like MM3–8, Legacy have only a fixed number of enemies spread around the map, they don't appear respawn, meaning your XP source from them is limited. Quests are in small quantities and often yield only small amounts of XP and often can be only completed when you reach certain points of the game, like the Tea quest, which you likely complete only very late, since it need you to travel to different places.

Many times, spells which should help you deal with the massed combat, have this strange punitive design, where enemies killed by them yield no XP, reducing something which is already in shortage.

This has two main effect on the game, first you likely only level up at certain points, which you don't have much control or know when. Also you cannot grind or even go elsewhere, so if you get stuck in something you have no option but press forward, if you make any mistake during point distribution, your only option is also go forward, until the gain another level. So to say, you often have no room to maneuver.

The second effect is that since you have no control when you level up, you have to be extra careful with how you spend skills points. You mostly like need to spend as most you can to reach new mastery levels as soon possible, specially later on, since the final level of mastery require lots of points, and only putting a few points each level might mean take forever until you can reach the mastery level.

To make thing slight more complicated, you often have more skills than points and you need to know very well what you are doing, as example: magic users often not only have to improve their magic skills, they also need to spend points in Magic Focus. But your points are limited and spending in anything is risking not being able to level up something else. While this might give an illusion of a strategic choice, what happen is that you can't really experiment much with the system.

This is happens to a point, that you might only reach Grandmaster level in certain skills by time the game end, in my case, the paladin in my party only reached Grandmaster in Sword, by the end of both the DLC after the main game.

Another XP related issue, but minor, is the Relics, these are special magic items, which gain levels when you use them (up to four levels), there is a couple of problems: first, you don't know what exactly a relic gain in each level, second, some of them are not every useful at all.

Third many of them are either hidden in the “Dangerous Cave” dungeons, which require you to fight a boss, something which is hard to know when exactly you should do, so you might forget about these caves until much later, or by doing a handful of quests.

Fourth, to gain XP you need to have the relic equipped, now you often find Relic you can't use, because you don't have skills and can't afford to spend on it, in my game, I found lots of spears, maces and axes relics, which none of my character could use. For some reason, either I missed, or there isn't a two handed sword relic, so my Mercenary was stuck using the same sword he got in Seaheaven for most of the game.

Another strange issue, that somewhat could happen back in Xeen, is that due enemies not respawning and you have almost no other way to get resources, you can run out of gold and potions and get even more stuck, however this is difficult to happen, but not impossible, during my play through, there was a one or two moments, where this was close to happen, but didn't and later on, there was enough gold to buy potions with no limits.

There is a couple of stuff you can do like hire a hireling which give you extra XP early as possible, but that it.

Rule of Engagement

There are two elements of the combat I wish to analyze, how movement works and how combat itself works. Let’s begin with the first:

Combat in MM10 is very similar to Xeen, as enemies wander around the map, however — unlike Xeen or later games, once you enter in reach, you and the enemy are locked, you can't escape or disengage in any way, there is no spell for fleeing combat either. This mean exploration mean risking enter in combat with monsters too powerful for your level which you can't do anything except die.

You can only move around in combat at the start of the turn before any of character do anything, but is a movement of a single grid only. However, since enemies often close around you or fire at you from distance, it is hard to move around or even reposition yourself around, since either they are closing in or you are taking free hits. Most times the ideal is just stand still or try to find a corner and stay there.

The game also loves to spawn enemies around you in a really frustrating way, as you might be doing something such as open a box or flip a switch and find yourself surrounded by enemies on all sides often overwhelming you, since is almost impossible to move way or reposition and you likely take several hits from all sides.

While there is an element which the game features of pushing or pulling enemies (or enemies doing this to your party), where certain spell and abilities can push or pull. But outside an initial boss, which you face on the top of tower, where you need to watch out, or he will cause your party to fall off, this is often not explored much. Also, many of the abilities and spell which can pull or push are often the last level of mastery of skills which you likely only unlock by the end of the game.

Sometimes enemies teleport around during combat, which is often quite annoying, since you most times you don't have a way to answer to that and just take hits unable to do anything.

Now, let’s go to the combat itself.

One of the MM10 features, which sort put it together with some modern dungeon crawlers, is that fighters aren't simple limited to melee or long range attacks, most of the fighting class have access to a special skill called Warfare. These skills unlock new special attacks, this helps combat begin more fresh, but like happen with most skills in the game, the later levels, which unlock the most special attacks are often locked behind certain points in the game.

But despite this, combat at time can feel very slow and often features huge spikes in difficult, like I said earlier, the game features the massed combat of earlier games, however the power curve does not follow like in the same way.

Enemies often have lots of HP and high resistance to magic (making spell often feel unreliable), specially bosses, which are simple immune to all debuffs, making several magics skills useless.

In fact, you might quickly notice by looking in the in game bestiary that enemy HP scales in a strange way, where per example: one of the earlier dragons you can face have around 1200 HP and soon the ravenous ghouls in mass later also have around 1200 HP (or around the same time, depending on where you are in the game). So instead of giving enemies a distinct amount of HP to reflect them, they all feel have the same inflated HP, so fighting a dragon feel exactly like fighting a ghoul, which feel exactly like fighting something else. Only magic user enemies have slight less HP.

Opponents that you will face often come in two variation a melee one and a magic one (or a ranged), they often have one or two special attack of spell which the spam over and over again, as example, one enemy can keep casting Feeblemind (spell which block the ability to cast spells), over and over again, causing your entire party to be effected with no way o dispelling it. Because with only four character (and at best only two will have mean to dispel something) it not easy to find either half of your party (most time your spellcaster) affected by something. At best you one of your character get affected by something which other character have to keep dispelling over and over again. In my game wasn´t unsual to my mage got affect by Feeblemind, which the druid would dispel, only to the next round is the druid which is affect and the mage now have to dispel it.

When facing bosses (but not only them) that you quickly notice, is that they often can deliver pretty powerful blows thanks to their critical hit chances, this can often cause a downfall spiral, since losing a character his a heavy hit during combat (specially if it was the healer) and you likely won't have access to resurrection until much later (which also mean that if you survive now you have to leave the dungeon and go to a temple and make the way back). Meaning that bosses fight feel like they put you under mercy a weird rng.

While potions were always a feature of MM, here they are a lot more important, but using them isn't a free action, but cost that character turn, which make trick using them, still they are a lifesaver.

Losing Momentum

Might and Magic X, main and mostly only issue, is that the combined factors mentioned above, unlikely the previous ones, can lose a lot of momentum and pacing, you might often feel hitting wall after wall, specially if you try to go away from the main path.

Since it hard to figure if you are strong enough to fight something, due high enemy HP and critical hit chances, you often might be sent stray when you should go forward, as example, as you approach the gate to the elemental plane of Air, there is two Air elemental, which unleash lightning attacks upon you which might give the idea that you should turn back.

Also, like the previous event I talked about, the enemies in the third level of the Lost City, might convince you of not really going forward, but that what you need to do, as one of the Elemental Shards is in the fourth level, which is way easier for some reason.

The difficult spikes can also make hard to figure out how and if you can deal with some the massed combat the games feature.

Might and Magic Raiders

Before we start talking about the plot, there is one element I need to explain, the whole “Raiders” stuff you likely hear during play.

There once was, guess what? Cancelled game Might and Magic game! Called Might and Magic Raiders, which was meant to be action rpg, from there I think, it born the idea of adventures in the Ashan setting begin “Raiders” as a sort of trademark/term/call what ever you want. In MM10 often either your character or the story itself call your party as “raiders”. Some ingame lore expand on this concept.

Moving on…

The game does start with a simple initial plot: your party is tasked to take the ashes of their mentor to Karthal, so they travel to the Agyn Peninsula, but things aren't so simple, as you initially arrive in Sorgipal, only find out there is a lot of unrest and intrigue unfolding in these lands, Karthal is locked out and almost secession from the Empire.

To get there you need to a lot of work, which meant figuring out what is going on, from lifting a castle under siege from brigands to exploring the Elemental Forge and later contact a spy inside Karthal.

The story is spread around four acts, with the first being centered around Sorpigal and Portymerion castle, the second act move thing toward Seaheaven and Crag, and is also when you explore the Elemental Forge. The third act, is mostly about Karthal and figuring out what is going on the city. The last act continue the events in Karthal and finish with a final battle there and the hunt for the “Master of the Assassins” in the final dungeon.

There is so pretty good highlights, such the Tomb of Thousand Horrors, a classic of the MM franchise, a really cool dream sequence where you figure the fate of another group of Raiders, and a couple of more special ones, which I shall describe:

If you played any of the Ubisoft Heroes games, you notice, that Ubi never really connect them to the previous games (much less the whole sci-fi angle), outside classic names, such Crag Hack, Sandro, Falagar, etc.. there is almost no connections. However, in MM 10 you get them.

As you play the game you will note the less and less subtle take that on Ubi, first there is quest to save collect several volumes of an epic, which the Inquisition looking it to destroy. Guess what these epic are about? The previous games! Each one feature a quick description about the game.

Later you meet Edwin, as Astrologer, which ask you to take him to a special tower, so he can look at the stars again. Why? because once during an eclipse he could see nothing else that VARN from previous games floating in space!

Another much less obvious quest, features a npc named Jessa; He ask you to tell him about several of the monsters in the land, if you do this quest, during the game epilogue, the narration tell you how he just picks up a spaceship and leaves! This look almost random, until you notice he is a character from the Might and Magic novels...yes, they do exist.

But the real winnder is the bonus dungeon. Now, ever since MM6, there is always a bonus dungeon, which is meant to be a reproduction of NWC offices, where you could meet and see the developers. MM10 keep the tradition and you can visit Limbic offices and there a npc gently ask you to help them get rid of some Ubimancers, so they could work on the next MM game…

Now, there is some annoying parts, the game at least twice lock you in a dungeon, first while exploring the Black Guard Headquarter, which at one point, you do unlock a way to get out and return and the Tomb of Thousand Horrors, which also lock you there until you finish it. So hope you are stocked with potions and resurrection spell or scrolls, because otherwise...

The final dungeon almost broke me, Ker-Thal at first just looks a bit annoying, as at this point you be powerful enough to deal with anything, however… the final boss sequence is annoying and I sort suspect Unity itself start to fall apart during that part.

In the final part you need to activate four Solar Sigils and enter a password, problem is that every time you move in one of the bridges which connect the places where the Sigils are, there is a chance Erebos, the final boss, will spawn and attack you, often blasting you with powerful spells forcing youto fight him a bit until he flees for a while.

While I suspect that Erebos is only meant to spawn a handful of times giving you some breathing space you can either by moving to fast or something else, cause him to spawn again and again very fast and in the worst moment possible. I saw him, more than once, almost rubber bending! Like he spawn in once place them suddenly appear elsewhere... it is hard to explain.

This often cause you to be facing the Elite Faceless there and suddenly be surprised by a blast from Erebos, causing you to often fall in downspiral as his blast is often enough to kill a character or two.

But should you deal with this the games does come to an end. The game ending does feature an epilogue kind like Fallout where the narrator tell what happen to some npcs and explain some stuff, which is a fun thing, but isn't much explored, as there is only one quest with multiple end.

DLCs

MM10 only got two DLCs: one is a bonus dungeon, which you can get via the Ubiplay, the “Meow Temple”, which is a small shout to a classic MM trope, often in older MM games, you find “evil” temples with silly names, such as “Baa” (MM6–7), “Yak” (MM4–5) and “Bark” (MM4–5). But outside this small dungeon, there isn't much to talk about.

Now, the only other DLC, is the Falcon and Unicorn, which was almost the second time the game broke me.

The Falcon and the Unicorn is mainly about some loose ends of Might and Magic 10, specially the more political/intrigue angle, as you party travel to Karthal they are arrested by the Holy Inquisition (All enemies in the DLC are from the Haven faction, so you face Sentinels, Crossbowman, Griffins and Knights, plus some Angels) and taken to Fort Laegaire, where they are stripped of their gear (but not their gold).

The DLC begin with you locked in this dungeon and you must escape… by doing a rather frustrating stealth mini game which require you to cause noises to move guards away from certain places, any failure is instant death.

Once you pass this, now you need to face the really powerful guards and the also very powerful boss, without your gear, as the best you can get is some stuff which a handful of merchants npcs sells, which you can only access after you defeat the boss, which is also really hard.

But once this is done and you escape from the Fort (and pick up your gear) you can return to Agyn and restock to them go after the person which is behind what ever was going on.

The final part of the DLC is pretty much storming the villain’s manor, which also lock you there, so you can't escape and restock. The battles there quite hard, but at least one, which imitate a Heroes battle is cleaver, but save that, there isn't much to talk about.

For some reason, finishing the dlc, plays the epilogue again but add a handful of stuff related to the DLC.

There isn't much else on the DLC, no new classes or races or anything else, the fights can be overly annoying, as enemies either put your party to sleep or heal themselves, making battles overlong. The initial stealth minigame is a deep exercise in frustration, due the whole one error and you are death, also get the guards in the right positions is really hard.

What is Next?

With thing going as the go on Ubi, is hard to tell what is next, if there is a next, what it would look., Right now, the only new things related to MM is mostly online often mobile or browser games, lots of them, some of them no longer exist, like Might and Magic: Heroes Kingdoms, which was shutdown in 2014, other I swear they were shutdown,is Might and Magic Chess Royale, which turn out I mistake it with Might and Magic Showdown, which was closed. It is very confusing to follow. Most are spinoff based on the Heroes side of the franchise.

When you think about the whole retro aesthetic revival, plus the whole old school crpg revival (Legend of Grimrock, Divinity Original Sin), you could almost see Uni trying to ride the wave, after all, they have a classic crpg franchise right there, not only this, one of the few crpg franchise with this whole sci-fi angle in the west. However, their (or Hascoet) dislike for Fantasy, mostly made them lose this opportunity almost more than once, Limbic, if they had time and resource they likely could flash out MM10 a lot more and even how know what next. Well, for a while didn't Ubi got Obsidian doing some of those Southpark games? How about instead, they allow Obsidian to take a chance with a Might and Magic game?

Given how Ubisoft love doing annual games, they could even make an alternation between one Heroes game followed by a Might and Magic and so on.

Now to be fair, Heroes did gain a unique visual design with Ubi, which sort bring back colors, as Heroes was always a very colorful game (I remember a video review which complained about HOMM5 colors, which amused me of how wrong it was), and you can feel they got almost very close to make a decent HOMM game more than once, specially if you consider the huge shadow that HOMM 3 cast over the whole franchise. I mean, there were other strategy games with much more complicated starts that made a turnaround and HOMM games often aren't in such dire straits, but they often appear to be dropped out earlier.

Now MM (the rpgs) begin sort death, while sad in very light way, isn't the end of the world, after all, dungeon crawler genre is far from death, I mean, right now Nisa just announced bring one more game of Strange of Sword City series, which I am really looking forward as myself I found moving more toward jrpgs, however, the thing with Heroes of Might and Magic is complicated.

Heroes of Might and Magic, while simple in nature is hard to pin down, what exactly is. I have seen people often saying is a 4X (which would put it side by side with things like Age of Wonders, Masters of Magic and even things like the Warlord series). But this definition, never really clicked with me, because if you are to draw a line, where its origins are, you have to go back to Kings Bounty (NWC, 1990). Now this is the one which is even hard to pin down what exactly is, because is sort hard to find something similar.

The closest games to the Heroes series, is Disciples (which is the colorless and more gothic version of HOMM) and Nival’s own King´s Bounty series, but both become their own things over time, also Disciples series is actually death, however there is a new King´s Bounty game to be released, but I don't know what to think about.

In my humble opinion, Heroes is a game much about its pace, it's often about exploring a map in a relaxed fashion, listening to some awesome and relaxing music and fighting tactical battles, but later games sort move toward this almost “rush” based design, where you need to rush to do something which isn't most time explained or clear. To make things worst the games under Ubi often suffer from this overuse of “spawn an enemy behind you” trick, enemy armies grow to absurd numbers which can make a map impossible to win.

I mean, these days I tried to play HOMM6 again, in one of the DLCs, which was so poorly design that catch me off guard. Context: The DLC was about Sandro, the map in question you start with a town which can't recruit any creature or be upgraded. The map after sometime your maybe if get to close to a certain spot, will spawn a powerful enemy hero which make a beeline towards you (the AI know exactly where you are) and most time will be impossible to defeat. To make matter worst, dialogue in the map give this wrong idea that you would have time to explore around, but nope. From what I could gather I think they expect you to rush out and take some place which you aren't aware off with almost no army behind you.

Links for All the Parts:

Part One: Might and Magic X — An Fitting End? Part One

Part Two: Might and Magic X — An Fitting End? Part Two - The Early Games

Part Three: Might and Magic X — An Fitting End? Part Three - The 3DO Era

Part Four: Might and Magic X - The End (Part 4)

Notes:

• I made a mistake, there is not Heretic of Might and Magic, instead, what we had was Warriors of Might and Magic, which as far my memory goes, it was exclusive to 3DO or maybe just console only.
• I mostly like focus on the general aspects of the series during this period, commenting on visual, “rule set” (mechanics) instead of covering the plot of the games in detail. Again, the games during this period still high playable and there is even some nice mods out there.

Nature of the World - II

With MM VI we not just enter the 3DO era, but the moment which MM games moved from the grid toward “full 3D” (for contest, during this time, many crpg games are moving toward this and more action design, often dropping party in favor of single character) a transition which isn’t very smooth and a couple problem will crop up. During this period, there will be four games, of which three (MM VI to MM VIII) will use the same engine and sort the same “rule set”, this is also the moment, where HOMM and MM cross paths a lot, but this is also the moment which lot of inconsistency elements pop up. The last game, the infamous MM IX, uses a new engine and sort a new “rule set”.

Now it is important to understand, before we move on : under 3DO thing get difficult for NWC, while themselves believed that they might need between two and three years to really make a good game (either a MM or HOMM), 3DO didn’t care about that at all, at best they give them a year, sometime even less. This mean that NWC never had enough time to proper polish or push their engine. With that said, let’s continue.

When I say the games went full 3D this isn’t the open world game where might expect today, MM world space still organized in much the same way it was on the grid era. You have overland maps, which side by side, compose the whole world. To travel to one map to the other you could either reach its border and the game would tell you that it would take a couple of in game days to get there, or you could use some fast travel, in way of either carriages and ships, which instantly teleport you to a place following a certain schedule.

The world design sort tries to reproduce or follow, HOMM design, as you might find yourself visiting places such as Steadwick, Avlee, Tatalia, Barcada and so on. However, some places really don't match the HOMM representation, Steadwick has no walls, Avlee look like generic elf city, Tatalia, which in HOMM was the town with Lizardman, Gnolls, ect… having a swamp theme, somehow is just a human town with some snow in the north and a few swamps in the south. Meanwhile, Barcada is a city floating in the sky.

This is the moment, where both in plot and design, while MM and HOMM follow close together, with entire story arch happening either before or after one game or another, but this is also the point where things also get or fell very inconstant, sometimes they try to fix that with a spin off or in one of the sequels for HOMM, but unless you have played them you might don’t know.

This also extend itself to enemies you face, which sometimes, are akin to HOMM design, but other times they, don’t match it at all and other make very little sense.

Weight of Time

The question of how much something did or did not age well, is often the first thing we think about 3D, which is complicated question — because it is too easy to fall on “false necessity” mindset and simple assume everything which isn’t the current top is “too old”. But, 3D sometimes, more than 2D or even earlier 3D (specially the 3D gird first person view) can age a lot.

However, I personally think, that while 3D model/asset age faster, the world itself, is less about how exactly is, but how things around work. Let me give an example, if you compare Arena (ES 1) and Daggerfall (ES 2), the graphics itself aren’t that different, what does change, and sometimes make Arena feel much older, it’s to that navigate in that world is much harder, due stuff like cities being generated in a bizarre way where they are simple too huge and the map on the game not only does not make shops and normal building different, you have to either have a npc mark it to appear on the map or do it yourself, meaning that simple finding a shop can become an issue. Daggerfall in other hand, possessed much better generated cities and navigate in them was easier, since stuff like shops, taverns and other begin color different in the map, while simple looking at a building, will mark it on your map.

But what MM? At least between MM VI and MM VIII, the graphic, visual and design of the world itself good, however, the engine is very angular meaning that meshes often feature acute angles. The textures in MM VI are very crisp, but more vivid and colorful, while MM VII textures are more muted and saturated, however they are more uniform, which at time can feel bit bland. MM VIII on the other hand, feature again a more crisp visual and more color. Remember, NWC never had enough time to push or polish really anything thanks to 3DO.

The design of individual spaces (such as towns, dungeons, open spaces, ect…) can feature memorable places, such as, Kriegspire (MMVI), New Sorgipal (MM VI), Harmondale (MM VII), while other might feel bland due textures or design such as the Tunnels of Nighon(MMVIII), Castle Alamos (MMVII), Darkmore (MMVII) or maybe a let down depending on of your expectations (like Regna in MM VIII).

Major part of assets/models, look ok, overall, since they follow HOMM design, the general direction is more toward a standard high fantasy. They don’t change much between games, in fact many would be reused in two ways, often an enemy model would be reused for different variations of the said enemy, sometimes by changing individual details or some colors, other times what did was reuse the whole model but with entire new color in an overlay effect. As example, in MM VII you have Rats (which are gray) and its variations, which the same model but the colors changed to purple or green.

Talking about assets and models, MM 6 to MM 8, alongside the animated avatars, it also featured paper dolls for the party members, which you drop gear to equip them, it was a nice feature, as some armor and weapons did look excellent, however, sometimes, they don’t appear to match the paper doll really well.

The paper doll themselves are good, they were fairly simple in MM6 but in MM7 and MM8, they are 3d models, however the MM7 does look better than MM8, as the later feature some strange colors and the model itself look a bit strange for some characters. Also is worth mention, the npc portraits are actual photos in MM6, but from MM7 and foward most where 3d models.

Now, one major change, is that while in the older games, they could leave things for imagination, specially the more sci-fi elements, here they are more literal, which sometimes work, like when in MM VII when you explore the Lincoln Spaceship, which features a very dark sci-fi themes with robots, whose design, isn’t so much different from what you meet in MM 3–5, but with much lesser colors. Others look out of place, like in MM VI, where you visit the Tomb of Varn, which have its outside looking like a Mayan Pyramid, while the interior looks like an Egyptian pyramid, some enemies there are the Defender of Varn (and its variation, Sentinel and Guardian) an Anubis like figures which look straight from Stargate.

Rules of Engagement

One of the major struggle the games during this period face is they sort try to have MM massed combat again, which isn’t itself a bad idea, however get the whole “party vs enemies” in early 3D working the same it did on grid is rather trick, there was also the tendency of crpg during this period moving more toward single player action. In the MM games, the result is sort mixed, overall it works fines, but it can get repetitive or fell less strategic. But let me explain the basic of it:

You move in more free 3D first person view and enemies move around freely too, you can either engage them in real time (even attacking them at distance, like Xeen, in fact you will use this a lot), or you can enter a “turn base” mode, where at the end of each turn you can move around a bit (this was introduced in MM7, before that you had to leave turn based mode to move).

Now, this mean that most time you either be using long ranged attacks as mobs approach you or using melee, something you do it over and over again. Spells still crucial, but since now space itself is represented in more literal way, it also introduces an issue, back there, due enemies begin all in one space, area effect spell had their range work at 100%, if a Fire Ball is meant to hit up to six or eight enemies and there is six to eight of them, it will hit all of them.

However, now, you can’t be that sure, meaning that area of effect spell become sort less reliable and some spell have area of effect so specific, that it make hard use them at all. Since the game never show their actual area of impact, while enemies often are grouped in mobs, is hard to figure exactly how many enemies will be hit, or how much distance you need to keepin order to avoid the spell hit your own party.

Outside of spells, you have no other mean of facing mobs, outside of single melee (or long range) attack against a single enemy (you still have the concept of attack per round, however these are all used in a single enemy).

Which mean you keep attacking over and over again, something which can get old fast, but thanks to a sort of balance, between how your party grows powerful and enemies most of the time don’t have inflated HPs, this is sort avoid most of the time. However, there are moment when problems rise, specially the end of MM6, where you can only use Ancient Weapons against the Kreegans which have inflated HP and number beyond counting or the end of MM8, inside Escaton tower, this happens again as you face several Crystal Guardians and Planes and Chaos Overlords, which also have tons of HP or the Nighon Tunnel on MM7 is also another moment, as there are tons of enemies there and again, with lots of HP.

Another issue that arises, is that during 3DO era, due everything begin a 3D model, which isn’t easy or cheap do to, you sort have fewer variations of enemies (Xeen had fixed encounter but featured tons of sprites for enemies), what you have is the same model recolored with different stats, which means that, per example, during the exploration of the Dwarven Borrows in MM7, you face just Rats, Bats and Skeletons, over and over again, maybe in some different colors, but the same thing.

There is an old joke about how a dungeon with bugbears in one room and orcs in other make not much sense, and that sort true… but it also misses the point that an entire dungeon with the same enemies risk it became tedious, unless you have some means to keep it fresh, however, 3DO era games, don’t have that luxury and that sort becomes a problem as time passes, as it all it could do is have a room full of enemies over and over again.

Another issue, is that face lots of enemies in real time had the weird side effect of making any enemy which cast spells, suddenly becoming way more dangerous, simple by the fact that you will be hit over and over again in maybe causing you to be overwhelmed, this is the reason why people often dislike Castle Alamo in MM6, where simple walk around mean get hit by lots of spells all at once.

Music

Probably one of the most memorable aspect of MM games this period, it is the soundtrack, it is so good, that at times if feel carries the games around and is part of the charm. As often soundtrack for video game it is very non-intrusive, I mean, really non-intrusive, to a point where it can dangerously feel almost bland, but it does feel very different from average score for a fantasy crpg, begin soothing and peaceful at times.

Now, the other sounds are a mixed bag, most of them work well, expect ion maybe begin the infamous fanfare that plays every time you enter in turn base mode, get ready to have it play over and over and over again.

The voice work is ok, when you create a character you can choose a voice, many npcs are voiced too. Most sound fine, but some line delivery can either feel very weird or at best dorky, such as npc making Star Trek references, other feel strange, such as shopkeepers which insult you if you have a lot of money but don’t buy anything.

With that all done, lets at last talk about games:, to keep things short, I mostly talk a bit about the plot and how characer creation and other mechanics around worked.

Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven

Like I said, earlier, MM6 to MM8 would feature around the same “rule set” with some small changes between each game. From this point on, parties would be reduced to four character, only growing to five in MM8.

You would have the classic atributtes (Might, Endurance, Luck, Personality, Intellect, Accuracy), but in MM6, there was only one race of character, humans, and only a six classes — Knight, Paladin, Archer, Cleric, Sorcerer and Druid.

Back from MM2, is the concept of promotion, now each class would have two levels of promotion, Knights, as example could get promoted first to Cavalier and later to Champions. Each promotion would require a special quest and would increase some stats of the character.

New to this trilogy, is the addition of skills: in MM6, each class have access to certain skills, either weapons (Sword, Axe, Bow, Dagger, Spear, Mace and Blaster), armor (Shield, Plate, Leather or Mail), elemental magic (Fire, Air, Earth, Water), clerical magic (Body, Spirit, Mind), and the spell of light and dark. However, all classes have access to all miscellaneous skills (disarm trap, merchant, mediation, identify item and others).

It would go some like this:

Knights (All weapons and all armor), Archers (All weapons, Chain, Leather and elemental magic), Paladins (All weapons, armor and clerical magic skills), Clerics (Mace, Staff, Bow, Shield, Plate and Chain and all clerical magic skills, alongside with Light and Dark magic skills), Sorceror (Bow, Staff, Dagger, Leather, all elemental magic and Light and Dark), Druids (Staff, Dagger, Bow, Leather, all cleric and elemental magic).

To improve your skills you would spend points, which you gain when you level up, when you got enough you can find a skills trainer and promote first to Expert and later to Master.

Now this trick part for MM6, the npc which would train you were scattered over the world and the game didn't record it, so you had to do it by hand. Also, the actual requirement for upgrade, could change, weapons often require the skill begin at level 7 for master, but magic would require 12. To make things even more confusing, certain skills might require attributes at certain level or even perform a quest. Remember the game don't record, so you had to not only knew where the npcs are but the requirement too.

While you might wander, why exactly this game have the subtitle of “Mandate of Heaven”, unlikely other subtitles in game, this one make sense. You see, Enroth is facing several disasters, the first being nothing else that the Kreegan invasion, at this time however they where less “demons” and more insect like aliens, even featuring a hive mind. They kidnap King Roland Ironfist (yeah, the same guy from HOMM 2, which the son of the main knight leader in HOMM 1), leaving only his child Nicolai in the throne, while his mother, Catherine is busy in her own kingdom, Erathia.

Alongside the Kreegan came a vast array of problem plus an apocalyptic cult, the Cult of Baa, which start to preach around the idea that the Ironfist have lost the “Mandate of Heaven” to sow unrest and rebellion.

Your party had just survived one of the Kreegan attacks which destroy your hometown of Sweetwater, thanks to Falagar (also a character from HOMM 1 and 2), he trains your party until they can set out and uncover what is going on. Your adventures will lead to a lot of places, even meeting some old faces, such as Archibald (from HOMM 2), visiting a computer and then destroying the Kreegan colony.

For many people this is the highest point during the 3DO era, while later games would feature a couple of polished aspects, MM6 was the best. Now, I have to confess, that I played them out of order, back there when the game was released could never found MM6 where I live, so I skipped to MM7 and MM8, only later via GOG that I could play it. while I enjoyed when I played, I did feel fatigue from the combat system towards the end.

Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor

While MM6 title made sense, this one is does not make. The plot start in a curious way, first you see eight mysterious figures emerging from the sea, but once they got on the shore they have a fight and split up, as the event is narrated by both a group of goblins under Archibald and some elves under Gavin Magnus.

After this you have Lord Markham doing a scavenger hunt on Emerald Island, the winner become the lord of Harmondale, if you think this sound suspicious, because it is. This is also the literal tutorial island.

Once your party become lords of Harmondale, not only you have to restore it (much like you did in New Castle in Xeen), but slowly uncover a mysterious plot unfolding in Erathia. There will be a lot of famous characters showing up, from Catherine, Archibald, Roland (which at least is rescued) and couple other… including that group I mentioned, they were nothing else that the default party from MM3! (you might remember way back I told that the MM3 party is composed of six characters, so you wonder how are this extra two figures: They are meant to be hirelings).

While MM6 plot is pretty linear, MM7, does have more choices, even if an illusion of it, as things unfold, you have to choose a side in an unfolding conflict. The actual effect of said branch are quite limited, but for a game that like had at best a year of development, it does work, this along with some changes made to character creation and promotions, giving the game lot of replay value, as you can experiment some class combinations in different paths.

There was two different endings, on the Good ending, your party build a gate from which they can contact the Ancients again and even meet Corak, well not to THE Corak, but another one. On the Evil ending, your party build the “Heavenly Forge”, a device of the Ancients, which allow the evil side to arm themselves with futuristic weapons. For a short while, this was the canon ending, until the whole “Forge Town” incident.

In MM7 the character creation was expanded, there are now four races: Humans, Elves, Goblins and Dwarves and three new classes — Thieves, Monks and Rangers.

The promotion quest changed, as the final level is now split, depending on of the choices you make in the plot, as main point you need to either choose Good or Evil path, and the decision would unlock the final promotion. So, again, using a Knight as example, you would promotion to Cavalier and then either Champion (Good) or Black Knight (Evil). Special mention goes to Sorcerers, which would first become Wizard and them, either Archmages (Good) or Lichs (Evil). Yeah, you could become a Lich in MM7, it was pretty cool.

There was also new skills, such as Unarmed and Dodge skills and old one got reshuffled around, while a whole new level of expertise, Grandmaster was added… This is it point where some issues happen:

While all classes in MM6, could learn their skills at maximum level, in MM7, they introduced the concept, that classes not only would have their own skill selection, but the maximum level they could be learned was different for each class, as example, only Knights could learn Sword at Grandmaster level, Thieves and Paladins would be limited at Master, while, Archers, Monks and Ranger can only reach limited to Expert. This restriction were extended to miscellaneous skills too.

This made classes feel more unique but also introduced some problems, as some classes might have access to skills at such limited level, that sort made pointless to even acquire it, like — Thieves could learn only the Basic level for Air, Fire, Water and Earth magic spells, which open the question, why you even bother to do that?

But the worst case was Disarm Trap, which without you risk dying by simple trying to open a chest or simple being unable to open it, of all the classes, only Thieves could learn it at Grandmaster, beside them, only the evil path promotion for Monk, Ninja, could learn at Master. Everybody else either didn’t have access or where limited to Expert. This means, you have not many options but have a Thief, unless you go in the evil path and had a Ninja. But even if you do this, without Grandmaster level, you could die by opening a chest. Now, there are some ways around as a spell for the Earth school of magic would allow you to open chests at distances, but still…

Also, while the game feature promotions for either Good or Evil, the classes themselves don’t change at all. Champions and Black Knight are identical, as many other, the exception, was that evil Paladins, Clerics and Sorcerers got access do Dark Magic (while the good ones got the Light magic) the only classes which felt slight different, is the already mentioned Monk, which in the evil path, got access to Disarm Trap but in the good promotion (Master), only allow you to learn cleric magic at Expert level.

However on the good side, skill trainer npcs where better spread around and now the game register where they are so you don’t need to keep manual notes.

Between the expended character creation and the two paths the story could unfold, combined with the more uniform design and colors, make for a very good game, even if at times, it appears to lack the crisp and vivid colors of MM6 or some of it design.

Might and Magic VIII — Day of the Destroyer.

Now we are approaching the end of the 3DO era, MM VIII was also released in a tight schedule, but still manage to be a good game. The Ancients, maybe in a zero tolerance police, decided that every planet that was infested by Kreegans should be destroyed and so they send Escaton, to unleash the end of the world.

But, if you played HOMM 3 and it sequels, plus previous MM6 and MM7, you might rightly make a case of the Kreegans already being defeated and you will be most correct...Not that the Ancient cared about that, they still follow the doomsday protocol to the letter no matter what, and here is a missed opportunity, but I talk about this latter.

Anyway, Escaton arrives in Jadame (a continent in Antagarich) where he summons a crystal tower, from which he releases several natural disaster upon the land. Your character (which the game call “Hero of Jadame”) emerge during this chaos and soon is tasked by the Dark Elves to find and contact the five major factions of Jadame and make alliance with three of them to counter the disasters.

Here is when MM8 shines, because while the choices in MM7 can feel a bit hollow, here you do have more choices with a more sense of trade off, because some factions are enemies of others and you have to choose one You have Dragons and the Dragon Hunters (led by no one else that Quixote, a npc from MM7) and Priest of the Sun vs Necromancers (lead by Sandro, a classic character from HOMM). To be fair, while picking up a side, might mean not get the other, you still have a party composed of characters from conflicting factions, like a Knight and a Dragon, or have a Priest of the Sun and a Lich at the same time, despite picking one side or the other. If memory didn’t fail me, I think that shops in the Dragon Hunter camp might be closed to you, if you choose the Dragons, but I could be wrong.

Problem is that the plot, despite these choices can feel like it does not really react to you. Escaton appear, summon the tower and cause the disaster in the start of the game, but that is it. From this point on, he does not confront you at any moment nor tries to interact with you, even while your party slowly disrupt his plans. He just stands there, until the final moments. It is implied he didn’t mean or wish to do what he was doing, but you only learn this at the final moments. Also, the aspect of the Ancient, which were often portraited as good figures, going in a different direction isn't explored at all.

On character creation is where MM8 change things a lot — first, here instead of creating a party you create a main character and could recruit characters, also the party got expanded to five slots.

Also, here you outside of Humans, which could only be Knights, Clerics and Necromancers (it is a sorcerer which already have access do Dark magic), you have Monster Races/Classes: Minotaurs, Trolls, Vampires and Dragons (which aren’t available in the character creation).

Now, most of them, sort fill already existent roles of older classes, such as Dark Elves, which are sort a mix between Archer and Thieves, Minotaurs which are between Paladins and Rangers, Vampires and Trolls are slight hard to pinpoint however, while Dragons are simple broken, but not in a bad way (we will talk about this later).

The promotion quest got now reduced to a single promotion and there is now Good or Evil side, so now Knights go straight to Champion, while Necromancer become Lichs.

The skills didn’t change much, there is some small addition, such as Regeneration, a skill which only Trolls could learn at Grand Master, while Vampires, Dark Elves and Dragons, had access to their own unique skill, which represent their unique abilities (as example, Dragons at their basic level of their skills, got gain the ability cause fear, at Expert they got a fire breath attack, Master they can fly and at Grandmaster they can push enemies way with their wing). The only other notable change was that for some reason, Clerics can no longer learn Mace at Grandmaster level.

Now, does the change on party system work? Well, it complicated, while you have a main character and can change party members, this isn’t like other game of the same period, such as Baldur’s Gate, here you don’t have any conflict or complex rules to get the party together, like I said, you can still recruit a Lich to your party, despite have done the quest for the Priest of the Sun. However, this does not mean I think they should copy that Baldur´s Gate concept, I confess not begin a big fan, due the whole thing feel a bit restrictive at times often requiring you to check walkthroughs and guide just to figure which party member can work or not.

Also, the freedom of the party system does allow you to explore around more — as you can try to recruit a powerful character early on to speed things or pass some difficult part up or just to try someone else abilities. In fact, one of the fun things of MM8, was trying to get a Dragon to your party as soon as possible, and if you know where to look, the game get a lot easier and even better. Once you got a Dragon and manage to train it to reach Master level in Dragon skill, you get access to fly at will, which made the game much more fun to explore, as you might don't need a Sorcerer.

While the plot feel static at times and despite some last minute suggestion of something bigger happen in the future, as Escaton send some mechanical spider to tell the Ancients that he failed, MM8 feel mixed, in one hand feel more vivid and dynamic, with the alliance quest, the new races look great. But what I think leave this mixed feeling is that this is the end in more than one way.

In one hand, this will be the last game in Enroth and all your effort to save it are throw out the windows with the decision by the developers to destroy the world anyway in HOMM 4, so playing feel weird, like everything is about this eminent day of destruction but... even if you save the say and Escaton leaves some last minute hints, it all fell pointless or not so dangerous.

In the other is the last game of this trilogy too and the last one using this engine. But there is one more game... If you read up to this point, you might wonder: What about MM9?

So…

Might and Magic IX: Writ of Fate

This is a game kind hard to talk about because in the surface, while it is the worst MM game, featuring terrible design, pace, etc…it might look easy, almost fun to talk about… until you know the story behind…

You see, originally, MM IX was meant to be a sort “reboot” for the series, if would ditch (or that was largely implied) the old mix of fantasy and sci-fi, for a more traditional western fantasy, specially viking/norse themes. Meaning the series was sort giving up it own unique identity/distinction, in a dangerous gamble, since it risk “trying to be new, by becoming like everyone else”, but like any gamble, maybe just maybe, there was a chance that it could work, how knows? Except, that everything that could happen to make things more difficult and reduce the changes of success, did happen…

As 3DO collapsed, they tried hard as they can milk everything they could. The people at NWC maybe had a vision, but 3DO simple won’t give them time or resources to really do anything, forcing the game to be released, in something that the developers themselves could not call a beta (or alpha, I can't remember the exact words).

The result was a disaster, we all know. I won’t enter in details, but had everything you could expect from a rushed game, there is no shortage of videos and texts about. But, just to give an idea, npcs had really weird, “half faces” for textures, meaning, they just had time to draw half of the face texture and then had to simple copy, past and flip it. I might lack the screenshots, but believe in me, it was jarring. Other stuff was sometimes, npc instead of handling you something, they have the item just throw in the ground right beside them. Quests might end abrupt or bizarre way.

World design (and by this I mean, both towns, dungeons, forests, ect…) where very inconsistent, sometimes you can tell they tried to make somewhat “realistic towns”, but sometimes, they simply look strange and off scale, or other they feel like a huge let down, like the game stand in for Asgard, which just look like any other town. Places could only be reached by a single path, which lead to strange sequences, like — there was a place where the player can reach by following a tunnel full of ghosts, later a battle between armies was meant to be fought (off-screen) there, this lead to strange situation, since there is one only way was the tunnel, this meant that the wholes armies went inside? What they did with the ghosts?

The rest? Well, it was bad in a way, that I simply can’t remember almost anything. I played the whole game, and I can’t remember almost single location, everything sort became blur, expect the initial monastery and end dungeon, I had to even look some videos to refresh my memory, only to remember annoying places, such one map you need to do the whole “light and mirror” puzzle, but down to exact degrees.

The visual and design feel trying to be similar to early D&D 3 edition but with a light Celtic/Nordic theme applied over. Gone is the paper dolls, you still choose an avatar for each party member.

Like I said earlier, this was sort a reboot, for the series, despite your work to stop Escaton in MM8, the planet was destroyed anyway, if you remember HOMM and its expansion, there was the Armageddon Blade and another Sword of Frost which aren’t meant to be clashed, and guess what happen? They clash and the world goes boom (this is the main plot of HOMM 4), people have to flee to other worlds, and so we now move to another world.

The plot, was about the Belgarian Hordes invading Chedian, lead by Temur Leng. It upon the player to unite the Jarls to make a stand. But things are not so simple, very late in the game there is an attempt at a twist: you figure that Temur was being manipulated by the game equivalent of Loki, since he was given a “false writ of fate”, once the betrayal is revealed, he joins you as a hireling and you two set out to stop this god. However, due the game problems, you might never ever know this, since you might simply drop it way before.

Similar to what happened in MM8, the plot feel very static, if not frozen, you are just told the Belgarian are coming, but they don’t really do anything you can see, in fact you might spend almost 90% of the game with no idea of what they even look like. The Jarls you have to unite, are not much better, unlike MM8, where you different factions, but you could at least choose sides (like the Dragons or the Dragon Hunters), here you have an X number of Jarls and you need to get them all, despite them having either zero personality or at best single personality trait.

This does not mean, the game tries to have some original moments, in one scene, that happen off-screen, after you united the Jarls, they set out to battle the Belgarian, however, they are betrayed and defeated. For a moment all appear to be lost, however, then one of the most original quest of game happen, which heavily draw on Celtic and Finnish myths, where you must find a cauldron, from where you can bring back to life the defeated army. This all however, sort happen off-screen, I mean you do the quest, bring the Jarls back to life and their army. Once this is done is time to face Temur, there the twist is reveled, and he joins you.

From this point, you must travel to the in-game stand in for Asgard, there you receive a quest to trap the game stand in for Loki inside the Tomb of Thousand Horror (a classic dungeon in the MM universe) and the game ends.

I talked a lot about character creation, how the thing work here? Tip, not very well, now you have four races (humans, half orcs, elves and dwarves), classes now have three promotions, starting with only two (Fighter and Initiate) and form this two breaches out, at the first level of promotion Fighter could become Crusader or Mercenaries, Initiates could become Scholar or Healers. On the final level, as example a Mercenary could either become a Gladiator or an Assassin, and so on.

Spells now are no longer organized in schools, but instead to have access to them you often need one or more magic skills, but also made spell caster feeling identical at times. Talking about skills, what I remember most is that they were more confusing than previous game, due poor UI, I had often to check a guide to see which class can train at each level.

The pace was terrible, but again in a weird way, in one hand the Lithtech Engine, make you moving too fast, but combat often feel really slow due enemies having tons of HP, early one fighter classes appear powerful, but your magic users look useless, in late game the tables appear to turn and now magic classes appear slight better, while fighter fall behind.

In my own experience, with two fighters and two magic users, I found that early one, only my fighters appear to do anything, meaning that my magic users kind sit behind. Later, as I said, magic getter better and now the fighters sit and watch my two magic users keeping castings the same two spells (I think was Meteor Shower and Poison Cloud) over and over and over and over and over again. This made the pace feel even worst, specially in the last dungeon.

With this, the 3DO era close and I mean literally, because 3DO and NWC didn’t survive for much longer. The rights for the franchise would be later sold to Ubisoft once 3DO goes bankrupt.

While I could only play MM9 much later, I remember seeing people talking about the game in an MM forum which I visited (sorry I can't remember the actual name of the place) and the negative feelings toward it (or at best mixed), for me at the time, between all I read about bugs and problems, along with the game becoming more generic, left me with no desire to try it.

Only later, with a community patch I did played, and it is still bad, but in sad way, like you get this glimpses of what it could be, which is I think many people the community feel about the game now.

Links for All the Parts:

Part One: Might and Magic X — An Fitting End? Part One

Part Two: Might and Magic X — An Fitting End? Part Two - The Early Games

Part Three: Might and Magic X — An Fitting End? Part Three - The 3DO Era

Part Four: Might and Magic X - The End (Part 4)

Initial Notes:

• Turns that I sort forget about Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, a action based light rpg by Arkane, which is a very good game from what I hear and little I played. The concept of more action game in MM franchise is not new however, as there is Heretics of Might and Magic and Crusaders of Might and Magic, both published by 3DO.
• While I was trying to see if I really missed the screenshots, I did found out some notes of earlier versions of what I planned to write, which might help to speed thing a bit.
• Talking about speeding things up, like I said, I start to write this down in order to finally put it down, after too much time planning and never doing it. Even while I write drafts I noticed that I spend too much time describing stuff and decided to cut it down, since many of the games still high playble and easy to acess and so to avoid spoilers, I will only try to talk the essential, except for earlier games, which are might slight hard to play.
• Like I said before, this part and the next one are sort a recap of the series, I decided to split it to both avoid the text begin two huge and also to give me more time to talk about MM 6 - 9.

I remember, a long time ago, watching the anime “Hai to Gensou no Grimgar” (Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash), which was about a group of strangers that were teleported to a fantasy world, in other words your well known Isekai, but they don’t really remember their previous lives and had to struggle a lot, specially early on.

This initial struggle, where in the first chapters, the protagonists somehow manage to fail to kill a single goblin, until one day they managed to defeat a one, in a very brutal fight. From there they start to speed up, getting better, improving their gear, but also getting themselves in more trouble, that kind stuck with me.

Then I figured out why, it mostly because, either by accident or design, it captures really well how some old crpgs would play sometimes. It reminded me a lot when I first played Might and Magic II: Gates to Another World (1988) and even some other games which I had start playing such as the Wizardry series or the Golden Box titles. Most of what I say next are most toward crpg not so much tabletop.

In some of this games you sort have “three phases”, which I will call “Survival”, “Turning Point” and “Acceleration”.

The first is the Survival, if you play now, either the first Might and Magic or the second game, you might find it very hard — you build a party, start out with minimal resources and each battle could be pretty brutal, in sort its the “early game hell” trope. The reason why, is a combination of elements: first is the obvious one, since you start in these games at level 1 (and many of this games would feature rulet straight from tabletop or at least inspired by), this is the easiest moment to die, the second is the often “random” nature of this game can generate rather deadly situations. During this phase you likely can only take a single combat each time, before you need to rest, therefore the exploration is rather slow.

However sometimes, the Survival phase, can give the game a feeling, specially for dungeon crawlers, of “pushing up your luck” (due the random monsters) and of “risk and reward” (due random rewards), that often fit well with the game themes and atmosphere.

But, the keyword is “phase” because it doesn’t last for long. Or at least isn´t meant to last too much, as it is very trick to get it right without risking producing feeling of either no progress or thing begin too slow.

Note, that the whole survival thing, might don´t work really well in table top, there is a reason why people back in AD&D would skip the first three levels or more.

The second, “Turning Point”, is not much a phase, but a moment, it could be when you reach level 3 or more, at this point, things start to speed up, you can take more combats before each rest and can fight hard enemies, this moment will lead to the Acceleration Phase. As things speed up, you can now take more combats, explore futher before each rest, while rewards increase (but a key factor is for that rewards have to be worth). This continues until the game end. Maybe this was also something that happen by accident, due either monsters list never have something enough to keep up with the player most of the time. Also this might be because sometime older crpg aren´t afraid to give powerful stuff early one, if you know where to look (per example, Eye of the Beholder, had Dagger+4 very well hidden in the first level, I think one of the Ultima games, you had island where if you know the right step you can find powerful loot).

What this all mean? In a curious way, sometimes in older crpg the difficult curve isn´t the way we might expect, but slight backwards, and by this I mean the start can feel harder in the start but as the game follows it get easier. But this does not mean the game will have certain spikes.

Another thing I also which to talk about, is what kind of crpg, MM series even was? I think this is important, because its easy to assume, that all old crpg, “are the same game”, as you often see very different games in tone, thematics, pace and setting often throw in all in the same basket, often in a dimissive way. But what happened is that you have very different lines, paths (and so voices in a certain way), and one thing I hope with this articles is showing the path which the MM series followed and not just nostalgia for it own sake.

With that said, lets begin, for now let´s do a recap of the series:

Might and Magic I — Secret of the Inner Sanctum.

The first and obvious the oldest one in the series, it still a good game, but the age and the limitations of the perido do show. It is easy to forget, but early crpg had to struggle a lot of technical limitations of their period, often entire parts of the plot and even descriptions of items or spell had to either be cut, left in manual or hint book or saved for a next game due stuff such as storage limitations (I mean, this game would come in those old 5 ¹⁄₄ disks, which hold something like 512 kb).

That mean if you which to play it now, be sure to check a faq and the manual, because, you need to check which spells you need to cast, an item description or even some of the really obscure quests which the game featured. You might also need this for the maps, as the game didn´t have an automap.

MM1 was port to a lot of plataforms, such as NES, PC Engine, PC98 and so on, this versions often could be very different, such as the NES/PC Engine/PC 98 which give the game a whole jrpg vibe, with better graphics and even voices! I confess that I really curious about this other versions, do they keep the whole sci fi angle? how Corak and Sheltem look? If you know, please tell!

The main plot is about your character setting out to figure why the good King Alamar, suddenly turn in to a tyrant. But before this you had to create a party and level it up (the so said “survival phase”), something you did by either fighting enemies while exploring the initial town or doing some side quests (but finding the said quest, could be hard and their difficult wasn´t clear, that why without a guide is easy to feel lost since you don´t know where exactly you can go or not).

Note, remember the whole turning point? There is moment, where around level 7, you can go to a map (C3) fighting some wyverns, they give good xp and loot and farming them, allow thing to gain speed.

As you can explore further you can take other quest and the said main quest, now this is when the game get confusing and the information limitation hit hard, you had creative quests, such as the Og one where you need to find two Idols and them answer a question, or there “Judgement Day” where find prisioners and depending of how you treat them you are jugded by in acorrd to your character alignment. But the process was confusing like hell.

Even the main quest which, if memory didn´t fail me start with a quest to find some scrolls for some three mages then you need to find a magic whistle… I won´t spoil the whole thing, but without a guide, it could be hard to figure it out, even if the game give you some hints.

Now as you approch the final quest, you use the “Eye of Goros” to revel that the Alamar in the throne isn´t the real one, but someone named Sheltem, an rouge agent of mysterious and powerful alien species know as the Ancients. He eventually flees and you meet another person, of the same species — Corak, which unlike Sheltem is good agent of the Ancients. By the way, you also find out that VARN the world you are, isn´t a world, but part of spaceship, in fact, VARN stand for “Vehicular Astropod Research Nacelle”.

By least you finally go after the so said, “Inner Sanctum”, which was extra final quest, where in the Astral Plane, you find a scientist which give you a rough explantion of the plot and a final score.

This game introduces the classic MM attributes: Might, Intellect, Personality, Speed, Accuracy, Endurance e Luck. Featured the following classes: Knight, Archer, Paladin, Robber, Sorcerer, Cleric and you had the following races: Humans, Dwarves, Elfs, Gnomes e Half-Orcs.

In this game we first hear a lot of names, which would show up in later MM and HOMM games, such as Crag Hack, Lord Ironfist, Alamar, The Eye of Goros, Og and Kilburn. Now keep in mind, while the names do show up, it´s hard to tell if they aren´t meant to be the same person or not. Most time it appear not. Except for Corak and Sheltem.

Might and Magic II — Gates to Another World.

This game, maybe even more than MM4 and MM5, is the one know like the back of my hand. This was the first MM game I every played and the one I most played for the longest time, in fact, come to think, this maybe was the first western crpg I played.

You might notice, the whole "Book Two" and the "Book One" in a previous screenshot. While we might think as planned sequels as something modern, turn the whole thing is much older that you think.

Like MM1, MM2 was also ported to a lot of stuff, which of all, which only three I am more familiar:

PC/MSDOS: The classic version, graphics are minimal (few colors and most are blue), spell only have level and circle (meaning you need the manual), during combat, the sprite of the monster don´t change. Minimal music. This is the one on GOG.

SNES: Better graphics (most colors push toward orange), slight easier to get better rolls during character generation, good music, monster sprite do change during combat. Monsters appear to have more special abilities.

Sega Genesis/Mega Drive: This is the version I know and the one I played for most time. Monster sprites do change during combat, better music, better graphic (more colors, without any acting as main one), monster had more special abilities, and i t was slight hard to get good rolls during character creation.

With that said, let´s begin:

Much as the name suggest, the idea, at least for the original version, was that you party found a portal and manage to travel to another world, CRON, this hook as was the explantion from the why you could transfer a party from game to another (this was a common feature in old crpg). But what about the SNES and Genesis version? They don´t mention this at all, since well, you can´t really transfer character in this versions, but like the original, they play the same.

Another odd thing is that in the manual there was an entire part where Corak, explain the origin of CRON (remember how I explained that old crpg would have to expand their lore/background in creative ways to deal with storage and technical limtations?), but the way he explain is kind strange, since remember, CRON, much like VARN, is part of Ancient plan (and so part of spaceship). However, the way he describes, is most like a myth (the only explantion I have for why, is maybe because he is telling to a CRON natives habitants?), telling about the battles between the four elemental lords — Pyrannaste, Acwaladar, Gralkor and Shalwend, and how this battles created the world of CRON. He also explain, that several species, would emerge during this conflict (Humans, Elves, Dwarves, ect…) and how they would unite under king Kalohn to stop the elementals, using powerful artifacts know as the Talons (one for each element) and the Elemental Orb. Somehow this all happen inside a spaceship….

However, the elementals would return, and this time along with everyone favorite overpowered monster, the Mega Dragon. Kalohn would not survive since he no longer had the Talon (he used them to lock the elemental lords), but he manage to take the dragon with him.

While this all happens? Guess how show up! Sheltem! he manage to get Corak by surprise and separate his “soul” form his “body” at least that how the game mentions, but in reality, what Sheltem did as literal split Corak´s software from his hardware or throwing his HD away from his body… oh wait! I think I haven´t explained this — mostly because I have only vague memories when this is confirmed, because but both Corak and Sheltem, are some sort of androids or automatons.

As the game begins, you are visited by Corak “ghost”, telling you that “fantastic adventures wait you…” and nothing much else

While MM1 had the weight of time upon itself, MM2 is such improvement, that still highly playable — most crucial info is in the game, which even include in game hints and some sort of walktrough in form of codes which you need to decode. Also you now have an automap and even a minimap (in form of the spell Eagle Eye and Wizard Eye).

But that is not all, the game feature two news classes: Ninjas and Barbarians. Character can grow up to level 255 (this might be the height of the “MM power curve”) and do thing like 64 attacks per round! There is also for the first time the an “skill system” each character can have up to two skills, which can go from things like “Pathfinder” (which allow the party to walk in forests), “Crusader” (allow them to take quest from Kings), “Cartographer” (activate the automap), “Gladiator” (which give a bonus to Might).

Another two major features are how the random treasure and random monster tables work. Battles in the game could be massive, reaching up to 255 monsters, and the game feature a huge list of them (I think that it also was something like 255 different monsters), but that´s not all. Instead of a single table, each map have his own table for monsters, and each monster had his own chance to generate treasures (some could give more money, other more magic items).

The treasures tables feature both unique items, such as Flaming Sword, Photon Blade, but more generic magic items, which much like in AD&D would have a “+” to item, except, that while in AD&D and magic item might to at best to +5, in MM2, with could go alway up to +64.

This two tables work in amazing way in the game, making combat kind fun, the massive table mean that encounter can feel but unique and challening at the same time, reinforcing a sense of risk and reward. However, it have to be said, that at late levels, very few thing could match you party, save some unique enemies, such as Time Lords, the Orc God or Devil Kings.

Another addition to the game was the hireling system, something which later games would expand, but the idea was that outside your six character, you could add two npcs to the party, this npcs would be spread around the world.

The plot is not imediatly clear, like I say, Corak only say some vague stuff, but as things unfold you kind have a bit of everything : time travel, a whole quest arc which is sort a “martial arts tournament arc”, robots, two resorts in conflict, phasers, one circus , more codes to dechyper than an Cold War spy and maybe the first instance in the MM universe of a upgrade quest for characters — the Juror´s Quest.

While the overall main quest of MM1 can feel confusing, MM2 main quest is pretty more clear — You need to revert the tragedy of King Kalohn, for this you need his daughter´s support, Queen Lamanda, something you can only get after winning the “Triple Crown” and making sure that each character in your party did they respective “Juror Quest” to win their “plus”.

Once you revert the past, which somehow does not cause any time travel related problems, King Kalohn send you to investigate the Square Lake Cavern, there you find, guess who? Sheltem, this time he is planning to throw CRON in the sun, to stop him you need to doone last puzzle/code, while Sheltem escapes (in the pc version you fight him, but in the other ones he escapes before the fight).

Since this game is still, like I said, high playable, I won´t extend here too much, but here is some highlights I which to talk about:

“Triple Crown”: This quest, requires you do visit arenas in each town, and here the game show a small mini game, at each two you have an arena and a ticket seller, each color of ticket mean a different difficult level for the fight. In case what you need is buying Black Ticket and using them in each arena.

“Jurors Quest”: Overall this one, is a much improved version of the “Judgement Day” from MM1 and much more creative. The Jurors of Mount Farview, would require that each member of the party do a unique quest to win their puzzle. The catch is that not only the quest would be thematic for each class, but you need to split your party, and each quest was quite unique. This is the genesis of later games promotion quests.

Knights had to battle against the Dread Knight, Paladins need to invade a dungeon and kill the Frost Dragon, Ninjas had to go to Dawn´s Mystic Cave and kill her. But more important, remember Corak? The cleric quest was about finding his “soul” and unite with it his “body”. Also, worth of note, Robbers didn´t have their own quest, instead they could follow any character in their quest and win their plus in this way.

Time Travel: As I mentioned, you might be curios of how this happen and it was fairly simple, one of the local lords, Peabody, sort taking advantage of Corak begin defeated, simple stole the machine from Corak´s room (I guess he called dibs on the machine soon as he found that Corak went missing). Time Travel in the game, once unlocked by finishing a quest for Peabody, was only used for two quests, but somehow you could travel to at least eight different time period, but there was nothing do to there (I mean the world was empty).

Circus: One the 140 day, each year the Circus would show up, doing some minor quests for them you could raise your stats to 100.

Murray´s Resort Island and Dawn´s Mystic Bog: Come to think about, MM2 sort had his own thermal/resort/beach episode…ok, talking serious, the deal is that Murray want some help dealing with Dawn competition.

Remember how I said characters could become ridiculous powerful?

Some other classic MM 2 moments: The Ancient Dragon was one of the game unique encounters that sort acted as extra turning point, since between the massive experience and treasure, along with other treasure around him would speed your party a lot. The Cuisinart was another one, this one was trick, in one hand, they would use a special Frenzy attack which would do massive damage but would kill them in the process, if you manage to survive it there was some truly massive experience to be earned.

Nature of the World — Part I

Before we proceed to MM3 to MM5, I think I need to talk about how the world look like in the previous games and how would look like in the next games.

In MM1 to MM2, the game was a first person grid based crpg, so imagine and grid sheet in a certain size (15 x 15) you then draw walls and rooms on it, you will quickly notice, that despite it small size, you can cram a lot of stuff there, even more that maybe you could do in full 3D, with one advantage:

Despite you fill the whole, let´s say - 15x15 grid map - with rooms, corridos and etc… it still just a small map, that does not take that much time to proper explore it. This is the main advange of the grid, unless you go over board and the size is simple too large, things feel big, but small.

However, like I said, if maps are too big, let´s say like in some of the Legend of Ishar games, this advantage is lost, and exploring becoming tedious and depending on the engine, can create a line of sight issue, specially in open spaces. As exemple, there is one map in MM1 where, due the graphics begin almos a wireframe and the place begin an ocean space, so without any walls, you could get really lost.

But there is one more important element, to keep in mind, that the representation of space is this mode is sort abastract not literal, in MM 1 and MM 2 a square could fit between a single and 255 monsters, or a npc (which maybe a single person or whole shop/tavern/temple) and so on.

This specially true when you move outside dungeons and goes to either overworld or other space (but not an interior), a map of the same size of 15 x 15 (I am using MM2 map size for this examples), is used both let´s say to map a town like Middle Gate or overworld part or the dungeon under Middle Gate.

Now the trick thing is that while you agree a single square in interior space is around around a certain size, but what about that overworld? There the city is represented by a single square. The point is that space in sort abstracted.

There is limitations of course, one is that how you represent height? In classic grid base (and mean the older ones), you can´t really represent a two floor building visually most of the time (but you still be able to climb to a second floor). However, some games find trick around to represent height — In Ishar 2 they used some cleaver image tricks to give you the illusion that you are climbing a mountain or while in city.

But let´s go back to MM 1–2, like I said, the game would have maps for dungeons, cities and other places suchs as castles, connecting them, you have an “over world map”, which in essence are 5x4 maps side by side (split in A, B, C, D, E and numbers from 1 to 4), Middle Gate (MM2 starting town), was in C2, while Atlantida was in A4. Encounters would happen in a single square (which could be either random or fixed) and like I said, it could fit between one and too many enemies at once.

In the next three games (MM 3-5) , not much changes, except one major element, now monsters wander around the map and only a certain number of them could fit a single square. You can move around them and attack them at distance, now position sure matter a lot more as you can get surrounded. But you could easily disengage and run if necessary.

Ok, with this whole thing done, let´s cover the next three games.

From Three to Five:

More than before, this three games, still high playable and I really recommend, so much that from this point on, I sort try avoid spoilers and stay close only to what I think I need to say.

During this moment, the series gain proably, it fastest pace, so much that here you almost don´t have that “survival phase”, things speed up really quickly. Add to this that monsters now wander across the map and your party can hit them with ranged attacks or spell for afar, and while there isn´t so many enemies at once like in previous games, all combine for a very dinamic pace. While characters don´t do that much of attacks per round, you still can do a lot more than usual, as each class gain extra attack on certain levels (Barbarians gain one more for each four levels, Knight gain one for each five levels, and so on).

One major difference, it that the game now hide the “dice rolls” and other info during combat, instead it just show a blood spat of difference size to reflect damage, enemies names would change colors to reflect how much damage they have taken (such as yellow for half, red for almost dying). This does not mean the game removed the numbers, what they did is just hide them, but you still have spells to show how much hp an enemy had or you could look the description of weapons and see the damage. This change is sort ok, even if at times, by hidding info it sort make difficult to know what going on, however, this games are far from hard, so this isn´t much a issue.

Might and Magic III - Isles of Terra

With MM4 and MM5 standing out the way they do, this one is somewhat easy to forget — however, MM 3 does fill a very important part on the overall MM plot and was the first implementation of a whole new engine, which would be used for MM4 and MM5. Not only this, this game is maybe when MM series a whole, start to reach is own peak in terms of visual identidy, since until that point, most graphics have been very simple, now you have more detailed visual and sprites and this are quite unique, so much that is kind hard to pin point, what exactly the game was trying to do.

Character design might go from a comic (maybe even slight anime, it hard to pin down) style to a cartoonish style to a “slight realistic” (I mean remember the archer sprite in Clouds of Xeen?). Building, cities, dungeons do the same. Music was also in their highest peak too and the game would feature digitalized voices. All this element sort make this three games the most unique in the franchise.

In MM3, both in the manual and ingame, we learn more about what exactly the Ancients where up too and is their deal — the so called “Grand Experiment”.

I will try to explain it, since is kind crucial, but it confusing and I might get stuff wrong. Again, I really recommend playing the game.

In the manual, we have Corak again telling us about this new world, in much the same way he describe CRON, with elemental lords fighting for the control of the “Void” with lands emerging from the battle, along with species, eventually they where defeated with the help of the “Forces of the Dome”. This “forces” would then take this “lands” to TERRA. I think, this is what the game later call the “Elemental Manipulation”.

So what about CRON and VARN? turn they are microcosmos created by the Ancients, to be delivered to TERRA (or other place) as a new continent and so they (the Ancients) where literally “seeding” planets. So yeah, CRON and VARN, like I said are spaceships begin on route to TERRA.

Each planet and VARN (the game calls CRON and VARN as a “VARN”) had his own guardian, TERRA had Sheltem, CRON had Pegasus and later we will meet the Pharoh Dragon of XEEN.

But back to Sheltem, he was the guardian and the “Supreme Law” of TERRA and things go off rails when the new VARN (or something else) arrive his planet, and you see… Sheltem never truly saw himself as an agent of the Ancients, he, at least under his eyes, saw himself as TERRA surpreme ruler and didn´t like that and soon start to rebel (in sort there was a internal conflict between begin an agent and the protect TERRA protocols).

Ancients figured out the problem and created another agent, Corak to stop him, and at the beggining thing went smooth, Corak captured Sheltem and take him away from TERRA. However, Sheltem escapes and runs to VARN where he becomes the False King Alamar in MM1, after begin defeated he flees again, this time to CRON (MM2), but again he fails and flee, but this time he returns to TERRA, where he upset the balance of the “Force of Dome” there. Much of the plot is about help one of the Kings which represent an aspect of the force.

MM3 also introduced ability to choose protraits for your character and this would be sort animated changing to reflect different status. Outside this, not much change in character creation, except three things — one is the addition of Druids and Rangers, the both are able to cast spell from both Sorceror and Cleric lists. Skills also changed, each character can now learn unlimited number of skills. Also you can again add Hireling to your party.

Now, instead of starting direct in the character creation, the game sort drop you with a pre ready party, and for a while you might be confused of how or when you create a party, but what you have to do is start the game, go to the nearby inn and there remove the premade party to them create a new one.

Talking about this premade party, let´s describe the whole group a bit, you have:

• Sir Canegm (Human, Paladin, Good),
• Crag Hack (Dwarf, Barbarian, Neutral),
• Maximus (Half-Orc, Knight, Evil),
• Dark Shade (Gnome, Robber, Evil),
• Resurrectra (Gnome, Cleric, Good),
• Kastore (Elf, Sorceror, Neutral).

They are quite important, following the canon, once you help one of the kings and do some other quests, you go after Sheltem, only to find him fighting against Corak, again he manage to escape using a spaceship, with Corak following hot on his track in another spaceship. Your party them pick up a third space ship and tries to follow them.

Might and Magic IV (World of Xeen) - Clouds of Xeen

If I had to suggest one MM game suggest to someone, I would with doubt, recommend MM 4–5, or how is mostly know — World of Xeen. You see, originally, MM4 and MM5 where sort separated games, but they together, from a single game.

XEEN, is another VARN, but as is destinity isn´t fullfilled, it still in its “flat” format (remember it still part of spaceship!), the first game MM4 — Clouds of Xeen happen in the upper part of XEEN, while MM5 — Darkside of Xeen, happen in the lower part.

Sheltem escaped to XEEN, where he first take of the Darkside and them hatched a plan to take over the Cloudside. This stop this plan is the plot of MM4: King Burlock of the Cloudside send his brother Roland to the Darkside in a mission, however, Roland goes missing and suddenly reappear.

Roland convinces Burlock goes in futily quest for the Sixth Mirror, the court wizard, Crodo, tries to stop Burlock but in attempt to confront Roland, by accident, discover that this isn´t the real Roland, but the self proclamed Lord Xeen an Lich acting as a lieutenant for Sheltem. Xeen captures Crodo and lock in a tower while taking time to kill a group of adventures which where trying to make a magic weapon to kill him, destroying New Castle in the process.

The game start with Crodo asking for your help, and it up to you to find someway to free him, restore New Castle, take the Xeen Slayer Sword and stop Lord Xeen.

The game character creation didn´t change at all, as the game uses the same engine, which have slight more polished graphics. Also present, is digitalized voices for npcs.

Now what does change, is that there is great emphasis in heigh for the world, meaning that towns, castles, towers now can have several floor, which often lead to the “Cloud World”, which act as a secundary over world the game.

It also feature, for the first time in the MM games, the concept of taking over an castle and rebuilding it, something which we see again in MM7. In MM4 you would collect “King Mega Credits” and use them to rebuild New Castle, until you can acess the place where the Xeen Slayer Sword is.

Once you confront Lord Xeen in his castle, you find out that he was just a lieutenant for Sheltem. Burlock them send you for the Darkside.

Might and Magic V (World of Xeen) - Darkside of Xeen

Following the manual, reading the Pharaoh Dragon logs, we learn that Xeen as whole was preparting for a massive ceremony, which would require the cooperation of both sides and that was the reason Roland was send to the Darkside. However, an misterious figure calling himself Alamar, soon throw everything to dust. As you might guess, this Alamar is in fact, Sheltem (I love how he simple used the same name), he captured Queen Kalindra and with the help of Count Black Fang turned her in a vampire. Also he besieged the Paraoh Dragon castle, while taking over the Darkside.

As your party travel to the Darkside, they have to rescue and restore Kalindra and confront Sheltem for one last time. In this game, is where we learn a lot of the backstory of the series, finding out how Sheltem got in Xeen first, but when Corak tried to land the got stuck in his ship. What about the adventures? Sheltem believe they are destroyed, but what happened is something we learn much later. This is also the game where the whole Corak and Sheltem arc sort ends, but I won´t spoil it.

Once things where solved, the final quest is unlocked, remember the ceremony? and about Xeen destiny? Here is the deal, Xeen must become a full spherical world, but do to this one final quest for this, which would involve travelling between both sides of the world.

While the game is sort the same, music and graphics where a lot better and visual had a more darker tone.

On the Next episode

We shall move to the 3DO era, covering MM 6-9, this is likely a smaller article and like I said, save a few screenshots of MM6, which I had saved on Photobucket, there might not be many images (I mostly like play MM7-8 just to take a few screenshots, like I did now with Xeen).

Links for All the Parts:

Part One: Might and Magic X — An Fitting End? Part One

Part Two: Might and Magic X — An Fitting End? Part Two - The Early Games

Part Three: Might and Magic X — An Fitting End? Part Three - The 3DO Era

Part Four: Might and Magic X - The End (Part 4)

For a while I have been thinking in trying to write something, but feeling not very confident at all and was unsure of what. In the end I decided to write about a franchise, the Might and Magic crpg series, which I have a small amount of confidence. In fact, I often imagined writing about it several times, but never made to paper, despite have replayed almost all the games, even taking screenshots, for that eventual day.

However, a couple of months ago an HD failure cause me to lose most screenshots which I was planning to use, causing me to delay this even further. I was able to recover a bit of the screenshots, since a couple of them I had uploaded on Photobucket (but, let me tell you, rescue them from that site was not easy).

I was unsure if I should replay everything again, which won’t be easy, even if I managed to recover screenshots from the first three games, since that still mean I had to replay around seven other games, including the infamous M&M 9, which would take even more time. Something else I was aware is that replay all them might taint the experience, since I might need to rush stuff and the whole thing could feel like a job, causing me to miss important stuff I wished to comment.

In the meantime, I decided to play a bit more of Might and Magic X, a game that I find myself divided, in one hand I can tell is an attempt to make a good game and mostly important, maybe give a better closure and end worth to the series, compared to what we had before with MM IX. But in the other there are a lot of stuff that bothered me. In the end, what eventually came out was the idea, of talking how Might and Magic X related to the previous game and how Might and Magic fit in the crpg genre.

Now, to make a couple of things clear: the series is not without its own flaws or contradictions, or strange tone issues. Also, overtime, my interest in games have shifted too, when I start playing MM games, I was deep in the western crpg as my favorite genre. However, as time pass I found myself leaning strongly toward anime and strategy games, right now my favorite games are either Visual Novels, Jrpgs and strategy games (Grand Strategy, 4X and tactics).

Also, I am splitting this in three parts, first this a summary and notes, next I plan to do a quick recap with more details on the previous games and finish talking about Might and Magic X. To be fair, maybe there will be more parts.

So first some quick notes and a quick story of the series:

• The Might and Magic series, along with the Heroes of Might and Magic series, was produced by Jon Van Canegham and his New World Computing company (1984). NWC became a part of 3DO (around 1996), which worked for a while, until 3DO financial problems and mismanagement caused the end of NWC (around 2003). 3DO sold the right to the franchise to Ubisoft before the end.
• One major part of the franchise identity and distinction was the unusual mix of sci fi and fantasy elements, in almost jarring way. There was often little to no effort to blend them, you just have them side by side, with the sci fi elements appearing out of the blue. You might be playing normally, until you find yourself fighting robots, figuring out demons aren't really demons but aliens, and even wielding futuristic weapons or even using a spaceship, in fact you might find the fantasy world you are in a game, isn't a world, but a literal spaceship. While might look really strange, this does give the franchise a unique element, something we only see in jrpgs and handful of other oldschool western crpgs, such as early Wizardry or Ultima games. However, this mix as dropped at a certain point (don't worry, we will talk about this later).
• Another thing, that is also a part of the franchise identity, is the “power curve”, it's hard to tell, if it was intentional or not, but characters in Might and Magic, specially in the early games, grow to ridiculous levels, you might have characters dealing 64 attacks per round in some games. While you might think this was bad, this in a strange way, sort became part of the franchise identity and distinction, and even its own rhythm (again, this is something we will talk about). Why? Because of this power curve the combat in the games often turn in almost comical mass battles (but I don't mean the game were meant to be comical, only that the scale get off hand), in the second game you have stuff, like battles against 255 monsters at once, and while you might think: “wow, that surely would take forever”, expect, not! Between ridiculous numbers of attack per round, absurd spells, this doesn't last so long. The “Might and Magic Power Curve” changes a lot between games, and in a short recap, I will talk more about this, specially because later games try to reproduce this with different degrees of success and failure.

A quick list of the game in the series:

• Might and Magic I: Secret of the Inner Sanctum (1986)
• Might and Magic II: Gates to Another World (1988)
• Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra (1991)
• Might and Magic IV: Clouds of Xeen (1992)
• Might and Magic V: Darkside of Xeen (1993)
• Might and Magic VI: Mandate of Heaven (1998)
• Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor (1999)
• Might and Magic VIII: The Day of the Destroyer (2000)
• Might and Magic IX: Writ of Fate (2002)
• Might and Magic X: Legacy (2014).
  
  

To keep thing simple I will use MM I-X when I talk about the Might and Magic games and HOMM when I talk about Heroes of Might and Magic. By the way, for those which don't know, the MM is a rpg series while HOMM is a strategy series.

Now to also keep things simple, I will only talk about HOMM in a very superficial way. But here is a short list of all HOMM games:

• Heroes of Might and Magic I (1995)
• Heroes of Might and Magic II (1996)
• Heroes of Might and Magic III (1999)
• Heroes of Might and Magic IV (2002)
• Heroes of Might and Magic V (2006)
• Heroes of Might and Magic VI (2011)
• Heroes of Might and Magic VII (2015)
  
  
• Overall you can split the games in two major history arcs: from MM I-V you have the Corak vs Sheltem arc and from the MM VI-VIII you have the “Enroth” arc (I call this Enroth, since this is the planet name, where all games would happen). MM IX was a sort of reboot (more about of this later) and MM X is set on Ubisoft own HOMM universe.

The MM and HOMM games sort mix together, specially after HOMM 1, since they all share the same setting, so the order would be something like:

• Heroes of Might and Magic I (1995) (First game in the Enroth arc)
• Heroes of Might and Magic II (1996)
• Might and Magic VI: Mandate of Heaven (1998) (The story sort happen after HOMM II)
• Heroes of Might and Magic III (1999)
• Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor (1999) (the story sort follows the events from HOMM III)
• Might and Magic VIII: The Day of the Destroyer (2000)
• Heroes of Might and Magic IV (2002) (While does not share the same setting, the story of the game follows the destruction of Enroth).
  
• Talking about Ubisoft, their first game was HOMM V in 2006. All their games would use their own universe.
• While MM mixed around, the sci-fi elements, never appeared in the HOMM, even in games where they share the same universe or even where event happen right before or after something. So yeah, that can lead to a lot of confusion and inconsistency, since in MM6 you are literally holding sci-fi weapons and the Kreegan where aliens with a hivem ind, but in HOMM III the Kreegan suddenly are just demons, but in MM7 (remember, MM7 happens right after HOMM IIII), they go back to begin aliens and so on.
• Since it might be impossible to talk about HOMM and not mention the maybe, very tired topic, about the “Forge Town”, It might be worth a short explanation: There was a plan for a expansion for HOMM III, which would bring scifi elements to the HOMM, following one of the endings for MM 7. However, the reception wasn't good (to be fair some of the artwork they show might didn't help at all), so the concept was dropped. The backlash was there, but not so big as old rumors suggest however. The expansion was changed and the “Forge Town” was dropped in favor of the “Conflux”. This event might also lead to the actual drop of the sci-fi elements and even the destruction of Enroth as campaign set.

Next:

I will try make a recap of the previous games, talking about their gameplay and pace, along with their story. This might take a while. Maybe I might split this in two parts, one for the early games and one for the 3d games.

Links for All the Parts:

Part One: Might and Magic X — An Fitting End? Part One

Part Two: Might and Magic X — An Fitting End? Part Two - The Early Games

Part Three: Might and Magic X — An Fitting End? Part Three - The 3DO Era

Part Four: Might and Magic X - The End (Part 4)

I did write a list of my 2018 GOTYs, but I wish to expand it a bit more:

Best Surprise: Sword Art Online Fatal Bullet

I did write a review for this game on this site, but to try to expand a bit more. This was a very good surprise for me, when I saw the first articles and previews about it, it got my attention, but I was not expecting much. However, once I played I loved the game a lot, so much that while I didn´t enjoy SOA much, it made me change the light of how I see the series.

Best Visual Novel: Umineko: When They Cry (Both the Question and Answer Arcs)

One of the best mystery VNs out there, not only because it core mystery, but the whole discussion it does about the genre of mystery and detective novels and how this combined with the plot.

Best Comeback: Total War: Rome II - Rise of the Republic

Rome II had one of this really curious comebacks, first the launch was... not great, but with lot of dedication and support the game managed to turn it around, by time it reach the Emperors edition (the current version you find on Steam) it was way better game despite some flaws, at that point you might think that CA had done enough and move on, but no, kept supporting the game even more, with additions such as the Desert Kingdoms and the Empire Divided and now the latest DLC, Rise of the Republic just came in. It is very fun campaign and the patch that came with it (for free) is even better, specially the graphic improvements, such as remove the yellow filter and other additions, made the game a lot better.

Best Fighting Game: Soul Calibur VI

As a PC player, this was my first Soul Calibur game and while I had previously played Tekken 7 (for pc) I enjoyed this game a lot - specially the character creation mode and the Chronicle of Soul mode, I do hope the keep expanding those two.

Best RPG: Dragon Quest XI

When Ni no Kuni II came out, I though this might be my favorite jrpg, however Dragon Quest quickly stole that place, as I felt that everything appeared to work better, not tha Ni no Kuni was bad, but DQ simple managed to keep a better pace, gameplay and mix between plot and humor at a perfect mix.

Best Game Where You Break Someone Else Bike On Some Else Head: Yakuza 0

I read a lot about this franchise and how amazing it is, and now I finally had the chance to see it by myself and it was so great as everybody said it was. The gameplay, the humor, how they play with the elements of the Yakuza movies cliches and tropes is just perfect.

Best Expansions: Total War: Warhammer II - Tomb Kings and Curse of the Vampire Coast.

CA have been doing really great expansions and add ons for it games, Tomb Kings was a amazing - not only because it is a classic Warhammer faction, but how unique and different the gameplay feels, since you don´t need to pay for troops you rise them, but what troops you have available depend on who developed is your empire. Also the unit rooster is amazing and the voice act is on point.

The Curse of the Vampire Coast is also great, specially of how out of a obscure faction/lore of the Warhammer universe they managed to make a really fun faction to play, with is army of undead based in ranged attacks and unique monsters. The design for units and the Legendary Lords is again, amazing.

Best Getting Back on the Track Game: Crusader Kings II - Holy Fury

This might look similar to my previous award, however unlike Rome II, CK 2 never was bad, just some of it expansions felt the game a bit direction less. What Holy Fury does it put the "Crusader" back in Crusader Kings, ok... it does a lot more than that, and that is the important part. Not only improve things like the way crusades work, but a lot of things to the game.

Best Game from ....2016, 2017, 2018... - Europa Universalis IV.

I must have around 800 hours in EU IV and if you wonder how, mostly due the very good expansions, to be fair maybe not all of them where amazing but they do keep the game getting better and better.

Best Game with Mechs and Tactics- Battletech

Tactic game are often about manipulate the game, while XCOM much was about moving cover to cover, Battletech is a game of moving around, never stop, always keep moving, which capture very well the idea of giant robots battling. The game was already great, but Flashpoint manages to make it even better, specially the Career mode.

Best Mobile Game: Granblue Fantasy and Idolmaster Cinderella Girls.

To be clear, I do play both of them not much on phones but their desktop version. I am a big fan of Idolmaster, in fact I often do some Idolmaster fanart, check them here: https://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=10736454 , so no surprise there, but Granblue continues to improve a lot over time.

Honorable Mentions

• 428 - Shibuya Scramble
• Stellaris
• Hearts of Iron IV
• Nioh
• Alternative Girls (Mobile Game, also played on desktop)
• Idolmaster Shiny Colors (Mobile game, also played on desktop).

Games that I am Looking Forward:

• God Eater 3 (Bandai Namco)
• Total War: Three Kingdoms (Creative Assembly)
• Code Vein (Bandai Namco)
• Sekiro (FromSoftware)
• Imperator (Paradox)
• Caligula Effect: Overdose (NISA)

Well, since I finished writing a review for Stranger of Sword City (https://www.giantbomb.com/stranger-of-sword-city/3030-42558/user-reviews/2200-30816/) I might well write some hints, while the game still fresh in my mind. Keep in mind, this as just stuff I either figured about, maybe read here and there, but mostly stuff which worked for me, might no be the most awesome or effective hints.

So, first words - this is for the Steam version of the game, which is the so called - White Palace version (白の王宮), the major different between this and the Vita (Black Palace, 黒の宮殿) is some Lineage boss and if you have either the White or Black palace as one of the dungeons.

That said, let´s begin:

Life Points:

Remember, your Main Character does not lose Life Points upon dying, which make the MC the ideal candidate for classes which use skills that make the user a target, such as Iron Defense or make your character and a enemy lock in battle, like the Carnage skills, because if the MC dies you don´t have to spend resource recovering those life points. Specially because, there isn´t much items of this kind around, and don´t bother using poeny powder, it give a life point but reduced the total you have.

One common tip you might hear around is that during character creation, older characters get more ability points but less life points, while younger character have less ability points, but more life points. That mean, that having your MC as older character isn´t a bad idea, since the less life points don´t mean much, unlikely for other party members.

Divinity:

Make absolute sure to at least get Sword Bound level 2, while the first level of Sword Bound will work for 99% of the game, there is one history boss, that will use Charm attack twice in a row and you need Sword Bound 2 to survive them. There is a level 3 Sword Bound, but I did not found any boss which used charm three times.

Veil is a very useful ability which protect the back row of your party, in my run I did not buy, and it made thing hard, since there is only a handful of item in the game which do the same effect.

Multiclass -

Ok, here is a quick rundown, how this works:

- When you chance class you level became half of the current you have (if you are a Level 16 Wizard and change to Cleric, you will be at level 8 Cleric)

- During each run, there is a limit of how much times you can change, during the first play through, I think you can change around 6 or 5 times.

- Until your reach the level you was, you won´t gain ability points during level up.

- Each class gain Token points during certain levels, each Token can be used to have a skill from the previous class can use, this is cumulative, most class gain 1 at level 13.

Recommended class changes are:

Dancer - To have at least Weapon Trick and Trick Item.

Ranger - for Hunter´s Eye but Confine might be useful.

Ninja - for evasion bonus and related skills, Hide and Assassination can very good. You might wish all your front line member to be Ninjas for awhile. While other classes you might get enough at level 13, for Ninjas you might stick until 15 before you change, so you can pick up like Cicade Shell.

Wizard - Higher/Master cast.

Knight - Ability to wear armor and use heavy weapons, along with some passive skills which protect user from different effects.

Samurai - Slash skills can speed combat a lot.

Cleric - Holy Shield.

My party, during my play-through my party was follow, keep in mind, this might not be the most efficient or strongest setup:

Samurai 13 - Knight 13 - Dancer 13 - Ninja 15 - Samurai 40

Knight 13 - Samurai 13 - Ninja 15 - Knight 40

Fighter 13 - Ranger 13 - Ninja 15 - Fighter 40

Ninja 13 - Dancer 13 - Fighter 13 - Knight 13 - Ninja 40

Cleric 13 - Dancer 13 - Wizard 41

Wizard 13 - Dancer 13 - Cleric 41

Very quick observations on a few skills of each class, this is only a light observation, based on what I remember during my play through that was useful.

Knight:

Chivalry (Normal, Light, Dark) - offer a full Line attack, at expanse of defense.

Iron Defense - Very useful skill, which make enemies target the character instead of the party, however, it can result in the said character itself get killed during some boss fights and other tougher encounters, so make sure to have a high enough defense end evasion.

Samurai:

Slash - One of the best skills, offer a row Line attack, and higher levels mean that the character can not only hit the full line ahead, but even one or to lines back. This speed up combat a lot.

Carnage Front/Carnage Back- I confess that I never used this ability, against normal enemies there is not much point, maybe lock down the treasure carrying monster from a ambush but against bosses is very risk to use it. But people say that if you make sure your samurai have a very high evasion and defense, this can be useful ability.

Wizard:

High/Master Cast: This allow the wizard to cast the same spell two or three times in the same round, very useful to get hid or pesky enemies, but more importantly, it is very useful to quickly buff your party, with spell use as Multi-Hit and Multi-Avoid, getting Evasion and Hit to very high levels if often key to survive in certain Lineage battles.

Cleric:

Holy Shield: Once you get this skill, get ready for sudden have your cleric reduced to just spam it at every turn and combat, it ridiculous good, as protect the party from one attack/spell, including thing like Requiem (which might kill a character or more) and other stuff, during Lineage battles, this can be a life saver, specially to protect against party-wide attacks.

Dancer:

Trick Use: It allow you to use the same item twice or three times at once, I can´t say how ridiculous useful is this, at first glance, you might think, that isn´t so good, but late game, begin able to quickly use stuff as Mind Eye Scrolls (Multi Avoid) and Battle Scrolls (Multi Hit) is crucial, since you need to quickly rise Avoid and Hit fast as you can and only having your spellcasters, might be not enough. Also, during some maps, which you can´t use spells, this skill again became crucial.

Weapon Trick: Allow a character to attack a enemy in any row, despite the weapon actual range (meaning you can hit someone at the back row, even with a weapon whose reach is just S and only could hit enemies in the front), this helps a lot to kill lineages which shift from front to back row during a fight.

Ranger:

Hunters Eye: This ability allow you to see the enemies health bars and mostly like be the main reason for at least on character make a class chance to Ranger.

Confine: A low damage attack which reduces enemy hit and evasion.

Ninja:

Most of Ninja skills are really useful, your front line fight benefit a lot form begin Ninjas for a while, while you might need only one character with Hide (used for trigger the Assassination Skill), all other skills they have, even the one which say would give larger bonus if the character isn´t using much armor are useful.

Fighter

Rush/Berserker/Genocide - Ofter a full random row attack, kind like Slash, but the attacks are random.

Heavy Attack - When you first get it, might not be very useful, as it is a attack skill which causes lots of damage, but have a lower hit rate, however, a full buffed fighter can make use of this.

Other Hints:

- The shop NEVER restock! use stuff wisely, specially Mind Eye Scrolls, Battle Scrolls and items related to recover Life Points and MP.

- Some Lineage Type battles are more harder then other, so don´t be surprised if one or two might be done way later.

- There is a couple of Lineage Type battles, which start upon certain conditions, keep an way out, some might show up after a couple of round in any combat on certain maps, you might need to flee in this cases.

Spoiler - New Game Plus

When you finish the main story an npc will give you an Hourglass, this is what you need to start the new game plus, but before that, you might wish to hunt down some new Lineage Type which will show up, however, they are much more harder and what you gain in the very end might no be worth the effort.

This days while looking at some old files in one drive, I did found out that back up of thread I created in a old forum (which was closed down long time ago, but allowed users to back up stuff) about the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning MMO. The thing most people more likely remember of this mmo was the Public Quests, which other mmos have adopted.

It was fun readying this old posts and see how much I was hyped for this game, specially knowing how the things went down in the end (and bits of self denial at stuff happening). I could not share the whole thing here, since it is a long thread anyway and maybe lot of things there aren´t interesting, however I had the idea of sharing some thoughts about about I think happened in the end along with a few screenshots which I did kept for some reason.

I try to keep things in small topics, please this are just my thoughts about WAR mmo while I compare part of what a did write and what I did see. Also note that I played around a year, since the launch in 2008, so there might be events or things which I would be unaware.

Progressive Campaign

The original system and the game main feature, was a RvR of of two factions divided in the three fronts, linked together. The concept was a progressive campaign, with each side making a push toward the enemy main capital, the more the push goes, the more the winning side capital gets better and the losing side gets worst, until a final showdown with a siege followed by a "sack" phase in case the city feels, where some quest and rewards would happen. Once this as all done, the cycle restarts.

It was a impressive concept, I remember that I was quite amazed by the concept. But looking now isn't hard to see that it also a bit convoluted. To explain with bit more detail, you had to factions - Order and Chaos, each faction was split in three fronts, for Order it was Empire, High Elves, Dwarves, for Chaos it was Orcs, Chaos and Dark Elves). Each group was paired with another, so you got Empire vs Chaos, Dwarves vs Orcs, High Elves vs Dark Elves. Begin that Empire and Chaos where the main fronts and the other acted as support (but they also had their capitals too).

I won´t enter now on the subject of why Orcs won´t work with Chaos in the Warhammer lore, we all know that.

Problem of this system is that not only would require player to spread out (and would require a rather large number of players) and perform a very exact set of things, which by itself isn´t impossible, but they have keep doing every single moment. Sure there was some nice ideas they used, having warning messages send when one place was under attack and the ability to teleport to the front line as necessary.

But you see, in the end Mythic had to scrap the secondary capitals, along with other stuff before the game release (again, we talk about this later). The system, if I remember right, didn´t change much, but simple would not work very well. They had to perform several patches and revamps which in the end changed the whole thing to just a push toward either the Empire or Chaos, the other fronts still there and maybe had some role, but it was way less. The also had to revamp rewards with the renown system to make the player go forward, because there was very little reason to go to the RvR, which in the first days of the launch where often quite empty.

From 1 to 40

Maybe on thing that WAR did that was quite interesting for the period, but I don´t think it gained much appraise, was the concept that players would be active in progressive campaign from the very first level. Before that (and maybe even after that), joining in pvp/rvr or whatever was something often locked (some times not intentional) behind having higher level and gear, this often lead to strange job/experience thing, where to have them you need by in a large clan which performed raids/rvr/pvp/what ever but to be on it you often need have higher level and gear that you would only have if you where in a large clan....

Not in WAR, where there was this concept and the actual need of everyone working together, your UI would warn you when somewhere was under attack and with a simple click you could teleport to the area to join the fight.

Career perspectives.

WAR with it´s front system, feature a equal number of classes for each side, over all, each race got four careers (WAR´s classes). Many of them had very cleaver concepts, based on the concept that all player should be active in the fight. The most iconic example (and the one they most use) was the Warrior Priest of Sigmar, which had to attack enemies in melee in other to power up his spells, which for the period (and maybe from the game you where coming from, in my case Ragnarok Online) was rather new (in my case, I really liked this idea, previous mmo I had played often had you play in a fixed way).

Other cleaver ones include the Witch-Hunter, that dual wield a pistol and a sword and use both of them at the same time; the Marauder, whose arm could mutate in several different ways; the Archmage, which had to balance the winds of magic, where when he cast attack spell his energy for healings grows while his attack spells lose power and when he heals his energy to attack grows, but the healing diminish.

The rest of the careers however had mostly bar which fill when something happens while other where just mirrors of some other carrier. As I said early and it is well know, some classes where cut off from the game and later added again. Fun thing is, the Knight of the Blazing Sun, was my favorite class back there, but now I just can´t remember their gimmick...I guess they had auras our something like that....

...Of Beattles and Monkeys and Led Zepellin...

Sometimes even the most well laid plans can be lead astray if something unexpected happens very far away, in WAR case, they clearly didn´t had well laid plans and to add to that, something did happen elsewhere – Age of Conan had a not very good release, which meant lots of player complaining in forums (at least I remember seeing this a lot in MMO site forums) and lots of doubt and pessimism in the horizon toward War. And to make this worst, WoW announced the Rise of the Lich King for release a couple months after War launch. That meant that WAR was caught between Age of Conan not going well and the Rise of the Lich King release, while they had to announce the cuts of the Capitals and Classes.

They had a curious relationship with they way the promoted the game, at first there was this very strong hype-esque approach, with Paul Barnett and Mack Jacobs, doing very hyped video on youtube (funny note, this kind stuff wasn´t that usual as it was today, so seeing that had quite impact with me back there), where maybe unintentionally they reenacted every PA style comic, withe Paul begin the more enthusiastic and shouting figure and Jacobs begin the more calm figure.

Later they changed approach, suddenly there was all this talks of if you try to beat the Beatles, you might became the Monkeys, but how they where aiming to be Led Zepellin. Which was a clear analogy toward WoW (maybe around this time, the WoW killer idea was becoming clearly it was bad or impossible idea), this was followed by announcements of several cuts they made in the game such as the Capital and Classes. Now to be fair, there was a genuine attempt to communication and to clarify stuff (I had quoted large part of the original text they did in the old thread).

Strange decisions start to happen a bit before this, out of nowhere they simple give up having a official forum making the Warhammer Alliance forum the official one (reading my old post I remember for vague reasons I tried to rationalize this somehow back there, but I could not remember how).

Eventually they released the game in 2008, while, overall the the game launch was OK for it´s period, the same could not be said on Europe, where things are going very bad and was handle by GOA (which I have no idea who they are). The clearly expect a unreal number of players, I can´t remember how many severs, but there was simple too many – and they only got, close to the launch around 750.000 players at the best expectations (strange thing, in my thread I found I write 500.000 players which was based in stuff post during that time, but in a gamespot article, written close to the servers begin shut down, mention 750.000 players, maybe in my thread I got only players in the US servers...).

Still it was no small number, however I think, and lets be clear, this my humble opinion, WoW pretty much messed up our perception of MMO success beyond recognition. What should maybe look as exception became the rule, and this rule is simple unreal – but for some players and maybe even critics, anything which didn´t made the WoW numbers was looked down and decided it was fated to die. Problem is: MMOs don´t need gazillion players to work out, it need enough player coming in to keep its systems working (such pvp, matchmaking, party search), if as long they got this and this is enough to keep things running, you might say it is success. But it is kind hard to convince people about this when WoW reach unheard numbers.

But back to WAR, this so said 750.000 player where divided in lots of severs, and later in factions and races, which meant the whole thing at first days looked strangely empty, RvR din´t work very well (it was a bit empty in some servers) and the strangest thing which I had only a vague memory about, I don´t think global chat was implemented or something like that.

This number however wasn´t meant to last, in early 2009, the number was around 300.000, while Mythic suffered lay offs and later server closings. Things got worst as even worst for Mythic later, after a certain point Marc Jacobs left, and later EA merged Mythic with Bioware and later dismerged them from what I could remember.

Despite this odds, WAR last for longtime - around five years without any major expansions and very little support, something myself only realized how impressive is until a bit before finishing this text while seeing a video on youtube comment this, only then it dawn of me how impressive it is.

Sure, MMOs, despite most doom prophets in forums, are though beasts to kill, unless you screw things up to a unbelievable level or you pull the plug, the can keep going for long time and how knows, some of them, even after troubled launched might managed to grow good numbers along the way.

Keep in mind, WAR for the most curious reasons, was kept in subscription mode all time – sure, back there, the knowledge of how free to play could "save" some mmos wasn´t so well spread or know. Not that just turning in free to play would save something, because what really matter is how well handled the process is.

As I said earlier, during all of this issues, WAR find it self in this strange situation, it had no way to really expand or having a expansion like other mmos, because there was already too many classes and fronts. The only expansion the ever got, was one that featured the Tomb Kings, in the least interesting way – it was just this huge dungeon, where Order and Chaos fight to reach something and there was a mechanic that both side need to control the outside if they wish to enter or leave.

But long before this I already left the game...

So if you wonder why, well – I kind wonder that too, because at one point, I just stopped playing it, not because I suddenly dislike it or something like that... my one thread don´t offer much answers, because the forum which I was posting was dying so there was less and less people and after a while I stop posting but I continue playing.

Maybe one reason was the convoluted way to buy more credits they got for Brazil, which require you to buy those time cards sold on shops, but there wasn´t many of them selling this cards, which make buy every single one kind annoying process, so I had to order from a shop and wait they send one. To make things even more weird, they sold those card (which was just a small piece of paper) inside those cd/dvd boxes...so you got a rather large box for much no reason...

The game around the time I left, was improved a lot, but I guess, even I did found the thing was going without much direction and for me in my last days, there was much lag. Another possibility was the fact that I was playing mmos for a rather long time, since I started with Ragnarok Online and later did play a bit of Guild Wars, Lineage 2 and City of Heroes, so was mostly like a bit tired of mmos and also I was more interested in playing other games. Not that I now hate mmos or anything, I was just bit tired, specially, since in Ragnarok I was a officer at a guild, which made things a bit more tiresome.

Random Thoughts:

I save here for some small thoughts about the game. Sorry if I got way too vague here.

World Design: while not bad, it wasn´t memorable, at least what I could remember. Now while the the capitals where the main attraction and main reason to fight, for some strange reasons, you kind wouldn´t see until very late on, unless you go out of the way to go early there. Like I did when I send a character to Altdorf for reaching the auction house.

Gear: I remember mostly of begin ok or good overall, the game did feature a craft system, which I have no memory of using it or how it worked. One cleaver thing they did was that during pvp/rvr character would drop items like monsters (I mean not their gear, but random stuff).

Tome of Knowledge: Another nice idea was that the tome would register all stuff you did, so you could complete a quest, even before you actually start it, as it would register that you, per example, already killed x number of boars. Now I have to be fair, I can´t remember if this worked as I register in my thread...

Open Party System: The idea was that the game would show to you all parties around you and with a simple click you could join them. I remember liking this a lot, having not nice memories of begin unable to find parties in WoW and begin forced to skip some dungeons.

Scenarios: They where WAR´s battlegrounds, with a difference that you could easily teleport in to one and they begin much shorter in time, around 15 minutes. Compared to by bad experience in WoW (note: despite this I did liked a lot the time I played WoW), where many matchs (this was after Burning Crusade but before Lich King) which lasted 30 minutes and often turn suffering where my team can´t win nor lose and the whole thing just keep going and going on or begin plagued by twinked characters (like gnomes rougues with two daggers), I liked WAR a lot more on this aspect.

Ishar II - Messengers of Doom (1993)

Note: I decided to bring the second part here too, sorry if the way the images looks isn't very good.

The second game does take the whole thing to a new level, its a much improved version with superior graphics that tries a lot of new things and that also misstep a lot more, but still, it's a huge leap.

You now take the role of Zubaran, which recieve a vision from Jon the Alchemist, urging him to take action and face the new threat of the sorcerer Shandar, much like in the first game if you remember how Aramir (the first game main character) meet Azalghorm..

From there, with this single character, you quest starts. But also you are thrown in the middle of nowhere and all you can see is some npcs in the distance (this is somewhat also like Ishar I, where the first thing you could see is some npcs), but that is a fight that right now, you can't win. What you need to do (but not know), is avoid it and instead find a settlement to recruit some character and bought a few things, so then you go face them.

On Jon's Island, the game apply this trick to give you illusion that you are climbing or descending the mountains, despite still in a flat 3D first person perspective.

Now, let's be clear, the manual of the game gives you a general idea in form of rhymes (in fact many old crpgs did that, while in the surface they looked "complex" or "harder" as more modern crpgs, most of this complexibility came from period limitations, and many of this games came with manuals that kind almost spell everything to you), but even with this you can still get very lost.

One of the major difference is that the world you will explore is divided in islands (each one named after one of Jarel's companions), there was a even greater effort to make each island unique and some very cleaver tricks applied. Specially in Jon's Island, which is most made of ice and mountains, there they used very smart effect to give you sensation that you are climbing the mountains despite the fact that you still moving in a flat simple 3d first person perspective.

Meanwhile Thorm's island is all about forest with bridges and buildings on top of trees (saddly this is also the most confusing area to navigate), Zach's island is the one with the game major city that even features a night club which is operated by Shandar's followers (that avoid all troopes that you might expect, in fact the only night club related stuff show is a poster for the "the gates" show),also the cicle of day and night does affect the town as shops and other places close up at night.

Irvan's Island is the first one you start the game and it's mostly plains an swamps, while Akker's and Obtar's Island are dungeons.

The game even manages to avoid te confusion that might have arise from having all this island to visit but no idea where to start, since you need to find maps first, but still there is a lot of back and forth between them at key points. This means that you feel a lot less a sense of going from point A to B like in the first game, but kind fell like running in circles.

The overall quest is much larger with many more step and some nice new ideas, however, in many times you might don't know when, why or where you need something, and at certain points you need do perform very specific task that can be very vague. To make things complicated, it is very easy at certain points to break the quest by missing quest items and just got locked with no way to progress.

Below I will highlight a few moments in the main quest:

• In Zach's Island you can buy (and to be more exact you need) several pets, that will use during the game, problem is you don't might exactly know when or where you need them, nor their use is very clear. At one point you got locked in a prision and will use a raven to pick the keys (without you are stuck there), later you use a monkey to find a secret door, also at other point you a use a eagle after talking to a wizard. At the very end you need a parrot. Problem is, that you might totaly miss the pet shop if you don't know before and unless I am mistaken you can use this pets before the right time.
• Early on you can find a lot of gold, but you might have no idea that you could do it, because the trick is that behind the bank in Zach's Island there is a couple of monsters and behind a vault with a lot of gold that can make the game a lot easier and reduce the grind.
• Talking about gold: at least two moments you need to have certain quanty of gold in hand that you simple have no idea that you need it. One time you need give to a wizard 10,000 pieces and other time you need to go a specific part o Zach island in a specific time to meet a npc that after you hand him a lot of gold will give you one of pieces of the druid's body.
• During game at least twice moment I needed to reload because I might have broken the main quest, one by my own accident, one puzzle require you to put a certain mount of gold coins in some pedestals, they hint you the actual amount since you find some pedestal which already have the need gold, but my instincts lead me to pick all the gold only to find later that I had no idea on what to do. The second time was a puzzle where I need several skulls, somehow one of them vanish from my inventory or I lost it, since inventory space is scarce.
• On Jon's island which is most mountains and ice, you need buy furs (to avoid damage from cold) and a rope to tie your character to each other(to avoid them falling over the edges). This is quite cleaver, but you still might don't know you actually need any of this, specially the rope (well, the fur is quite obvious)
• In Zach's island you need to visit the Blue Veltet club twice, but one time without the night outfit so you get arrested and have to escape (but you might no idea you need to do this) and later with the night outfit and some pendants this time to actually visit the place and learn where Shandar hideout is.

The Ishar party system issues which I mentioned in the previous article (I mean the fact that the party votes if they want someone in or out) kind play hard here, twice you need main npc in your party: First the the daughter of one the two druids which tried to face Shandar (this is told in the rhyme in the manual) and later her father himself, which was killed by Shandar but you can join all his body parts (scattered around in form os relics). But might be unable to peacefully remove any of your party members, which mean the only way will be left people die in combat or try the dangerous act of order one character to attack another.

The overall game is much better and the athosmpere is much richer thanks to the improved graphics and even the day-night cycle, however you still don't know even how exactly Shandar is or what he is doing, the best hint you got is from some npcs.

While the main quest itself is very good, there still very vague moments that you might have you no idea what to do and while you can list to rumors in taverns, many times they are the same ones and can be very strange due weird translation.

However, despite this, Ishar II is much better game and much like the first have it's own atmosphere and feeling, maybe even more that the first game.I would recommend, as its improvements made easier to get on despite the confusing and vagueness that happen in some part of the game.

In case you wonder - why this game is called Messagers of Doom? I have absolute no idea why. It kind sound like a heavy metal album.

Once finished you can import the save to Ishar III, which will be our next stop - Ishar III: Seven Gates of Infinity (1994)

Note: This might take a while, Ishar III appear to crash from time to time and while I could import my save, character faces appear bugged. So I still need to figure if I will use a new party and find the right mood to play it.

More Screenshots:

About the game:

Release date: 1993

Developer: Silmarils

Platforms: PC, Amiga, Macintosh, Atari

Version I played: Ishar Compilation from Good Old Games (http://www.gog.com/game/ishar_compilation)

Old Version.