May Maturity 08: Might and Magic: World of Xeen (Intro)
by mento
Hail and well met, followers and/or fair-weather friends of the finely-aged, to another May dedicated to retro gaming. It's the triumphant return of May Maturity for its second year! I've been knocking together these May-focused features for a while, but since starting a weekly series for Indie games, I've sort of parlayed my old Steam spring-cleaning feature into one that chases up on various...
Hail and well met, followers and/or fair-weather friends of the finely-aged, to another May dedicated to retro gaming. It's the triumphant return of May Maturity for its second year! I've been knocking together these May-focused features for a while, but since starting a weekly series for Indie games, I've sort of parlayed my old Steam spring-cleaning feature into one that chases up on various outstanding video game debts. That is to say, games that I missed in their heyday and am now catching up on lost time.
You can feel free to read more about the May Maturity feature in greater detail on its Welcome/Contents blog from last year, however, as we're going to be too busy being mighty and magical today to bother listening to some old man yammer on about bucket lists and the golden era of CRPGs and adventure games like that isn't right now, a.k.a. the best time to be playing video games. But then, so many of the Indies today are beholden to and predicated upon the classics those Indie developers grew up with, so it's good to give ourselves the occasional refresher course of the history of this medium. That said, I reserve the right to get horribly lost, have no idea how these ancient interfaces work, and throw in the towel after a few hours in a pathetic display of becoddlement. Hypothetically speaking.
Our opening act for this year's May Maturity series is Might and Magic: World of Xeen, released in 1994 by New World Computing. World of Xeen is actually Might and Magic IV: Clouds of Xeen (first released in 1992) and Might and Magic V: Darkside of Xeen (first released in 1993) combined together into one updated super-RPG, as they were always meant to be two halves to the same game. They also literally take place on two halves of the same world (Xeen, of course), with the Darkside of Xeen offering a more challenging scenario for a higher level party who had presumably already cut their adventuring teeth on Clouds of Xeen. World of Xeen apparently lets you cross between Cloudside and Darkside whenever you so desire, which means there's potential for some sequence breaking, or at the very least spending a few hours in the early stages of Darkside to strengthen you for the next quest or dungeon on Cloudside. It's a neat idea, one that RPGs haven't really gone into before or since beyond the usual sequel party import/export feature of something like Mass Effect or Baldur's Gate, and one of many innovations that had Might and Magic enthralling the computer gaming world for at least a decade. The reason I opted for the Xeen duo in particular is because I recently saw blogger The CRPG Addict take on the third game, Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra, in vivid detail and I'm already well acquainted with Might and Magic VI: Mandate of Heaven and the four successive games in the series. The Xeen pair are really the only M&M games remaining with any surprises left in store for me.
I'm going to begin with a freshly generated party - they have a default group for you that's reasonably solid, but I always like to create my own - and then taking on the first quest of the game in the starting town of Vertigo. Unfortunately, I couldn't get much further than that today (bad timing meant May 1st landed on a Tuesday: the same day as the live Bombcast and regularly scheduled SNES Classic Mk. II blog), but it's enough to give me some idea of the mess I'm getting myself into.
Unfortunately Not a World of 'Zines
Character creation time! I didn't read too much about the game for fear of spoilers, but I've read that it's worth having a few dedicated magic users and a few "hybrids" like the Paladin. Paladins are essentially crappier Knights who can cast Cleric magic, so I have one in case I need a back up healer. He can also hit things when he's not healing. This, he commands.
Michael York is my full-time ass-kicker. Knights don't have magic, so they make up for it by being much better at hitting things. The downside is that he has to get renewed when he hits age 30.
Ninjas are thieves with better stats, and I want at least one of those for stealing things and disarming traps. If she can also slash monsters in half with a fantasy katana, all the better.
Archers are a bit of a misnomer title: they aren't bow experts (though they can shoot as well as anyone else) but rather are hybrids in the same way the Paladin is, except for Sorcerer magic instead of Cleric. Again, best to have a back-up in case I wander into some physical-resistant monsters or some equally annoying BS. (NB: I picked the name Iris because I've been thinking too much about bows and eye puns after playing Zelda.)
So that leaves our two dedicated magic users. I have a dwarven Cleric, because that seems to be the tradition. (NB: I picked the name Jo because she was one of the Little Women.)
And an elven Sorcerer with a pseudo-mystical name, for pretty much the same reason. Hey, look, these races get stat benefits appropriate for these classes, so what am I supposed to do? Not adhere to racial stereotypes? Just imagine Lisa Simpson looking at a picture of an elven mage and shrugging halfheartedly, if that helps.
We start just outside this tent, which is where the Mayor of this town lives. He tells us that he spent most of the town's money on hiring an exterminator to clear the streets of slimes and giant grasshoppers. They're still everywhere though, and he's at his wit's end. Sounds like a quest to me.
But first, getting acquainted with the town and its functions. The inn is where you go to restock food - you eat some every time you rest - and learn tips and rumors about nearby quests and other points of interest. And I didn't say "points of interest" because this woman appears to be falling out of her shirt. This is a classy LP, dammit.
Grim Eric Pope here is the town's blacksmith. He has a random assortment of weapons, armor, and miscellaneous goods that seem to restock daily. Trouble is, there's no apparent way of knowing if the stuff he's selling is better than the stuff I already have, besides a telltale price difference. I'm going to hold off in case I find superior gear lying around or determine a better use for money.
The "Slime Temple", which is full of creepy blue zealots, is also the only place in town to get uncursed or heal from severe conditions. If you just want to recover hit points, they offer a smaller fee which I believe is dependent on your level. While that can suck for a higher level party, at that point you probably should be able to fix your own boo-boos.
The bank. I'm not sure if the game is one of those where you wake up back in town with half your cash gone if your party gets wiped, but there might be an interest factor also. Might be an idea to stick any cash in here I'm not using right this moment.
Sassy Cortana here is the guild master, or the guild rep at least. She sells you spells, but only if you paid to join up. That's a per-character payment of 25 gold, mind, though I saved a little bit of money by not signing up my Ninja or Knight (since neither can use magic). I'm grateful this game doesn't insist on partitioning the game's spell library into a bunch of separate elemental guilds.
This... thing, is the warp snake. I don't know how it works. I think you put in passwords and it sends you off to certain parts of the game. It's an elegant town portal system if that's the case, though I think it only has a few specific destinations in its database. If I want to warp between towns legit, I'll need the Town Portal spell.
For whatever reason, every one of these happy little bushes has money in it. I should be thankful it's money, and not Sim Vinny's barf or something even less appealing. (Searching fixtures and furniture for items is the best way of finding treasure, though naturally you get a fair amount of traps too.)
The equipment system. Far as I can tell, there's no encumbrance in the game; rather, your characters can hold nine items of every type. Armor slots get filled up quick with all the different types - as well as these four, there's also helmets - but I can't see myself running out of room for accessories any time soon. I'm also unsure if there's any way of checking what any of this stuff does for you without identifying it at a blacksmith for a nominal fee.
The spell system takes some figuring out. I think the first number is spell cost? But no idea about that second one. I'm going to have to keep an FAQ open in a browser window, aren't I?
Joe's the exterminator that the Mayor hired, so I'm going to assume something's amiss at his storeroom if these bugs and slimes are still running the place.
The storeroom was packed with crates, half of which was full of loot and the other half full of bugs. Made for an interesting guessing game, at least. We also found a note that incriminates Joe as the guy who brought all this vermin into the city, so that's this quest sorted.
After receiving an exorbitant reward for some minor detective work that even Scooby Doo could solve, I check in with JK Simmons (the JK stands for "Jiant Kut") and get some dang experience levels. If you're not familiar with how M&M does things, you have to BUY levels at training centers once you have the XP. It can get really pricey too, digging deep into your funds at higher levels. Still, what else am I going to spend it on? I'm already stealing most of the stuff I need. I consider ourselves a morally-flexible group.
Anyway, with all that done, and the rumor of a dwarven mine to the east that needs our help, it's time to leave Vertigo and set out into a harsh, painful world full of monsters and traps and demons and curses and... I might just see if there's somewhere in town to hole up until this whole "Lord Xeen the Lich" business blows over...So this probably only represents an hour or so of game-time, but ended up being longer because of all the character creation palaver and getting my bearings with the town of Vertigo and the pictograph interface/general mechanics of the game. I'm hoping to figure out how to pause the combat so I can get all tactical with my spells and such - I didn't test it, but I'm wondering if enemies stop attacking if you're looking through your spell book, because that sure would be polite of them - but it seems to be enough for now to employ the old Might and Magic trick of giving everyone bows and sniping everything from a distance. That's been a surprisingly effective tactic in every Might and Magic game I've played so far.
All that said, World of Xeen's left a positive impression. I was concerned that going too far back in the annals of CRPG history would lead to a lot of ambiguous interfaces and underexplained mechanics, all of which is no doubt elaborated upon in the manual for avid readers to consume and check on at regular intervals. There's definitely been some of that so far, especially with how equipment stats work, but it seems entirely workable. I suspect I'll suck at combat for a while longer, but I'm happy that I kept finding full suits of armor in beds and other furniture to stop all my innards from becoming, uh, outtards. If people are just going to leave that gear lying around...
I have no illusions that I'll defeat this entire CRPG with the one-week-per-game rule for this feature. The Might and Magic games are not small RPGs and World of Xeen - which I've barely scratched the surface thereof - happens to be two of them jammed into one package. I'd be lucky to be done with Cloudside before this time next Tuesday, frankly. One reason why I went with this game first is that I could keep working on it between the other May Maturity games this year, though I was also dumb enough to add a bunch of other CRPGs too so I may end up needing to be a little judicial in the games I choose to stick it out with. At any rate, we'll check in on our group of ne'er-do-wells in the next update as they continue to squash bugs and steal everything in sight across Xeen. Be xeeing ya.