Hi fellow gogers. Im thinking of trying this series. From what I heard the best place to start is with the pack. One question though. Will I be needing to do hand drawn maps to get trough the game?

I can't comment on 1,2, or 3, but I've played a bit of 4-5 and I've gotten hooked on 6, and for 4-6 I haven't need any hand drawn maps. However, I know when you buy the game there's a download for maps for all 6 games.

I would start with MM6 and work your way through 7 and 8 ( MM8 got posted up on GOG just today), then finally onto MM9. You can find MM9 on ebay.

As far as toughness goes, easiest to toughest is as follows:-

**Easy** MM8, MM9, MM6, MM7 ** hard**

When I say easy, its still a challenge, just not the monumental challenge that MM7 is.

All of the are great fun and will take hours to play through.

You can also find the strategy guides for these games on ebay , and whilst they get progressively less detailed as they go on ( 7 is less detailed than 6, 8 is less detailed than 7)
they are still very good guides and very useful.

There are a number of online resources for all of the MM games, and I simply downloaded and printed maps, solutions and quest guides and made my own versions of the strategy guides as well. I didn't need to keep copious written notes for any of the games ( MM6,7,8 &9). But note, these are the only ones I've played.

They are all terrific games, and if it weren't for the fact that MM8 became available off GOG today I was going to go and try MM4+5 ( the Xeen story line).

You are in for a real old school treat if you play these games, and please note that MM6 should be played first as its a nice middle of the road difficulty. MM7 is brutally hard, but finished it again for the 4th time just before posting this reply. MM8 is lot easier than 6 or 7 mainly due to the excellent and unique grouping system. HINT:- Join the dragons and NOT the dragonslayers !

When you play MM9 be sure to install TELP's latest patch ( 1.4 I think) just look for it on Google, as this fixes a few issues, and also make saves prior to making promotion decisions as they are irreversable in MM9. MM9 is the only game with a different and slightly confusing promotion system, but just save and pay attention. Whilst un-finished in some graphical aspects, it is still a fine game and very, very enjoyable.

Any questions, post them here and I'll try and answer them for you.

Thanks for the info guys. Is the card game thats in 7 also in 8?

Hand-drawn maps are only needed for MM1 and MM2. Some would argue that you don't need them for MM2 because there is a rudimentary auto-mapping feature but I felt the automap didn't record enough info so I just drew maps by hand anyway. Automapping is greatly improved for MM3 onwards and you will not need to hand-draw any maps for those. For MM3-5 you may still want to take some notes though.

I personally enjoyed MM4-5 the most, but I have not yet played MM3. MM6 is quite different, and as Fortysixter said it will be a good intro into the later games that have just recently been added to GOG.

There is no need to start at the beginning of the series, as the games are mostly isolated from one another. Most players are advised to start with either MM3, MM4-5 (which combine to form the giant game World of Xeen) or MM6.

Also note that in the GOG extras for the games you will find the cluebooks for most (if not all) of the games. For the earlier games I recommend using the cluebook to look up item stats as it gets really annoying having to constantly identify items in-game.

Yes, Arcomage is also in MM8

Just wanted to put my 2 cents in. I would start with World of Xeen. I don't have any experience with the more modern games, but am playing through World of Xeen right now. I've already put in a bunch of time, and it's holding up really well. I'm having lots of fun with it, and it's just as fleshed out as a modern day RPG. Since you're buying the pack, I'd say load up Xeen for an hour or two and see if it grabs you.

You guys should get a commission ;) I will install 3-5 and check them out. Have the other 2 in my wishlist. Thanks again.

Fair enough if you are starting with MM 3-5 but do be aware, from 6 onwards they are a very different game series, both gameplay and graphically, so if you find you don't really like 3-5, go and try mm6, it really is different to all that came before.

One thing to say about Xeen... It won't really hold your hand. It's a pretty hard game, and you should be prepared to die/save/load a ton. If you wonder into an area you shouldn't be in (and that is very easy), you'll get one shotted and kicked back to the title screen. With that said, if you stay in/around Vertigo (the starting town) until you hit level 10 you should be well on your way to making it.

Oh, and you can level your guys past level 10 at Rivercity. I was getting frustrated until I found that out! haha.

Well I started playing 3. Found this site that was very helpful since I was completely clueless. But after playing a while and dying (wich I didnt mind)a lot I found that I enjoyed the game. But since it was the 3rd one of a trilogy felt kinda lost. So I am going to start at xeen then maybe 6-8 and when I feel really old school go for 1-3.

Oh. I thought that because of the guy at the beginning. So story wise then its 1-2, 3-5 6-9?

Pretty much, the story is inter-related to some extent across all of them, but 1 and 2 and 4 and 5 are the closest pairs as you can transfer characters to 2 and can link 4 and 5.

While this is true, I thought I would add that the cluebook included in the GOG release can help a lot... my memory is that it contains full maps and complete solutions for everything in the game, as well as including all the item stats which can be VERY helpful. It is of course full of spoilers, but if you ever get stuck on something it can be a good thing to check. I use it for item stats regularly (just search the PDF for the item you want to check) as constantly identifying items in-game is really annoying.

For those who don't know, you can grab the cluebooks from the "additional content" menu when you click on the MM pack on your GOG account page.


EDIT: Cluebooks for MM1 and MM2 are not as complete and provide hints rather than solutions for everything. But they still contain all the item stats which is quite nice.