it looks like a fun series but m & 1-6 are a little to old for my taste. i tried betrayal at kondor which is from the same year of mm6 , however i think i could get into some of the later ones.

again: no. might and magic IX redefines masochism. seriously. my eyes and brains still hurt and it's been two years since i've played it.

Again: M&M7 is the best. MM9 is a joke.

Yeah, MM9 is a pure waste in the "look-how-we-fcuk-a-good-game-because-we-don't-have-money-anymore" way.
I have it nonetheless, for the sake of collection... Doesn't mean that I play it! ^_^

Might and Magic 6 came out five years after Betrayal at Krondor, and it's pretty obvious when you play it. They're not the same era or style at all.

I would pay this price for MM6 alone so it was a nice bonus to get the first five games as well. I've gotten pretty far in MM2, although my main concern with that game is the need to look up what each spell does every time I go to cast a spell, and just the outdated interface in general. MM3, 4 & 5 are all surprisingly playable, in my opinion, and are very entertaining in their own ways.
MM6, though, is probably the best in the series. Although it lacks the sheer amount of stuff that MM7 contains (races, classes, spells, Light/Dark path, and much more), I feel as if the progression in MM6 is much more cohesive and the dungeons are, for the most part, more entertaining to go through. MM7 throws you out into the world after you finish up Harmondale and the difficulty curve after the first area is pretty steep. The difficulty stays pretty high for much of the game, to the point where most dungeons become exercises in turning invisible and avoiding the freakishly damage-resistant monsters (it seemed like every dungeon featured physical/magic immune monsters in some form). While MM7 might have more features, I think that MM6 provides the better experience.
With that said, I would love to see MM7 & 8 on GOG.

haha, yeah. "oh, here are some medusa infested mines. better not fail any saving throws, because no way in hell that you got a stone to flesh spell already! and guess what, to escape you need to beat a time limit."
oh, how i detested that dungeon. and don't get me started on the necromancer proving grounds. daaaamn.

That was so much better than the tunnel to the Land of the Titans or Eofoul, however it's spelled. Been a while since I played, my brother made me give him the play disk back :(

Really? I agree that MM6 presents a more cohesive experience overall, and that MM7's difficulty curve is a little out of whack, but I found MM7 to be considerably easier than MM6, for two reasons.
First, MM7 cuts WAY down on the sheer number of enemies as compared to MM6. There are still way too many if you ask me, but trying to progress through any dungeon in MM6 was like trying to cut granite with a cheese wire. You'd clear one room and move on to the next, only to have to retreat two rooms back in the face of overwhelming numbers.
The proving grounds in the volcano in MM7, though... yeah, I admit that was brutal. The minotaur lords are made of hate, and you need to get through there at a lower level than the designers seem to have intended. Still, it's no harder than, say, the ruins of VARN in MM6, or the basement of Castle Darkmoor with hundreds of beholders flying around.
Second, knights go from underpowered in MM6 to brutally strong in MM7. MM6 was all about throwing magic from a distance, because melee was fairly weak. In MM7, though, between the new Armsmaster skill and the damage reduction you now get from plate and chain, melee fighters can carve through enemies pretty quickly, and only knights can grandmaster the plate and Armsmaster skills. As for physical damage resistance, I don't recall ever really having trouble with it - and my party was Knight / Knight / Cleric / Archer, so my offensive magic was pretty weak.
In MM6, I found the ancient weapons almost essential to save my sanity near the end of the game, due to sheer number of difficult enemies and the damn terminator bots that have a chance to eradicate on every hit, but in MM7, I didn't even bother with them, except for that one section where you don't have a choice. It was actually faster just to close the distance and turn my knights loose.
Speaking of eradication, it never happened to me even once in MM7. I bought the Resurrection spell and never used it.

Ohhh yes. I want M&M 7! I own it twice on CD, but i cant be arsed to go and look through my huge collection to find the CDs every time i want to play. I want the GOG version of MM7 and 8 too!
MM7 was actually the one i started with, went back to MM6 then and ended up trying MM9 ... but lets just not mention MM9 again ;) Unfortunately i cant stand the gfx and gameplay of MM1-5 :(
6,7 and 8 were great, even tho in MM8 it was a bit weird to change the chars all the time or get a decent party of those you find and skill it up. I can remember darkly that MM8 was still the only i actually played to the extro :)
Right now iam working on MM6 but the incredible amount of enemies at the moment makes it hard. Iam not high enough in level to go to the areas where my new quests are, but too high for the other areas to gain good XP by slashing masses of monster. I've done two promotion quests or so, but still - right now all the areas are pretty much crawling with undead or werewolves and its very hard. Bah, i'll make it somehow ;)
Well, again: I want MM7 and MM8 from GOG! :D (Did everyone vote for it already in the wished games list?)
- G

It's funny that you're talking about MM6 because this perfectly describes my experience with MM7. For example, the Barrow Downs had me teleporting into rooms filled with a shocking amount of skeletons, bats, and rats attacking from all sides, leaving me little choice to kill what I could and retreat from whence I came. I would repeat this process until I could finally whittle down the monsters enough to explore that section.
Another good example of this is The Pit, and to a lesser extent the Breeding Zone. These two zones are absolutely brutal, even for advanced parties, and require copious use of Lloyd's Beacon and Town Portal to eventually whittle away at the vast amount of baddies. I feel like I could go on and on. I guess it's just a hallmark of both games to present dungeons that cannot be easily cleared by a single nonchalant run through, and managing these numerous forays is part of the charm of the M&M series, in my opinion
I agree, melee combat experienced a much-needed boost in MM7. Knights in MM6 are pretty good in the early game when your party's combat abilities are still weak but become quickly outshined once your Sorcerer (because you surely have one or two in MM6) can unleash havoc with an up-close and personal barrage of Sparks and Poison Spray. (In my last run-through of MM6, I had an archer who specialized in air magic and a sorcerer who took up fire and water magic and found that Sparks, Poison Spray, and Fire Blast trivialized many of the dungeons. The Cave of the Dragon Riders, for example, was no big deal at a somewhat early level abusing these spells.)
MM7's knights, however, can dish out serious damage, to the point where getting decent weapons for your knight becomes a high priority. The knight's sturdiness makes him great for hauling your dead party out of trouble and to the temple, as I would often encounter situations when the rest of my party had been obliterated but the knight was sitting at a peachy 75% of his health.
My experience was, again, somewhat opposite of yours, as I found that the blasters in MM7 were much faster than any other method of killing, especially once everyone's skill was high enough to allow what amounted to a continuous stream of blaster beams. Haste, which was actually useful in MM7, was helpful to achieve this.
Did you make use of GM Protection from Magic? With a Cleric, you most likely did, so that may have protected you from the bulk of eradication attacks. I can't really remember how much eradication I ran into in MM7 as it has been a while since I've played it, but I do remember how useful the final upgrade to Protection from Magic was. The only problem was keeping it active, as, if I remember correctly, it would only absorb a certain number of status effects before it would dissipate.

Yeah, there were quite a few baddies crammed into those tombs. I didn't have much trouble with it, actually, but I think I visited at a later level than what was expected.
I don't think I had much difficulty with those two zones, either - I found the most difficult areas in the game to be Thunderfist Mountain and the Titan's Stronghold, largely because there are so many death touch effects flying around, and Protection from Magic doesn't help. I only had a single divine spellcaster, as well, so if she was killed, I had to either reload or retreat. Fortunately you only have to clear a narrow path through the Titan's Stronghold, though I ended up clearing the whole zone for the experience and treasure.
I think it becomes tedious. Often it's not just the dungeon that needs multiple trips to clear out (that would be fine and even expected), but even individual rooms. I was able to clear dungeons in MM7 much faster than in MM6, but I still often needed to rest or visit the temple a few times (or many times) before I was through, so for me, it felt much better balanced than MM6. Personally, I prefer the way dungeons were set up in MM3-5: there were plenty of monsters to kill, of course, but they were also loaded with traps and riddles, which is where the bulk of the challenge came from. MM6 shifted things heavily towards hack-and-slash.
The basement of Castle Darkmoor was one of the most frustrating areas for me in MM6 - it's crammed full of what must be at least a hundred beholders, half the time floating out of reach of melee weapons, each with different magic resistances and each able to spray debilitating status effects. It took me forever to get through there.
Yeah, next time I play MM6 I will definitely be bringing either two sorcerers or a sorcerer and archer - I've learned my lesson about the importance of combat magic. I played it most of the way through (to Hermit's Isle) some years back as K/P/C/S, and then came back to it about a year ago - either as K/P/C/S or K/K/C/S, I forget which - and replayed it to the end. Both times, my sorcerer did by far the bulk of the heavy lifting in combat. If I bring two casters, I can increase both my damage throughput and the total mana I have available for damage spells, which I expect would make the game much easier.
My knight in MM6 was mainly worthwhile for her massive hit point total - if a fight went bad, chances were good that she was still standing and could drag the rest of the party to safety. Honestly, she was worth having for that reason alone - even the paladin didn't come close to my knight in sheer tenacity - but I do wish she had been able to hit harder.
In MM6, I found that the ancient weapons, properly trained and with Haste active, could turn pretty much anything into confetti in seconds. In MM7, though, they just didn't seem as effective. At grandmaster level they still sprayed out damage with lightning speed, but with two knights dealing out 150-200+ damage per hit and with the sentry bots posing no serious threat, I just found it easier and more fun to chainsaw my way through the final stages.
I did, yes. Does it protect from eradication? I don't remember. That might be why it never happened to me, as I kept it up pretty much all the time. Of course, it doesn't protect against death touch.

MM6 was great! I just finished it last week. If gog had MM7 I would totaly buy it.

I might be the only one here to buy MM9 - it's a horrible game, after all! - but the DVD version always hangs up in the Arena. My father played it far. o.O

I LOVE your advice on the Melee Whack Attack approach.I have been using that Strategy to Maximum effectiveness in the later levels of MM6. All hail The Might !! I will try your approach when I play through MM7 !! Thx