Since I have to wait for this ginormous thing to download anyway, are there any other players on here who started M&M right from the beginning back in the 80's & played through the games as they were released? My main reason for asking is because I thought MM3, 4, & 5 were the bomb-diggity back then...the graphics were a huge step up from MM1 & 2, while retaining alot of the same gameplay that I already loved.
But when MM6 came out, I felt terribly disappointed. I didn't like the real-time combat (I'm aware you could pause it, but it wasn't quite the same), and although movement had taken the final step to real 3-D, I didn't like that there were no longer fixed grid spaces for finding things (you had to know exactly where something might be placed at).
It wasn't what I was used to and, admittedly, I gave up on it pretty quickly. I just didn't have the patience to try to adapt. I liked my turn-based combat & my grids (which is why I also loved Fallout).
Has anyone else experienced this? Were you able to overcome your bias (and mine) toward the "original" style of M&M, or did you also quit after MM5?

A lot of people consider 6 to be the best of the series, but if you ask me, 3-5 were much better. The biggest problem with 6 is that the monster population is incredibly dense. While 3-5 provided an excellent balance of exploration, combat, traps, and riddles, 6 is very combat-heavy, and that can become tedious.
That said, 6 is still a rather good party crawler. If you can get past the differences from Xeen, you'll get a lot of quality gameplay hours out of it. Exploring the world and working my way through all the quests and promotions was a lot of fun for me. I think it's worth your while to give it another shot. It might be easier to manage if you bring two sorcerers or a sorcerer and archer - elemental magic is the heavy lifter in combat in MM6, and I found it taxing to play with only one sorcerer.
MM7 was better than 6, thanks to its more robust and more balanced mechanics, as well as thinner monster populations. The content, however, was a bit weaker than 6. Overall, I enjoyed it a fair bit more than 6.

Well I started on MM6 so I may be abit bias. Once I had beaten it I was like: Well this was the 6th game in the series... What about the previous 5? So I managed to get an archive that had 1-5 on a CD. However, 1-3 would never run right... all 3 would always too fast, even on my 386!
I did manage to play MM4/5. Honestly I found them to be on par with MM6. MM4/5 and MM6 both have their pros and cons and I liked both pretty much equally. I am only now getting to try MM1-3. I really like the style of MM1. Its old and alittle shallow feeling but I see how everything came to be from it. Exploring is really fun in it too. I havent tried MM2/3 yet though
Anyway we are getting off topic. To answer your question, no I did not experience what you did. MM4-6 felt like the prolonged peak of the MM series. MM7 was a HUGE letdown in my opinion. I loved MM6 because any class could master any skill. However, just because you could didnt make it a good idea persay. For example just because a sorcerer could match an archer in melee/ranged attacks if you put your skill points in that direction does not mean it was a smart idea!
I HATED, ABSOLUTELY HATED the fact that certain classes could not master/grandmaster skills they had. I firmly believe that if you can learn a skill, there is no reason you should not be able to master a skill. The fact that you also needed to class change to grandmaster a skill is absolutely retarded beyond belief.
The only reason I played/beat MM7/8 was because I found save editors where I change the level of mastery of skills on characters. Using those I'd give characters expert/master/grandmaster ranks once they had the skill level to be worthy of it. I actually found the cost of that and docked my gold accordingly to keep it fair.

My playing order was MM3-MM4-MM5-MM2-MM1-MM6.
When I first tried MM6 I didn't like the 3D real time movement, got confused by the higher complexity and stopped playing quite soon, but after I bought the game some time later with the manual I got soon used to the higher complexity (still did turn based combat) and enjoyed it a lot.

So far here has been my playing order: MM6 -> MM6 -> MM4/5 -> MM6 -> MM7 -> MM4/5 -> MM6 -> MM8 -> MM6 -> MM7 -> MM9 -> MM1
The repeats are when I decided to play the game... again ^_^;;; The reason I replayed MM 6 so much was because you had to drastically vary your play style depending upon your party build and I was pretty sloppy on my first 4 runs. The last time I beat it, I pretty much did every quest I think... The builds I've beat MM6 with are;
Knight-Archer-Druid-Paladin
Archer-Archer-Archer-Archer
Knight-Knight-Druid-Druid
Sorcerer-Sorcerer-Cleric-Cleric
Archer-Cleric-Druid-Sorcerer <--- Probably my favorite build

Well, that's some set of replies overnight. Thanks everyone for your input.
I think for me its a matter of "I grew up with turn-based combat & grid-based movement, so its natural that I'd want to stick with it." I played Castle Wolfenstein when it came out (one of the first 3-D fps games) years & years ago, and thought it was definitely a different experience...I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either.
I enjoy watching friends play real-time 3-D games (I love watching GTA, for instance), but I just can't imagine controlling an entire party of swords-and-sorcery in real-time combat....probably the biggest reason MM5 went from 6 characters to MM6's 4 characters.
I did do some research on Wikipedia, running through the M&M's from 1-9. It was actually a pretty interesting evolution in its style of gaming, seeing as I stopped paying attention after my disappointment with 6. It seemed like there were some big changes from each game to the next. I rather liked MM9's class system, where you chose Might (Fighter) or Magic (Initiate) to start with & progressed from there. It was non-traditional, but made sense to me as a more realistic progression one might take in life as an adventurer.
Well, regardless, since I've got MM6 now from the collection on here, I may as well give it a second chance. I'm probably going to start with 1 & work my way through to 6...but being a married guy in my late 30's with infant triplets at home, it could take me a couple of years to get to 6. ;-)

I started M&M from #3, and each entry that I've played thru and completed has its merits as well as detracting points. For me, nothing can top the good ending between Corak and Sheltem from Worlds of Xeen. MM6 is ok, but it's REALLY long even if you know what you're doing. MM8 is shorter and a bit easier than MM6, so I think that's a good casual entry to start the series with and work backwards.

>>MM7 was better than 6, thanks to its more robust and more balanced mechanics, as well as thinner monster populations. The content, however, was a bit weaker than 6. Overall, I enjoyed it a fair bit more than 6.
It needs to be said that MM7 was overall a much easier game. The dungeons were much smaller, simpler, and less interesting than MM6's. IN MM6 even the simplest, non-storyline dungeon could be big, complex and interesting (Hall of the Fire Lord, Temple of Tsantsa)
MM7 also lacked a climactic final dungeon, and no clear main villain.
As for game balance, MM6's might classes were too weak as of patch 1.2, but grayface's patch fixes a LOT of their problems (with dual-wielding and armor skill working correctly now), and I took it a step further by improving swords, axes and spears.
As for me, my history goes like this:
King's Bounty
HoMM1
HoMM2
HoMM3/MM6 (same time)
MM7
MM8
MM1 (in progress)
then I'll take on MM2, MM3, MM4-5 in order.
MM2 reminds me a LOT of King's Bounty in graphic style, so it feels nostalgic even though I never got to play it in my teens.

I don't disagree with those points, and I especially agree that MM6 had better dungeons, but I think that MM6 was mainly more difficult because of its design issues. Healing magic and melee characters were too weak in MM6, and while most enemies were fairly easy to kill individually, they came in enormous packs that filled entire rooms. Clearing them out was tedious, especially with a melee-heavy party, and exploiting the movement mechanics was a lot more necessary than it should have been (especially in Dragonsand and Hermit's Isle).
MM7 was a relatively easy game, but then, 3-5 weren't that tough either; MM6 was difficult at times, but for me, at least, combat was more tedious than legitimately challenging, and that took a bite out of my enjoyment of the game.

>>> melee characters were too weak in MM6
Check out my other topic where I said I buffed the melee classes. It's as easy as
1) installing grayface's latest MM6 patch
2) changing your items.txt (I can send you mine if you wish) and putting it in the DataFiles folder.
My last game was Knight, Cleric, Archer, and Paladin and they litterally bulldozed through everything with their swords, axes, and spears - never used attack magic at all except to kill slimes and diamond gargoyles.

Thanks, I'll post in your other topic - though I found melee characters weaker defensively than they should have been, as well. Knights had a lot of hit points (paladins not so much), but without MM7's damage reduction from chain and plate, a high armor class just didn't seem to help all that much.

The main issue I had with the Knight in MM6 was the delays got all F***ed up when you would dual wield a spear+sword or like an Axe/dagger. sword/sword and dagger/dagger were alright but it was very limiting.
In MM8 I went with a Knight for my main character and by the end he attacked like 4 times a second and each attack did like 50~120 damage(this was with dual swords). I couldn't believe how lopsided it had become..
For the record if you want a way you can deal some sick damage in MM6, master water magic as quick as possible and use poison spray. It sprays 5 shots that do 2+(1 or 2 damage per skill point) If you add that up at rank 10 its 12~22 damage a shot( you get 5 shots). At point blank its 60~130 damage for like 3 mp!

RagingChaos, grayface's patch fixed that problem, as I said in my other topic.
And yes, Knights were pretty ridiculously overpowered in MM8, thanks to GM armsmaster (though not as much as Dragons). They are very strong in MM7 too except you get the GM Armsmaster trainer quite a bit later.