Played MM6 for 10h and I dont get what is so good in this game, I caught myself on repeating same moves again and again -> arrive on new map -> discover few dungeons, after endless fights with tons of enemies -> clear dungeon with resting or backtracking to the city for supplies -> move to the next dungeon \ map -> repeat. Missed these series from the beginning and now wanted to get into but honestly cant. Maybe I am missing something, or playing MM wrong (went with default party)? Do MM 7, 8, 9 have any differences or scheme is the same always - grind more and more?

I played MM6 but not any of the games later in the series (yet). I also found it to be a bit of a monster slog, but it does have some interesting dungeons and puzzles to sort out. Many players like the game for the opportunities to powerlevel your party. There are many secrets and tricks to discover, and not a lot of specific direction given compared to other RPGs. For example, you can find places to boost your party's stats which will help a lot.

Having said that, I wouldn't recommend trying to clear every dungeon in each map right away. There are some that you're meant to come back to later. Most dungeons have a quest associated with them, so if you have no reason to enter you may want to wait. As for the party makeup, I had a Knight, Archer, Cleric and Sorcerer. I don't remember what the default party is. An even balance of fighters and magic users works well, if you want something different then going heavier on magic is probably easier than going heavier on fighters, at least for new players. Things get easier when you are able to get some decent spells and training. Don't make the mistake I made and skip over the island town of Mist, it's a great place to get magic close to the start of the game.

Personally, however, I prefer the earlier games to MM6, especially the Xeen games... MM4 and MM5 combine into one giant game. They still look pretty good for their age, and while the interface is a bit dated, they are much easier than MM6 and have a better balance of exploration and combat. I think the designers did a great job of making locations feel like they had their own character, so I never tired of exploring them and figuring out how to proceed. MM3 (which I have not played yet) is in the same style but I hear it's a little harder than the Xeen games.

If you want to stick with the modern games, I've heard people on these forums say that MM7 is easier to get into than MM6. But there may be plot-related things that get spoiled since it's a direct sequel. Then again, the plot is not the focus in the Might and Magic series, so maybe that's not that important.

I hope this helps!

Mainly exploration, character development, and finding new and better loot with which to equip your characters.
If you don't like that I guess M&M is not for you.

As far as rpgs goes, MM6 kind of is a first person version of Diablo 2 in many ways. You kill monsters, do some quests, grind levels.

It works though. I loved MM6 (Diablo 2 not so much). I can see how MM6 is not for everyone.

I found MM6 to be a classic example of CRPG, which is not diluted by various unimportant elements from other genres.

Not all genres are for everyone. I, for example, don't like sport genre at all. But I realize that it is just me. Modern RPGs are created to attract as much people as possible, and so they are kind of hybrids of different genres. It makes some people think that RPGs have nothing to do with killing monsters to get mower powerful and find more powerful gear to kill more powerful monsters in big and elaborated dungeons.

And by such logic shooters can also be called as grinding games. You enter level, grind all monsters, go to next level, grind more monsters, repeat ad nauseam....

Strategies can also be called as grinding games - you grind resources to build your base to kill monsters. On next level you do the same. And so the same you do on the level after that, etc. Just with different numbers and advantages/disadvantages.

What concerns MM 7-9, they are much worse - they started restricting things, so you can't have both Dark and Light Magic, so you can't make your own party without mods, and MM7-9 worlds become gradually smaller. Understand me right, those are still decent games and they are better than most of what was released after them under the label of RPG.

Funny, I was going to start a similar thread about MM6 specifically. But I don't have time at the moment to make a proper post. I'll come back to this later. Yes. In fact MM6 to, say, Baldur's Gate is like Serious Sam to Half-Life. When you just want to kill many monsters, which is what shooters are all about, without worrying about other stuff, you play Serious Sam.

MM6 is the barebones of CRPGs. Really nothing wrong with adding extra elements, or even creating "hybrids", but sometimes you just want a good game with the core basic CRPG elements. ... but only because of proliferation of video games in general. There are still lots of very good RPGs these days - pure, hybrid or otherwise.

The scheme is generally same.
They might be easier to get into difficulty-wise (In MM6 you can be faced with difficult fights from the start if you don't prepare properly and learn to pick your battles), but that's not really your complaint about MM6.

The only thing that might make MM7 better in your eyes is the fact that there is a choice to make mid-game and the story then branches in 2 directions. But otherwise they mostly follow the same formula.

One of my favorite things to do in earlier MM games is to go into high level areas and fights when I'm still a low level, and actually win such fights (which does have the downside of breaking the power curve).

The thing is, the game actually provides you with the tools to do so, the most important one being fountains; drinking from a fountain will give your party a boost to some stat (which could be level, HP, or SP, as well as the standard attributes (Strength, etc.)), and if you know where the really good fountains are, you can do high level areas early.

In MM2, for instance, there is a certain encounter that you are not meant to beat at low levels, but that gives you a lot of XP (enough to take level one characters past level 20); I have managed to win that fight without winning any other battles first.

In MM3, there's a place you can pay to use powerful fountains, and you can get there early. (By powerful, I mean things like +50 levels.) This should allow you to go through things like the dragon dungeon early (I haven't actually done this, but I see how this could be done).

In World of Xeen, my favorite trick is to go through the Dragon Tower early. It isn't easy to gain access to the tower at this early stage of the game (fortunately, a certain endgame Darkside location conveniently isn't locked, hence why this is even possible), but the reward for doing so are disproportionately huge for the difficulty.

MM6 is the biggest game of the series, you might have more fun with MM3-5 or MM7-8 which are faster paced.

If you have trouble with a Horde of Enemies, then you might have a problem with the game. There is one place where there is a sea of Liches. And Crazy Eyeballs. Something tells me that might be for you.
(Heck I always disliked the endless Giant Sea Born Sock Puppets that show up later. Always felt like it was my laundry coming after me),

I think the appeal of the Might and Magic series has a lot to do with their very straightforward focus on exploration, character development, and combat with not much else getting in the way. It very much plays into that old-school RPG mentality of taking a party of player-created weaklings and building them up to ultra powerful murder machines, but set in giant interconnected worlds instead of a single dungeon. Might and Magic VI especially has a massive world with a non-linear main quest and a lot of very creative dungeons with some fun puzzles. I'll cop to the fact that it can be a bit of a slog when dealing with the nigh endless hordes of differently colored enemies, but I kinda love it regardless, especially once you get access to Fireball and can clear out those hordes much more easily.

That said, if that core loop of exploration and combat isn't doing it for you, the other Might and Magic games aren't going to change your mind. VII is smaller and more polished (might be an easier start) and VIII has some unorthodox character classes, but they all more or less play the same. The earlier games (can only speak personally to Isles of Terra and World of Xeen) play a little differently and hold up remarkably well for DOS RPGs from the early 90s, but aren't much different from the newer ones in terms of philosophy. IX is... well, it's better than it has any right to be, but shouldn't be anyone's first Might and Magic.

Definitely try MM 3. It's a very small and contained game, in my opinion, and it fits very well into the series formula.

I enjoyed 6, 7 & 8 when I first played them, but after returning to them recently I realised I could never re-play them. Although quite addictive, they were also very tiresome in places, and very slow.

My favourite games in the series are 3 and primarliy 4 & 5 (aka World of Xeen). They're colorful and simple to get the hang of with fun combat and dungeons. I also love how fast paced they are compared to the later entries in the series and also recent grid-based rpgs like M&M X or Legend of Grimrock, where everything feels like a wading through mud in comparison.

But you start in town which feels like dungeon - rats and sludge everywhere. You exit town and there are hordes of goblins and orcs everywhere. You get various loots, clean town underground dungeon, then you enter next dungeon to battle hordes of skeletons, etc., etc. :))) Getting all the more powerful loot and raising up in levels up to eleven! )))

I think if someone doesn't like this genre (or MM series in that matter), no matter what game he'll start with - he will see only boredom. Just like other people feel bored with RTS, sport simulation etc., but feel excited to explore next dungeon, learn its secrets, fight its denizens and loot tons of treasures :)

Btw, Dtgreene, you didn't try MM6 yourself yet? Imo, it beats Oblivion in variety, dungeons and most of the other stuff. And you don't need to micromanage skill leveling (and to be honest, I gave up with Oblivion because game started to feel too tedious with its leveling system and world had little variety to make up for that).

First of all, my username starts with a lower case letter, so please don't capitalize it.

Secondly, Might and Magic 6 can't replace Oblivion for a few reasons. In particular, MM6:
1. Has a boring XP->Level (with skill points) system. I much prefer systems where skills increase by use. (In fact, the only reason I played Wasteland 1 is the use of such a system.)
2. Does not have spellmaking or enchanting. (For a game to take the place of a TES game when I'm looking for a game to play, it needs to have spellmaking.) (Note that the Enchant Item spell does not count as enchanting here; the game must let you customize the enchantment as later TES games (and, arguably, Elminage Gothic) do.)

I may get to MM6 at some point, but there are other games I want to try first:
* Trails in the Sky and Hyperdimension Neptunia (JRPGs)
* Jedi Academy (similar to Oblivion, but minus the open world, RPG elements, and most of the customization)
* Revisiting an earlier TES game (probably Arena or Morrowind)
* Perhaps Shovel Knight, either as body-swapped Shovel Knight, or Plague Knight NG+.

By the way, I am using the "All +5 Attributes" mod, which drastically reduces the skill micromanagement you need to do in Oblivion (and if I revisit Morrowind, I will use the construction set to make a similar tweak).

(Incidentally, one thing I *could* do if Oblivion is getting too easy is to use the "showbirthsignmenu" cheat to give myself the Atronach birthsign.)

By the way, MM6 does have some nice music.