I always found my sweet spot is might and magic 7. I enjoyed it just a tiny bit more than 6. I found it definitely more enjoyable than 3, 4, or 5. I also for some reason enjoyed 9 and 8. I could not get into 1 and 2, even though I've played games that old when I was young.

7>6>8>3-5>9?1-2

9 higher than a main mm game? HERESY! Burn the witch!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hahaha man, you stepped in it.

No but really, I kinda agree 1 & 2 are hard to get into. 7 is the best of the 6-8 series. I'm a fan of 3-5, but I don't know if more so. They're kinda like a different game series with a lot of the rules being the same. I like 10, but less than the rest. Never tried 9. Uh so:

7>6+8=3-5,10,1-2 Yeah, there we go, easy.

to be fair on mm2, it plays like a pre version of mm3-5, as mm1 was made when most rpg developers were trying to find a formula for a rpg.

MM 1-2 had some bad design approaches which were unfortunately quite "popular" back then. By this I mostly mean saving only in inns and stuff like that. From this point of view they aged extremely bad, especially MM2 which also liked to put you against hundreds of monsters in one fight.. However I liked MM 2's combat log, wide variety of various creatures, game's style in general and swords "+63" :))

love the dozens of loot you can get in mm2, and I always laugh when my party of 4-6 can take out over 50 orcs xD

Usually you only face hundreds of monsters if your party is much higher level. Grinding those Cuisinarts has its consequences.

And I have to disagree with the guy above that MM2 plays like a pre version of mm3-5. To me MM 3-5 felt like simplified and dumbed down (at least the combat) versions of MM2.

I miss that kind of stuff. Welcoming armies on the plains. Dozens upon dozens of mages having a laaarge picnic. Endless hordes of crazy fanatics roaming the roads to Castle Ironfist.

There is one thing about Might and Magic 2 that I miss in later games; nearly every event is repeatable. If I want to fight a certain powerful enemy again, I just need to go back to where it was and it will be back. The same holds true for items and stat bonuses; just leave and return and they'll be back.

This is also good for the situation where I want to change party mid-game. Because experience isn't finite, there is no permanent penalty for changing your party mid-game, unlike in, say, the Xeen games.

Before anyone comments that this would make the game too easy, I should point out that Wizardry 4 was like this. Also, I am one of those players who sometimes enjoys what some people call "grinding". Sometimes I don't want to explore a new area or progress the story, but I still want to play the game. I should be able to, right?

That's due to technical limitations of the time. Dungeons and world maps were not saved, and quest items (are they in party's possessions or not) were used to keep track of quests.

Likely true, but that doesn't mean it was necessarily a bad design decision, nor that the developers would have removed respawns if they could. The games were designed within that limitation, and I also appreciated that it allowed for repeating fights and events.

Later games did not have respawns and were designed accordingly. In Xeen, repeating fights over and over would have unbalanced the game, but for MM1 and MM2 it was fine.

It isn't true only for MM III-V. MM VI-IX feature full respawns, and they respawn everything including bosses (sadly there aren't many of them) and permanent stat increases. It seems you still didn't play MM VI+ because of real-time mode? :) Try it, you can play them turn-based just fine (and they were intended to be played turn-based).
Nah, it was easy to program, it was just a design choice. Finite encounters would make it not possible to have shared world (those games had global saves iirc, no separated saves; in such circumstances new game would be nigh impossible with finite encounters). MM VI+ returned to respawn systems as intended game mechanics, because "no respawn" simply sucks.

Well, it's weird that all the ancient CRPGs are designed the same way, then, with an absolute minimum use of HD space.
And that things changed once HD space became plantiful.

You can't compare the respawn system in MM6 anyway, since that was obviously designed that way (different areas even had different respawn rates IIRC),

Not really. Saving monsters in MM2 engine would require only few (2-4) additional kilobytes. Even in MM2 time it was a very very small amount. Most HDD space is being taken by graphics. If to look at amount of monsters, items, quests etc. MM II beats vast majority of modern multi-gigabyte games (which is rather sad).

"No-respawn" wasn't used mostly because CRPGs back then were done with longevity and freedom in mind, and not just "play once and forget".

Might and Magic 2 also was designed with a number of hirelings and character slots, and the ability to swap in different hirelings/characters at will. In practice, it was useless (I've played through with only my main PCs, and never touched a hireling or extra PC save for a "bank" character or six). But, that may be why JVC left the infinite respawns in; so you could grind up extra party member if you wanted.

Might and Magic 1 is the hardest to get into, but is impressive for the simple fact that it was wholly done by JVC alone, working out of his house. Not very many people can claim they made an award winning series, spanning 3 decades now and still going, and started out all by their self. Granted, the latest (and worst) is owned by Ubisoft, but still.

IMO, WoX - III - VII - VI - II - I - VIII - IX - X, from best to worst. However, I freely admit that my fondness of WoX may stem from all the years gaming with my grandfather, who introduced me to computers, gaming, and other such things. I used to spend many weekends over at the grandparents', and Bard's Tale, Xeen and Terra, Ultima 6, Wizardry 7, etc... made up a lot of that time together.

7 and 6 I can almost put interchangably, as there are things about each I think was done better, but in the end, the only real reason they get punted below Terra is due to the 4 character limitation. In 6 it wasn't quite as bad, but 7 was horrible. It literally begged for a 6 character party.

2 isn't that bad to play, once you get going, though starting out it's a pain. 1 gets a nod up over 8 due to the fact it was designed, written, programmed, art and sound done, and marketed by just one guy, even if it doesn't hold up at all to even it's immediate sequel.