Might and Magic® 7: For Blood and Honor®

This wasn't my first Might & Magic game (that was Might and Magic 2) nor my last from this developer (Jon van Canaghem, who also did the original King's Bounty and the Xeen series). I was no stranger, then, to the worlds of Might and Magic and the sly humor which delights the wit by popping up at the most unexpected times. Nor did the Sci-Fi twists bother me, since they were SO wonderfully conceived and woven into the fabric of the games. After the superlative Xeen series (Might and Magic IV, V and Va), though, and the unfocused, spotty experience that was Might and Magic VI, I had my doubts about this entry in the series. About ten minutes into the game I was hopeful. After the first month of game time (yes the calendar in the game DOES matter) I was ecstatic. The flaws from VI had been corrected, and here was the true successor to the world of XEEN. Here is all the free-roaming goodness you can imagine, including the freedom to wander into areas far too dangerous for novice adventurers. Want to get up on the roof of the inn? Ok, if you can figure out a way to climb up there, go for it. Have a burning desire to climb that mountain range in front of you? Great! The game won’t stop you. It may not reward you either, but then again you might just discover an ancient shrine that permanently boosts your elemental resistances. Either way, you’ll have a magnificent view of the countryside which is sometimes reward enough for the effort. Here too are moral choices, cast in pure black and white to be sure, but no less weighty for all that. Do you side with the necromancers and sample the delights of awesome destructive power free of any ethical restraint? Or choose the wizards of Bracada and channel the restorative and protective power of the gods themselves. It’s up to you, and the game plays out wonderfully either way. Oh yes, and did I mention the class system? Nine classes divided into fighters, spell-casters and hybrids makes for a lot of replay value. The game is subtly different when the party composition changes. Adding a monk and a druid to the knight and thief forces you to approach the critical battles much differently than you would with the standard cleric and sorcerer combo. Or dispense with the thief entirely; you’ll take a lot of punishment from traps, but your party will be stronger in combat for the extra fighter or spell-caster who replaces it. I could go on of course; the skill system alone is worth a paragraph. To summarize, though, there’s a lot to fall in love with here. I fell for this game twelve years ago and I still love it dearly. I mourned when a Windows update finally killed my heavily-patched CD copy, and rejoiced when GoG resurrected it. Now if they could just get the Arcomage sub-game working properly….

I hope my review is useful as it comes from a new (literally) perspective. This is the first Might and Magic game I have played,ever. I'm an enormous old school RPG fan. I bought this in April of 2012, completely new to the franchise. I have to say that this game is an absolute blast. I think it is essential to watch a Lets Play from youtube to get the hang of the game, but I am so happy with the value and content the game provides. What a lovely revisit to old school rpg's. Having more fun in this than the Witcher 2!

The graphics might look laughable and the UI ancient; but Might and Magic 6, 7 and 8 offer solid RPG gameplay, and 7 is probably the best of those. A lot of the early game is wandering as far as from the nearest inn and killing as many enemies as you can before needing to crawl back to recover. There's a slow grind from killing enemies, but spread through the game are treasures and quest items. A big plus to this game is the risk/reward balance - if you can push a bit further, it's laborious, but almost always the game rewards you for pushing through. The rewards are very satisfying, as you watch your party's equipment, stats and skills grow. Towards the middle of the game you'll be mopping up quests, trying to find new areas where you can push through; and trying to figure out permanent upgrades for your party. Towards the end of the game, there are some really tough dungeons where you sometimes need cunning but occasionally just seem to need to charge past enemies - this is a weak point in the game. You'll either need trial-and-error or an online guide to find where you're supposed to get to before enemies slaughter you. Another negative is that you can't judge how to create a good party at the start of the game and can't change the party later. Giving up and starting over with a new party is very likely to be a part of playing this game. Overall this is a fairly modest RPG that just seems to deliver a sense of adventure and progression in a way that big budget RPGs miss.

I started playing this back in 2000, when I was about 16 years old. A friend recommended it to me so I gave it a shot. The graphics weren't very impressive back then either. I started to wander around, not knowing what to do and how to fight and all that. When I saw the fireflies, I thought I would beat them instantly, what the heck... fireflies. I died a lot, got angry and uninstalled the game. A few weeks later, I tried it again. Kept me going for a whole month I think, it was awesome. Quests, leveling, exploration, you could make choices which would matter, you felt stronger after each level up. Titans, dragons, behemots were scary as hell. I remember on the first island, the dragon from the first cave. When I entered it the first time and saw the dragon, I froze, I didn't know what to do :). The plot was actually good, it made sense. In that time I was in high school, so I had to wake up at 7am. My father tried to wake me up one morning, and a told him: "wait for the our glass to finish" :)). I guess I thought I was sleeping like in the game and I had to wait for the sleep animation to finish before waking up. Needless to say he lold, as did I after realizing what happened. In that time I also played Starcraft 1 and Half Life, but for me, clearly, MM7 was the best game ever. It still is there with my favorites. I recently bought the game here, and I started my 5th playthrough. I can handle the graphics, can't wait to get home to play some more :D Give this game a shot, bare with it for 4-5 hours, and if you are into RPG's, I bet you will enjoy this game very much.

Might and Magic VII - For Blood and Honor is party rpg with 1st person view with the main focus on exploration and fighting monsters. You are free to explore the huge 3-dimensional world, climb up or down slopes or even fly over the areas. Combat can be fought in real time if you prefer action or turn based without any time limit like in the classic Might and Magic 3-5 games if you want to win the battles only with strategy. You can even do both, you only have to press a key to switch from real time to turn based and back. The character development is the best I've ever seen in a crpg. The complex but easy to handle skill and magic system allows developing in many different ways. As you progress in the game you can choose whether you follow the light or dark path and your characters will develop in this direction. A monk can end as master or ninja, a sorcerer can become an archmage using light magic or a lich using the very destructive dark magic, ...