Might and Magic® 7: For Blood and Honor®

This review is not comparing this game to other entries in the series (which I have not played), but to other games in general. I'm still not sure if I should give this game 3 or 4 stars. I did beat it, I did put tens of hours into it, if not even a hundred. But in the end, I feel this game is equal parts of fun and frustration, so an average 3/5 seems fitting. The levelling up system will be your main source of frustration from the beginning up until the very end. To increase the mastery level of your skills, you need to find a specific trainer for the skill AND mastery level in question. Most of them are just some random people chilling somewhere in the the world in their shacks. And they are gonna train you, the party of dragonslayers. This complaint is crucial, because the whole levelling up and acquiring new skills is the core of this game. And it's amazing. Lots of spells completely alter the gameplay, like invisibility or flight. But before you have fun with them, gotta find that random trainer. Even with external help, you will spend entire HOURS travelling from one trainer to another. If this doesn't scare you, it might be a game for you. The part of time you don't spend on travelling you will most likely spend in combat. It is a tiny bit repetitive due to how many monsters there are in each zone, but the variety of monsters carries this game. From rats and bats to dragons and titans, they are all well defined with strengths, weaknesses and abilities. They don't level up either. You see one and you know what to expect. This is in clear contrast to Morrowind, where many adversaries are human-like NPCs who could one hit you, or die in one hit. The story is... interesting. It's pretty random and illogical, but memorable. One last thing. The soundtrack is FAN TAS TIC. One of the best in history of gaming. I recommend to patient lovers of older games and only with help of external sites. It's seriously more fun this way.

As you can see most of the Reviews are very positive. Unfortunately i myself was very dissapointed with the game. Let me breakdown a bit in depth why i did not enjoy the game. The Gameplay is a mixture between Diablo (Grinding for Level up and Gold, and looting Rare Items from Chests) and Morrowind (Open world, tons of NPC) . I expected a Turn based fight system like in Baldurs gate or Icewind Dale or at least something similar with some strategical depth. Unforuntaly the very old Engine and the poorly designed Combat System do not allow any real strategy. The fights become tedious and repetetive very fast. Sometimes you have to use heal or another cleric spell to remove the insignificant status changes that affects one of your heroes. That is about it. The story starts promising you win a castle with a village in the middle of 3 rivaling kingdoms (Elves ,Humans and Dwarves). The empires are on the brim to war. WIll you be a warmonger (evil path) or can you restore peace (good path). But then very fast after 1/3 of the game, the story totally starts to suck very hard. The FInal Missions of the game are (at least for me) a total disaster and absolutey horrendously written. Especially the last 2 dungeons are so insanely bad that it nearly hurts, I do not want to spoil the end but it really sucked. Feels like they had to rush the game out due to a deadline of the producer. The rest of dungeons are also pretty boring, just some tunnels filled with random mobs and some easy and annoying puzzles. No real Boss fights, you have to pay attention to even see the boss, before you kill him because he has the same model as mobs and only slightly better stats. Big minus. Dragons and Titans are basically mobs, running around in groups of 3 or 4. You kill them in the end like you killed goblins at the start. Very dissapointing!!!! The 3D graphics have a poor art style and make the game look terrible today, other older games with did age a lot better The quests are pretty basic: get item "xy", kill person"xy". Sometimes you have to search entire areals unfortunately for quest items with no hint where it could be. Very tedious. Good things: - Nice loot (feels a bit like Diablo, just see what is around the next corner) - Interesting skill system where you have to search for teacher / guilds to gain access to your skills. - The monsters do not scale with your level, so you can come back to areas where you got smashed later and kick some ass big time. - The villages and cities are well done for a game of 1999. - Open world, no barriers. Feel free to explore every location if you can manage to defeat the mobs. Fazit : 4/10 . If you want to play RPG with a story i rather recommend you buying Baldurs Gate or Planescape Torment. Icewind Dale for nice tactical fights.

6 of 5 must play. 5 of 5 great story great gameplay. 4 of 5 great story average gameplay. 3 of 5 average story average gameplay. 2 of 5 play only if it's your favorite genre. 1 of 5 play if you have nothing better to do. 0 of 5 play if you're a masochist. -1 of 5 avoid. Might and Magic VII For Blood and Honor score is 2 of 5.

like it

I bought this game because I love classic RPGs, especially ones that are rough around the edges and have a learning curve. I love customizing characters, building unique people to overcome big challenges, as well as immersive gameplay. This game has none of that, from what I can tell. The game play seems to be quite a bit like the first three Elder Scrolls games, having you walk around a 3D environment, interacting with people and places. That worked really well, but I quickly realized that I wasn't in a nice town with a mystery to uncover, nor was I stranded somewhere having to find my way. The first "town" is made up of all the guilds you need to play all your characters, and little else. This felt totally artificial and really broke immersion for me. Not only that, but there isn't even any mystery. You're on an island and there is a dragon that you should avoid while you should explore the island. Why am I here? I don't care, I just want to leave and do something interesting where ever my team just came from. The reason I rate this game so low though is the combat system, which is without a doubt the worst I have ever seen. Not only does it not have any real animations for your characters that lets you know if you actually hit something, what you hit, or who hit it, but it is literally just "Mash A button". It"s actually the 'A' button as well, which doesn't make it better. The real problem is that attacks have no "cool down period", so your damage output is directly tied to how fast you can push A. The only way to play this game is to take 4 fighters and just push A until everything is dead, because taking the time to cast a spell wastes valuable seconds that you could be pushing A. Not to mention that the first enemies I fought were fire-breathing mosquitoes. My advice would be to give this game a miss and try a game that uses a better combat system and has a story that grips you from the start.