Might and Magic® 9

I remember looking forward to the release of this when it first came out because I'd been a fan of the Might & Magic games since Might & Magic III was released and it became my first M&M game. Unfortunately due to some bad business decisions in trying to get into the console gaming market with their own console and milking the Army Men IP to death, they'd ended up bankrupting the company. They couldn't even finish M&M 9 properly despite the New World Computing founder and developer Jon Van Canegham sinking $1 million of his own funds in trying to complete it. 3DO literally shipped Might & Magic IX the same day they filed for bankruptcy and laid off everyone despite that it was clearly unfinished and had game-breaking bugs. It is only through the die-hard Might & Magic fan community that the game even became playable. Unfortunately there was only so much they could do without having the actual game code. It is extremely unfortunate that Ubisoft picked up the M&M franchise and then only ever released Heroes of M&M games and that travesty that was Might & Magic X over a decade ago. I really wish someone who loved the Might & Magic games could buy up the franchise and bring it back to greatness.

As a massive fan of the classic NWC games, HoMM and M&M, this game is probably the one that is the most unfinished of the bunch, and it feels! A lot of quality-of-life stuff that you could find in M&M6 even, are not here. There are bugs; visual, audio, and gameplay. And the story is quite frankly as unfinished as the code. That being said, I enjoyed it quite alot! As a lover of the world of Axeoth, exploring these areas was a joy! The dungeons are fantastic, some of them even better than the ones from the beloved 6-8 games. And the music is stellar as always. It hurts knowing that the devs were really trying there best with nothing, but their passion does shine through, and I'm happy that this game exists!

A good game broken on gog. Want to go to the invintory screen? {you will } Well wait 15 or more seconds please!! Oh you want to exit? go to the load/save screen? 15seconds please!!! over and over and over...it makes the game UNPLAYABLE. It would be nice to have known this before buying.

This game had potential to be "the best" M&M in series. There are some really good reworks. Now there are no "Must have" class like priest or knight always were just because they were way too powerfull, mage and druid can cover for a priest for support and add more firepower, priest itself will provide alot, both heavy fighter kinda equal with gladiator being just more tanky but assassin is capable to do more damage etc. Yes the ranger is questionable character but still ok i guess. Combat is really cool, if we "remove" AI bugs it is doing pretty good job to provide challenge almost at all stages of game. Economy was better balanced and spells were balanced aswell, now you cant faceroll bless+heroism for 5 hours after completing harmondale, you need to be really skillfull in magic to do good blesses and local heroism aka "faith" is single target, spell and buff management was done REALLY good for M&M. But it seems that is all that devs were able to kinda do before release, their core with classes and combat/magic going with almost empty shell of not completed cities, underworked promotion system, quests, ALOT of bugs, both gameplay and visual aswell as crashes. Even things that alot of people liked like gearing your character maneken in inventory now gone, more than that the pictures of characters dont match race and portrait look, which is huge shame for this series. Consider getting this game if you are looking for M&M gameplay with interesting magic and combat, but if you are looking for well crafted world with stories and dialogues your best shot will be to miss this game. I have rated this game 4/5 since i knew what game im gona play, if it were my first hand expirience it would be 2, maybe 3/5.

I have owned this game in one form or another since it first came out and have never gotten further then 2 broken hours into this game. No matter what I do the game is glitchy and runs choppy if it runs at all. Most of the time the game freezes on start up taking 5-25min to get to the menu when it does load. Then the loading agian between zones and rooms and interatction is super choppy and I feel there is alway a delay in command interactions. I am a huge fan of the Might and Magic series and have them all installed on my computers so I always have something to play. And this franchise is always new in game play with the combination of choices you can have. SO even though I can't play this game with out stressing on the glitching I hold on to this game in the hope that some programing Genius, Saint or fanatic will work on fixing this programing once and for all. For every one else reading this review definitely get the previous 3 installment to this game you wont be disappointed. I have loved these games for over 15 years.