Well I restarted with 3. My party kinda sucked last game apparently. What I did was take out the pally and put in a ranger. Now im hooked. Saved fountain town im about lvl 7 avg. cleared out goblin and orc camps. Now more adventures await! :)

Don't play 9.

Play 6, 7 and 8 as previously advised, but be a normal person and continue to deny the existence of 9. Don't waste your money on it.

For Might and Magics 1 - 5, graph paper is indeed necessary. My dad had a folder of years of 'research' from playing Might and Magic. Every single dungeon, map, area, the stats of all the monsters, all the passwords and clues... It was all there.

Unfortunately, though, when he upgraded to Windows XP on his main machine and saw no hope of running Might and Magic ever again, the folder found its way into the recycling bin. Such a sad loss. Such a terrible, terrible loss... I would have loved to scan and share the whole thing with you guys.

I guess back in 2001, we had no idea of a site like GOG. If I had a time machine, going back and telling my dad not to throw out the folder would be the first thing I do.

Dont worry. The time machine included all that in the clue books. :)

Graph paper is definitely required for 1 and 2, but 3-5 have automapping that's solid enough to make graph paper entirely optional. I beat the entirety of World of Xeen without a single manually mapped square.

A notebook, on the other hand, can be very useful. The auto notes are definitely better than anything else from that era, but there's still plenty of information you'll want to write down yourself.

Regardless, my dad went the whole hog with these games. I want that folder so badly. That thing would have been a goddamn family heirloom. An heirloom.

With all due respect, I can't agree with the statement " don't play mm9"

It's a fun and enjoyable game, and if you are a person who is likely to play an RPG then you will be a patient person. And there may be some times when that patience gets tested with MM9. That said, I found that a little bit of research into completing the right quests allowed me to shape my team towards the promotion quests they needed.

Play MM9....but maybe stick TELPS patch on it first !

The issue is that it's an empty, soul-less game that also happens to be buggy as hell and ends the storyline with a big wet plop. Ultima IX had the exact same problem, and for a more recent example you've got Gothic 4.

I mean, yes, enjoyment can be wrung from it if you really intend to force it. But it was rushed as hell (the designer claimed it was shipped in a pre-alpha state), had absolutely no involvement from the series creator (who was the leader of 1-8), and just generally feels like a Might and Magic game in name only (only one recurring character, no sci-fi aspect at all, etc).

With so many great RPGs out there, including seven in this series alone (and M&M8 isn't terrible either), why bother with M&M9? It doesn't even have the distinction of being "the final chapter" like Ultima IX had, since most things that needed to be wrapped up WERE wrapped up by the end of VIII, and the stuff that didn't get answered there isn't answered in IX either.

I could see it being a satisfying game if it were ever actually finished, but it wasn't, and TELP can only do so much. It was a somewhat promising alpha, but nobody should have to pay for that.