Hey folks! I've recently acquired the entire old Might and Magic series through GoG thanks to gifts and sales, and now I'm ready to take the plunge. I spent my entire life playing the old Wizardry series and the Realms of Arkania games, and really loved Wizardry 8 the most, but never really had a chance to play the M&M series for some reason. But now I'm gonna change that!

So now I have two questions for fans of the saga:

1. What are the truly stand-out gems of the set? And why are they so good? I doubt I'll be able to really play through ALL NINE, so I want to make sure and hit the best ones while I still have the drive for the series.

2. Of those gems, do you have any tips for a noob to the game who hasn't been playing them for decades now?

Thanks!

I'll go through the Xeen games here; World of Xeen is often considered one of the better games in the series.

* The default party works just fine in this game. If you are going to make a custom party, you need at least one Sorcerer or Archer, as those two classes are the only ones that can learn a certain required spell.

* Save early and often. The games are known for having lots of traps, and some are death traps (I can think of at least one that is an instant game over). There is a spell that will tell you whether something is trapped, but note that sometimes you get mixed signals (particularly if something has both good and bad effects).

* At first, don't use the pyramids. You see, this game was originally released as two separate games, and if you installed both games on the same system, they would combine into a single game. You start on Clouds of Xeen, and the pyramids will take you to the Darkside. The problem is that Clouds is balanced for lower level characters (the highest level you can train to is 20), but the Darkside, being intended for higher level characters (can train to 30 in Castleview, the starting town), will give you tons of XP in the early game. Going to the Darkside before beating Clouds can make Clouds too easy. (With that said, note that there are a few areas on Clouds where the keys are only accessible via the Darkside; those areas *are* intended for high level characters.)

* At high levels, training costs get ridiculously high, to the point where money, not XP, will be the main limiting factor for character advancement. Even worse, there is one endgame dungeon that expects you to pay something like 4 million in protection money. (If you don't, it's still possible to get through, but it won't be pretty.)

* One last thing: The word "beggers" has no 'a' in it.

As for Swords of Xeen, I would recommend not playing it for now; that game, while it has some interesting ideas, also has a lot of problems. I can give some tips for that game, but for now, I recommend staying away, at least until you finish World of Xeen.

The 1st (Book 1) and 2nd (Gates to Another World) games are alright, but they have aged. There is more mircomanagement tasks you'll have to deal with (for example, you'll have to manually tell your characters to loot the enemies after each battle before you leave the square). I gather that the games aren't bad if you can get into the heavy exploration and mapping required. If you are only looking to hit the highlights, then come back to these later.

I enjoyed what I've played of the 3rd (Isles of Terra), though I'm not sure how well it stands out in comparison to the others.

Dtgreene is referring to the 4th (Clouds of Xeen) and 5th (Darkside of Xeen) games in the series. They are generally well regarded everywhere I've seen people talk about them.

The 6th (Mandate of Heaven) and 7th (For Blood and Honor) games are also very well regarded. The 8th (Day of the Destroyer) is alright, but generally considered to be somewhat lacking compared to 6 and 7.

The 9th entry is a mess, and easily regarded as the worst of the lot. Save it for last, or possibly never depending on your available time.

The games almost act like waves in how they play.
-1 and 2 play very similarly (and you can export your party from 1 into the 2nd game).
-3, 4, and 5 all play very similarly. I gather that the later entries of this wave have some refinements on the formula used here.
-6, 7, and 8 all play very similarly. 6 and 7 have some stylistic differences; 6 has more, larger dungeons, but 7 kind of tightened everything up and made a few other tweaks to the formula. 8 is mostly just a weaker version of 7 with a new story, with some differences in how the party is handled and with a smaller world.

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I'll defer to others for tips on playing 1-5 and 9.

Tips for 6:
-The default party is fine. You can also consider swapping out the Knight for a Paladin. The Knight is a better weapon fighter, but the Paladin can use clerical magic.
-If you take a Knight, then have him handle mastery of all misc skills that a single character can handle for the party (ex. only one character really needs to advance the Merchant skill). The rest of your characters should focus on their weapon, armor, magic skills, and misc skills that .
-If an area seems to be kicking your butt, then leave and come back later. You are free to wander in any area you can manage to survive in (whether by killing the enemy or just making mad dashes past them and surviving).

Tips for 7:
-The default party will serve you well. Again, you can consider swapping the Knight for a Paladin, with mostly the same trade-off as in MM6. The Paladin sacrifices some offensive ability in order to use clerical magic.
-Note that, unlike in MM6, character classes in this game have limits on how much mastery they can acquire in different skills. Your knight will never be as effective a merchant as your cleric can be. Take a look at what skills each character can master and grand master, and plan your party build around those mastery levels.
-Once you are recognized by a monarch, there are some main line quests that are on timers. They are still worth doing, just make sure you don't accidentally miss them.

Tips for 8:
-You can easily succeed with any character class as your PC. You'll be able to add a Necromancer, Vampire, and Cleric to your party before leaving the first town, and you'll get a Knight at the entrance to the first dungeon. The rest of the classes have at least one member that isn't hard to acquire soon after that.
-Long term, plan to use a Cleric and a Necromancer, and select 3 other unique classes for your party. If you want access to the widest range of spells and skills, then plan to use a Cleric, Necromancer, Dark Elf, Vampire, and Dragon. You can use Town Portal and Lloyd's Beacon to jump back to the Adventurer's Guild to use Repair Item from one of your recruited Knights if your equipment gets broken.
-Using dragons as party members makes the game easier. More dragons usually means less difficulty.

1. 2 and 6.
2 because it has the best combat system and item system.
6 because it has the best exploration and most epic battles.

3-5 are rather easy and anemic in comparison, but they are the most newbie friendly ones.


2. For 1-5, don't be ashamed of using the pregenerated characters. They are better than what you can roll yourself in a reasonable time.

With respect to MM2, I would disagree.

The Cleric in the default party is rather slow. This means, in practice, that he does not have the speed to cast a support spell (like Bless) before the enemies start to attack, at which point he will have to spend the rest of the battle healing and won't get a chance to use many of his spells.

Also, there's the problem that the party is male dominated, and both the female characters are offensive spellcasters. This is a problem because, for whatever reason, some enemies have gendered physical immunity, and this party will find it annoying to fight enemies with male physical immunity. Therefore, I would recommend replacing either the Knight or Paladin with a female character. (Note that you probably want the Paladin and Cleric to be the same sex because of the way the Personality boost works; since you want to replace the Cleric anyway, you might as well make her female if you're also making your Paladin female.)

MM3's default party also has an issue; there's no Druid or Ranger, so your party does not have access to the Walk on Water spell (rather important on a world map which contains a lot of islands surrounded by water). Therefore, I recommend putting a character of one of those two classes in your party. (Note that, as far as that particular spell is concerned, a Ranger works just fine, as that spell isn't expensive to cast.)

(Also, if you do ever decide to play Swords of Xeen, the default party in that game is *not* resonable.)

For me it is MM VI that's stands out the most. But I also highly enjoyed the other games in the series (including MM9), though I enjoyed MM II the least, because it has level scaling (thankfully, no other game in MM series has level scaling).

About tips. Interface is very user friendly (except maybe for MM I, II). Game greatly rewards exploration. You are free to experiment with any party setup, any combat approaches, etc. Best thing in MM games comes from your own exploration and experimentation. You might found your own approach which works for you and have distaste for approaches of other people.

Also MM games have very high level caps, so if you make some mistake in party development you can always fix it by gaining few more levels.

Another combat tip for MM2:

Fire and Cold are resisted by many (perhaps even most; it certainly feels that way sometimes) enemies, including some you wouldn't expect to resist them (in particular, undead tend to be immune to fire, which is the opposite of how most RPGs with elemental attacks and undead behave); as a result, spells of those elements tend to only be useful in special situations.

Electricity and Acid, on the other hand, are resisted far less often. If you don't know about the enemy's resistance, using spells of these elements is a reasonably safe option. For this reason, Lightning Bolt can be your main attack spell until you get Disintegration, and Mega Volts is generally more useful than Inferno, with Dancing Sword best used only when electricity doesn't work.

Of course, non-elemental spells with fixed costs tend to be the best, like Disintegration, Implosion, and Deadly Swarm (Cleric).

Also:
Casting Turn Undead will cause Holy Word to fail if you try casting it later in the same battle, so the strategy of casting Turn Undead, then using Holy Word when that fails, will not work. (With that said, Holy Word does not age the caster in the DOS version of 2.)
Divine Intervention can only be used once per battle, and only during battle, but if you have high HP (either temporarily or permanently) it's worth the aging.
Rejuvenate is best cast after you save the game by entering the inn, but before you turn off the game; if it succeeds, save and try again, and if it fails, just turn off the game. Note that, if this spell would reduce your age below 0, it *will* backfire.
A character who is 80 or more years old may die when you rest, but I believe the character is not otherwise at risk (if you're clever with the fountains, you might even be able to avoid resting entirely).
Similarly, spells only wear off when you rest; you can go days without your spells wearing off. Also, hirelings only charge money when you rest with them in your party (the game won't let you rest if you don't have enough), and IIRC food is only consumed when you rest.
I have never seen Recharge Item or Duplication destroy the item; Recharge Item will not work on items with 0 charges (but you can use Uncurse Item (which doesn't work as presumably intended) to give it a charge), and Duplication will only work for items that can be randomly dropped by enemies.
Frenzy is bugged; it doesn't permanently lower Endurance, and it makes your offensive spells always succeed. This is game-breaking enough that I would consider it an exploit (especially since Finger of Death exists). That's not true in MM4, where you can train only up to level 20, and where the highest attainable level is 23 with permanent boosts, or 33 with temporary boosts. (This is for MM4 alone; traveling to the Darkside (MM5) will let you reach much higher levels.)

Also, I believe that in MM1, reaching really high levels is not feasible, as enemies don't give that much XP.

With that said, both of these games pre-date the MM6 skill point system, so there are no choices you could make in party development (except for choosing your initial classes) that could be mistakes. (That's one reason I think I prefer not to have a skill point system; no mistakes to make.)

I think it is fair to consider MM4+MM5 as a single game. After all, MM4 has some of top level content locked in it.

Also MM 1-5 level-up requirements eventually stagnate, so that you need same amount of exp from Lv. 51 to 52 as from Lv. 151 to 152.

MM 6-9 use different formula, so exp required to level keeps increasing, but at same time Level Cap in MM 6 and 7 was increased to many thousands (to 32767 to be precise), which gives more than enough room to make powerhouse team, which can effortlessly kill massive hordes of dragons as if they were some rats.

Another important thing about MM2 (this probably also mostly applies to MM1 as well, but I have not yet played that game):

Permanent and temporary stats

Every stat for each character has two values: a permanent one and a temporary one. What you see on the stat screen is the temporary value. After each battle or rest, every stat's temporary value gets set to the permanent one (excluding max HP, which is only reset when you rest, and will be set to half the permanent value if you're poisoned at the time you rest). This may seem reasonable, but there are some things to be aware of:

* Any effect that permanently changes a stat will typically only change the permanent value. This means that you may not see the new value of the stat right away, and may have to rest or fight a battle.

* HP gains always use permanent Endurance; there's no benefit to a temporary Endurance increase. SP is recalculated only when you rest, and is therefore only based on the permanent value.

* At least in DOS MM2, if a character individually runs away from a battle, the character's stats won't be reset. This means that, for example, you can carry the effect of Heroism from one battle to another.

* In MM2, there is one particularly nasty trap in the game, which is triggered by stealing a certain treasure. If you suspect you may have fallen into this trap (the game gives you a dire warning, but nothing seems to happen, at first), do not return to the inn; instead, rest, then check your stats. You will know if you tripped that trap, at which point I recommend turning off the game without saving. If you already saved, it is still possible to recover (hint: get your Speed back to decent levels first), but it will be painful; I believe people have actually quit the game entirely as a result of this trap.

Also, since it came up in a different thread:

In MM3, there are traps in one of those high tech pyramid areas that will advance time, causing natural aging that can't be reversed. If you suspect you are in such an area, and that you may have triggered such a trap, it is a good idea to check your characters' ages *before* you save. The only way to recover from this is to hex edit your save file to change the year (but note that characters under 18 will suffer stat penalties for being young).

6 is my favorite. Large open world, open character growth, great game.

If we're talking just the highlights, World of Xeen and Mandate of Heaven are the "best" games using their respective engines (it's worth mentioning that the Darkside half of Xeen is a lot more interesting than the Cloudside), though I have a soft spot for For Blood and Honor (VII), which I find to be a more condensed, polished counterpart to VI. Consider starting with that one if Mandate pushes you off the deep end too quickly.

The first two games are a little too old for me to have made any headway in them, but honestly the only game I'd consider warning you away from is Might and Magic IX. Even then, it's far better than a blatantly half-finished mess of a game should be and is worth a look if you already played and enjoyed the rest of the series. There's also Might and Magic X. It's alright, but it's also a weird, low-budget experiment that doesn't quite nail the landing. That's definitely in the "optional" column.

Swords of Xeen should probably also be put into the optional column; while it has some interesting ideas, it also has some issues. (One tip: Because the combat difficulty is not balanced, and some battles are harder than what I would consider fair, I recommend playing on Adventurer rather than Warrior; this is in contrast to World of Xeen, which I think I like better on Warrior.)

A few things to note about MM1 and MM2:
* MM1 has no automap, so you may need to bring out the graph paper that you used for Wizardry. MM2 does have an automap, though you will need a (easily obtained) skill for it to be useful.
* In MM1 and MM2, you can only save at inns; this is unlike later games where you can save (almost) anywhere outside of combat.
* These two games have better combat than the later games; you can actually see what's going on, and you actually get damage numbers (something that, for whatever reason, is absent in 3-5).
* Don't forget my earlier post in this topic about MM2, some of which likely applies to MM1.

(By the way, I just remembered one annoyance in MM3-5; you can't *load* during combat. I can understand not being able to save during combat, but why can't I load a save if I'm in a fight that I can't realistically win?)