I thought of another complaint:

The game does not let you load a save during combat. You can access the menu with the load option just fine, but when you choose it, you get the message "No Loading allowed during combat". Seriously, what's up with that? Why, if a battle is going hopelessly awful (perhaps I stumbled into an area I wasn't ready for), why do I need to use Mr. Wizard before loading a save file?

I can understand not allowing mid-battle saves, but what's the justification for not allowing mid-battle loads, particularly when the menu where you would load from is easily accessible?

(This, like some (but not all) of my complaints, also applies to Isles of Terra.)

Yeah I was also frustrated by a lack of transportation spells, and then later learned that I could have found them sooner but just happened to explore in a different direction. Once you get better magic the outdoor areas are a lot less frustrating, but there are still some tough dungeons with long, arduous fights in them. I don't want to sound too down on the game, though, as I still liked it. I just sometimes wished there weren't QUITE so many monsters.

As for the early entries, MM1 and MM2 are similar in style. I liked MM1 a little more because the design of the outdoor areas made them more fun to explore in my opinion. But both games are cool. MM3 (which I haven't played yet) is more similar to Xeen in style. I hear good things about it.

Note that in MM1 you will have to make your own maps (or look them up online / in the hintbook). But I was surprised to find that mapmaking was really fun, and it allowed for some cool environment design where the locations themselves could be a confounding adversary. Navigation could be as much of a challenge as the enemies. MM2 introduces some automapping but I still drew my own.

Actually, if you want more details, MM1 is one of the first games I wrote about on my personal blog:

https://waltorious.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/history-lessons-might-and-magic-book-one-secret-of-the-inner-sanctum/

(I've since gotten better at writing, but that piece isn't THAT bad)

For those of you with fond memories of World/Clouds/Dark Side of Xeen may be interested that ScummVM, traditionally an application for running classic adventure games, recently expanded it's scope to include RPGs. And World of Xeen will (likely) be the first RPG-specific engine to be officially supported (as opposed to existing adventure engines that also support some few RPGs, like Lands of Lore in the Kyra engine). I'm currently hard at work, bugfixing and implementing missing functionality. Keep an eye on the ScummVM Planet developer's feed if you're interested. The most recent Xeen posting is from Dec 17.

I was planning to start World of Xeen but just saw your message. Do you think it makes sense to wait for the SCUMMVM? What is the advantage of ScummVM over a game already on gog?

Also, does that mean GOG release will be automatically powered by ScummVM when it is released? Sorry for the flood of questions :)

It might or might not be worth waiting. ScummVM has been known to fix bugs present in the retail release of the underlying game, and it's possible that the ScummVM support for Xeen will, either initially or later, fix bugs seen when playing Xeen in DOSBox. However, unless the original rightsholder has released the game data for free (which, as far as I know, has not happened for Xeen), you will still need to buy Xeen somewhere (GOG, or a retail CD) even to use the ScummVM Xeen.
No. GOG might decide to package ScummVM with their Xeen offering at some point, or they may not. If it happens at all, it won't be automatic. GOG already sells other games that ScummVM can handle, and I can't recall any that ship in ScummVM. Instead, they come as their original DOS game and it's up to you to use ScummVM instead if you prefer it over the DOS build.

Thank you for answering and sorry if my first question wasn't very clear. I actually already own the game on GOG. I was curious if it is worth waiting for ScummVM support to play the game? Does ScummVM support mean a better gaming experience than the current World of Xeen build (I assume dosbox) on GOG?

I'm guessing it is highly unlikely that GOG will change their build to use ScummVM, if the build doesn't already use ScummVM (and it probably does not). So don't wait for GOG to release a version using ScummVM.

I can't answer whether you should wait for a ScummVM release independently of playing the version GOG has.

Personally, I wouldn't trust ScummVM for this game. The problem is that, being an RPG, World of Xeen has a lot of game mechanics that, I assume, are hardcoded in the game. In order to support this game, ScummVM must re-implement all those mechanics, and it is very likely that said re-implementation of those mechanics will not quite match the original. Since the mechanics are what make an RPG for me, having them be accurate to the original is very important to me, and I do not want to play an inaccurate re-implementation of the game's mechanics.

I could compare this to Exult, which re-implements Ultima 7; as of last time I checked, there was one inaccuracy that I noticed. Specifically, the rate at which you naturally regain HP and MP was wrong. In original Ultima 7, you regain 1 HP and half your spent MP (rounded up) each hour (and I find the MP regen to be a rather interesting mechanic), while in Exult, you instead regain random amounts of HP and MP up to 1/3 the maximum each hour. I'm just worried that Xeen under ScummVM will have similar inaccuracies.

Actually, most adventure games that GOG sells come with ScummVM instead of DOSBox.

Well, as I've been working on the engine, I've done little things here and there which I think make the game more usable. Like, for instance, it supports the ScummVM save dialogs, so you have more save slots available, and savegame thumbnails, and metrics like total playtime. I've also removed the "loading pause" between map areas, so now you can smoothly walk around without it freezing every 16 paces. And I've also added some commands already to the debugger (Ctrl-D) like "invincible" and "spells" to give you all the spells.. for a fun "God" mode :). I'll also likely add support for the scroll wheel in places like the spells dialog. So if you can bear to wait, you'd be performing a useful service for others in the future by helping test for any bugs when it's ready for testing.

That's the downside of course.. as one of the others said, there is a lot of combat logic built into the game. I've been furiously fixing bugs as I find them.. I think at this point that combat is pretty stable, but it's certainly possible that there are other problems, particularly when it comes to some of the more esoteric spells.

What might be helpful for you in deciding is to go to the ScummVM website and download a daily build, which will have the Xeen engine enabled, and point to the GOG copy of World of Xeen, and try it out. See if the gaming experience feels better for you in ScummVM vs DosBox. Just be aware that it's still a work in progress, so I'm not looking for anyone to be reporting bugs just yet.

I love that someone is working on this. I should be able to help with testing the game and finding bugs, when you get to that point.