There's more than enough great gaming here to be easily worth your $10, but it's all concentrated in the middle. Might & Magic I and II date from the dawn of the CRPG genre, when developers were still figuring out what did and didn't work. They're far too obtuse, grindy, and primitive to hold up today when so many games have built on the foundations they laid. M&M VI, meanwhile, stumbled the series' transition into the modern era of 3D, replacing crisp, colorful, precise 2D for dreary browns and awkward navigation. It also saw some needless "streamlining" in terms of mechanics (the cut from 6-person parties to 4 was particularly painful in how much it constrains the player's options). It's not bad by any means, but hard to recommend over the other choices. In between those extremes, though, is solid gold. M&M IV: Clouds of Xeen is the pinnacle of the first-person party-based dungeon-crawling RPG subgenre, perfectly paced, with a wealth of interesting locations to explore and mechanics to play with. It's also remarkably brisk-moving, with no filler or unnecessary downtime. M&M V: Darkside of Xeen is interlinked with it, allowing you to bring your party back and forth, and is nearly as good, though the fact that you will already have most of the spells by the end of Clouds hurts the sense of balance and progression a bit. These are absolute must-plays for anyone who's been intrigued by modern takes on the genre, such as Etrian Odyssey. Finally, M&M III: Isles of Terra uses the same engine as the next two games, and is very good in its own right. It's much less forgiving than its progeny (it's quite feasible to have a total party kill from being mauled by moose rats before you even leave the first town), so I'd recommend playing it only after you've gotten a good grounding in the series plays in IV and V. Swords of Xeen falls into the same category -- good to check out once you've finished IV and V and are looking for more, but its roots as an amateur project show through in a number of unpolished elements. Overall, this pack breaks down as two all-time classics, a few more pretty good games worth playing for people who like the CRPG genre, and a couple of relics interesting only as historical curiosities. But even if you never play half the content included, you'll get much more than your money's worth from just hitting the high points.
