I have mixed feelings about this game. I've played through it multiple times and tremendously enjoy the story and the fact is, it is just plain fun. That said, the PC version is crippled by it obviously being a bad port from a console game. The control scheme barely works on the PC, and you can't do even simple things like throwing objects straight. Instead, they go zinging off to the side or somewhere else. The targeting system is just completely broken. Also, two of the main fights are very poorly implemented. Pulling down the star destroyer and the Kasdan Paradus fight are infuriating. Like everybody, else I dread the star destroyer pull down fight because it takes forever and it just gets reset with new tie fighters too quickly. I'm absolutely stunned that they never went back and fixed it. The Kazdan Paratus fight it's just ridiculous because they made him immune to everything except one move and you just have to sit there and do the same move over and over and over again to beat him. In fact the game philosophy seems to be that they make a fight difficult by simply making opponent simply immune to everything that you have in terms of powers. In short, it really is a very good but deeply flawed game. If they had just simply gone back and fixed the control scheme in a couple of fights it would have been a masterpiece.
This game is just plain fun. Killing Nazis, blowing stuff up, car collecting/racing. The setting in occupied Paris/France is really amazing, even if the layout has huge liberties taken with the actual geography. The stealth aspect of the game is highly additive, as Sean (the main character) frequently has to sneak into heavily occupied areas to get to his targets. The perk tables are a lot of fun to work on and achieve (e.g. run over a certain number of Nazis with your car, shoot two Nazis at a time). Collecting vehicles was a great distraction, as was the car racing. It was extremely fun at times just to engage in sheer mayhem - get on top of a building, and snipe the hell out of the Nazis until they sent aircraft after you. The missions were interesting and fun (and sometimes quite challenging). Normally I am pretty inclined to point out shortcomings of games, but this one really doesn't have any significant ones. There were no significant bugs in the game that I noted - only a few quirky points in the game (the occasional enemy floating in midair, the water turning to bright white light near the Zeppelin launch pad). Escaping the alarms were sometimes annoying, as the alarm would not end even as you ran away halfway across France. But it was about a clean of a game as I've ever seen in terms of bugs. If you're thinking about this game, definitely give it a try. It is a badly underrated gem!
I even liked MM8, as uninspired as it was. MM9 was awful. The story lost the whole interesting sci-fi vs. fantasy history of the series, the combat was annoying, and the engine horrible. The character advancement had some vestiges of what it used to be. But in general, it deserves the scorn it got. A pity to see a brilliant CRPG franchise go out with such a whimper....
Sold far less than it should have. One of the top RPGs of all time, and only dethroned as the very best in the 2000s by Baldur's Gate II. Play this, or you are an idiot.
