When I first started writing about games, I was very hesitant to include PC titles at all. As I've said numerous times before, it's just not something I've ever really felt qualified to talk about.
There are so many iconic PC games that were just blind spots for me as I never really actively sought them out. If it didn't come on a PC Gamer demo disc or I didn't hear about it through word of mouth, I didn't know about it. Does anyone else remember those PC Gamer demo discs? I had as much fun playing with the UI on them as I did any of the actual demos. Maybe if I spent less time clicking around the secret underground club and more on actually playing the games, I would have had more PC experience. Eh, I'm okay with the fact that while Fallout and Diablo weren't nearly as critical a part of my early gaming life as Coconut Monkey. Even when I did play and enjoy PC games, it was typically because I played the console versions first. Games like Doom, Command and Conquer and Deus Ex all came to my attention as console ports before I played them on PC. It goes to show how great those titles are, even inferior versions managed to land them amongst my all-time favorites. Of course, there was the occasional PC-exclusive I got to play in full. Civilization II was one of those landmark games in my house, even my parents played it. I picked up DOS versions of X-Wing and TIE Fighter from the bargain bin many years after their initial release. But perhaps the most integral PC series, at least to me, was Heroes of Might and Magic.
We will not be discussing Heroes of Might and Magic in full this week, though it's going to happen at some point. But it is critically important to the story of how I came to discover just plain old Might and Magic, the series from which it spun off. I had a friend pick up Heroes 2 on a whim, it was the coolest looking game he could afford with his allowance money, and we were both instantly hooked. 20 something years later, we still play HOMM3 all the time, I would venture it's both of our top games in terms of hours played. And it was the same friend who ended up doing the same double take when he first picked up Might and Magic VI, again the coolest looking game he could afford at the time, and found it was something completely different. I remember distinctly him calling me to tell me about it and being confused myself, like, "six? What happened to Heroes 4 and 5?" But alas, this was something different. Instead of a strategy game, this took place in first person. Not being a PC person, I had no idea what a first-person dungeon crawler was, to me this looked just like Doom but with dragons. Anyone who listened to my Heretic review a few weeks ago knows that was something that I found most appealing. I had to check this game out, and as with it's more strategy focused little brother, I was instantly hooked.
Developed by New World Computing and published by 3DO, MMVI initially hit the shelves in 1998. Further adding to the confusion between the two series, the story here picks up seven years after the events of Heroes of Might and Magic II, which saw the Roland Ironfist defeat his brother Archibald for control of the throne of Enroth. Unfortunately, things have gone from bad to worse, as a catastrophic event called the Night of Shooting Stars destroys the village of Sweet Water. The area has now become infested with devils, called the Kreegans, who are hell bent on conquering the kingdom. Roland sets out on a quest to defeat these monsters, but his forces are defeated and he is taken captive. Making things more complex, a doomsday cult called the Order of Baa has sprung up in Enroth, calling for the end of Ironfist rule in the kingdom. The story puts you in control of a party of four adventurers, all refugees from Sweet Water who are determined to figure out what happened to their village. In their travels, they come across a letter from Xenofex, the leader of the Kreegans, which outlines their plans for world domination. The group delivers this letter to Ironfist Regent Wilbur Humphrey, the de-facto ruler of the kingdom, who asks them for help in tracking down the king. I am sure you know where things are going at this point, right?
Not so fast. Because while the story isn't anything to write home about on its face and its beginning and end are somewhat derivative of its genre, its middle is anything but. There's a point in the mid-game where the story takes a head-first swan dive into the deep end of the crazy pool, and I'm all for it. I'm not going to completely spoil things, but the game basically goes from being a fantasy title to a science fiction one in the span of about five minutes, a sort of twist that wasn't common in games of its era. If anything, it borders on too much too fast and comes off almost comical. But it was always nice to see risks being taken and a series which up until that point had been firmly rooted in fantasy take risks. As with most open world kinds of games, the story here is what you make of it, you can become as heavily invested as you want but it isn't as central as what you would find in a more linear RPG. Still, I think it's a good, solid effort and it's backed up by an incredibly well-built world.
As a largely console based gamer, open world games were still a foreign concept to me when I first played MMVI. Those kinds of games go back to the 80's on PC, but many of the early examples of the genre simply had elements of openness. But MMVI would have been considered open world even by today's standards, you get dropped off in front of the village of New Sorpigal with a few items and your letter and are just told "good luck." You can explore the world at your own pace, there is a mainline quest you can do to advance the story but there are also smaller quests that you can perform for various NPCs. The map is laid out like a grid, with each area labeled A-E from West to East and 1-3 from north to south. The farther north and west you go, the harder the monsters get, so it does kind of incentivize you to stay to the areas you can handle. But you are totally free to explore as long as you can walk or find transportation to your area of choosing. The starting area New Sorpigal is E3, populated by apprentice mages, goblins and other weak enemies. On the opposite end of the map you have Sweet Water, A1, infested with dangerous Kreegan with powerful attacks and huge health pools. I don't think they do a great job of balancing the middle ground areas, which is one of the few flaws I find with this game. The C areas, Northern Highlands, Free Haven and Mire of the Damned from north to south, all feel like the enemies they contain are either too easy or too hard. The E areas are nice and easy while the A areas have appropriately dangerous enemies, like the titan filled Paradise Valley or the Dragonsands desert (I will let you guess what kind of enemies are there). But the middle areas don't feel appropriately balanced. Still, all of these places have plenty of spaces to explore, dungeons to find and towns to visit.
Character customization here is limited but it's still pretty fun to experiment with different types of parties. You have a variety of weapon, armor and world skills, things like merchant, disarm trap and identify item, to assign to your characters, who can be one of six classes. You have the Knight, who has no magical ability, the sorcerer, who can command elemental magic (Earth, Fire, Air and Water) and the cleric, who specializes in self magic (Mind, Body and Spirit). Paladins are physical attackers who can learn self magic, while archers capable users of elemental magic. Druids can use both kinds of spells, but are unable to learn the powerful light and dark magic skills available later in the game. It's always fun to try different classes and each one of them brings something unique to the table. Magic is definitely stronger than might by the endgame, but the physical attackers are definitely plenty strong, even for the late game dungeons. You gain experience from fighting and doing quests, which provides skill points to upgrade your skills. Each skill has tiers, which can be upgraded by finding teachers throughout the world. Being an expert or master in a skill will give you huge bonuses and its borderline required in many cases. You need to at least have expert level proficiency to learn high level spells in any discipline. Having high level in repair will allow you to fix high level armor, something you are going to have to do frequently. Stores will try to rip you off unless you have adequate skill in merchant, while you will be unable to see what your items do without enough points into the identify skill. Disarm is also critically important, as most of the chests you will find have some sort of trap, usually strong enough to do some insane level of damage. You will never be able to have enough skill points to go around if you play normally, so it really makes party construction important. The system is a little simplistic, but I kind of like that as it's something you absolutely have to keep on top of for all of your characters. I think it's a good balance, there's some level of detailed stat and ability management but it's not over the top.
The actual gameplay might take some time to get used to, but I have always found it to be incredibly addictive. You move about the world in a first-person view, battling enemies throughout the way. The A key attacks, while the C key will cast your quick spell. Attacks up close will swing the weapon in your hands, while attacks from a distance will fire your bow (if you have that skill, of course). Of course, there are quick keys for just about everything, that's still something I'm just not used to as a non-PC person. Double clicking on your character portraits will allow you to manage their grid-based inventory or see their stats. I think the combat is fun, though not being able to see my weapons firing was weird to me at first. But the game makes very clear when you are getting a hit and when you miss, so it kind of comes out in the wash. You can actually play MMVI as a turn-based RPG, pressing the enter button will lock you and enemies into place, allowing you to go attack for attack. I think it's a better 3rd person action game than a turn based one, but this has its uses, especially late in the game. The huge overworld areas are filled with dungeons, ranging from small areas with a few rooms to cavernous castles and winding caves. I think the dungeon design is excellent and there are a good variety of more straightforward combat-based areas and exploration-based ones. There are even a few puzzles here, though they aren't anything too crazy. All of these areas are filled with a great cross-section of monsters that should be all too familiar to HOMM or MM fans. Your first dungeons will see you battle bats and rats, before you move on to goblins and Baa followers. By the end of the game, you will find yourself battling minotaur, titans and black dragons. I think both the dungeons and overworld design is outstanding, I can only think of one overworld area I don't really like and it is more because there is just not much to do there. Two of the dungeons, Hall of the Fire Lord and Gharik's Forge are horrendous, but that's two of many and the Hall is completely optional, so you don't even have to enter it if you don't want to.
I think I've made it fairly clear that I'm not big of trying to exploit workarounds, either legitimate or glitches, in video games. I like to play games as they were intended. However, I do like it when games give you the option to do things like this and MM VI certainly does. Some of these are intentional, kind of like ways to allow players to make small skips. Experienced players might know that by inspecting the side of one of the buildings in New Sorpigal, you can find a spell scroll for fly. This spell allows you to, well, fly in any of the outdoor areas. This definitely helps, but it's just the start of what you can do. Flying to the top of the skill guild and pressing the action button will instantly take you to the shrine of the gods in Dragonsands, allowing you to instantly get +20 to all skills for all characters. This will make the first third of the game go by easily. Of course, you will probably get instantly killed by dragons, but all that will do is take your money and start you back at New Sorpigal. Or you can save yourself by ducking into the hidden New World Computing dungeon, an area modeled after the developer's office, filled with items and gold that will help you to maybe get back to the start alive. That's just one example, but MMVI is filled with stuff like this. But even beyond that, it just adds for so many out there strategies to take on the task at hand. Anyone that has played HOMM has probably encountered the Armageddon spell at some point. You know, the one that deals massive damage to every enemy on the battlefield. That's here as well, and boy is it powerful. Here, it will deal massive damage to every character on the map. As in every character, not just enemies. If you use this on a map with a town, you will kill every single NPC in that town. This will give you tons of experience, but it will also ruin your reputation. Oh yeah, if you have a bad enough reputation, you can get arrested if you enter a castle. This will get you sent to the dungeon for two years, which is relevant because it's two years lost. Your characters start at the age of 20 and start losing stats if they get into their 50s. So armageddon-ing towns is a very high risk, high reward strategy. That just scratches the surface of all the different ways you can go about things in MMVI, it's really up to you to go about any way you want. It's even better than some modern open world titles in this regard.
Of course, the game is far from perfect. I always liked its graphical style, but I can see a lot of people not really caring for it. Even other retro gamers might find it a bit to pixelated and lacking in detail. I'm sure most modern gamers would complain about the interface, it's very busy with the actual gameplay window only taking up about 2/3 of the screen. But that's not something I ever had a problem with and I think the whole "immersion" thing is a bit overstated in games like this. I will say there are a lot of glitches and it's very easy to get stuck in certain places. It's really easy to get lost and the game doesn't always give you a great idea of what you are supposed to do or where certain locations are. The dialogue options are very limited and a lot of NPCs are outright useless. This can especially be a chore when you are looking for a teacher, as you will have to enter and exit house after house in a town and hear the same stuff over and over again. There are some really steep difficult spikes here, once you start getting to maps like Dragonsands or Kriegspire the enemies go from "I can walk into a group of them and deal some damage" to "I will get wrecked if I get near just one" almost instantly. There are a lot of inconsistencies here and this is one of my personal favorites I could see others not liking nearly as much as I do.
I could go all day talking about MMVI, there is just so much on offer here. It may not seem like much compared to modern open world games, but in many ways, I think I prefer the way it is set up. Again, I don't have a huge frame of reference when it comes to PC games, definitely not nearly as much as I do with console games. I'm sure some PC gamer is looking at this right now, thinking of about a dozen games in this genre they think are better. In this case, I kind of would like to hear about this kind of stuff, the PC gaming iceberg is vast and I have barely even scratched the surface of it. But I've played what I've played and believe me, I've played a lot of MMVI. It's yet another game where I feel like I learn something new every time I play it, something that I always love. Might and Magic VI may not be perfect, but it's one of my all-time favorites. It's definitely worth checking out for old school RPG fans everywhere, even if you are a console gamer like me.
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