I don't think we have to make a first-through 'easy' game, if we save often, at many strategical times and locations.
There are many strategical decisions to make in MM7 (mainly, WHEN to make a quest, and then were to go in priority to make it in time), and I don't think that we can understand and remember all well them if we don't read some parts of a walktrough.
However you are right that it is not easy to find out our prefered party in the 1st game, so I think the game must be cancelled and redone as soon as we appear to prefer other classes.
A gamer should know that an all-knight party will not be the easiest, above all for a 1st play, so the default party is (was?) for the newbs in gaming (16 years ago, the pc games were still not a mainstream hoby). Your advice is good for them, but I don't think that is very relevant for a nowadays gamer.

"Your advice is good for them, but I don't think that is very relevant for a nowadays gamer."

I have to bow to your comment here, this is definitely true, and I didn't even think about this until you mentioned it. I saw things from my prospective, which hasn't changed much since the 90s, e.g. I just installed MM3 (brand new for me :) ) yesterday, and I'll play it without any walkthrough's - of course I'll see into stuff after finishing it and hopefully give it another try.

" so I think the game must be cancelled and redone as soon as we appear to prefer other classes. "

The perfect idea for anyone. Exactly the same as I did many times. You can get the best experience out of this game when finally you manage to run your party your favoured way.

For MM6 I always go 2/2 Cleric/Sorcerer.
For MM7 I find a Thief to be indispensable, so Thief/Cleric/Mage/Druid is most common.
In MM8 I always choose Dark Elf, because I find that to be the most sensible choice given the story.
My MM9 party differs more, but generally I go for 1 Fighter (Paladin) and 3 Initiates (Priest/Mage/Druid).

I used a knight, thief, cleric and a sorcerer when I beat the game. Worked really well. I don't think you can create a "wrong" party in the game in any case.

Depends on how you define "wrong". The game likely isn't impossible with any given setup, but I wouldn't want to try and take a single class challenge with Knights or Thieves. It would be so very, very tedious.

Any combination with no class repeats should be fine, with perhaps Knight + Thief + Monk + Ranger being the hardest non-repeater? Anything else starts netting you Master levels in magic.

Yeah that party will be tricky to use. Especially towards the end of the game.

A party that is complete awesomeness and fun is all Sorcerers. It starts off a bit slow but by the end you are killing titans in less than a second.

Won't trapped chest end up being a severe problem?

At the start, yes. You'll have to just take the hit and then rest. But once you get telekinesis chests are no longer a problem.

Geez. I actually never thought of using that spell to open chests. I have played these games for thousands of hours and never even considered that approach. It is as they say "the obvious solutions are right in front of your face".

It only works as long as you can see the chest from out of range of the trap. So if the chest can only be seen from right next to it, you'll still take damage.

If you go with Knight/Thief/Cleric/Sorcerer,

You'll have a team that can do absolutely everything. I think that this is what the game wants you to do.

However, the sums of the parts is equal to the whole. In other words, this configuration is only average at best. And there is nothing wrong with that because Sorcerer/Sorcerer/Sorcerer/Cleric is too powerful.

That said, Sorcerer/Sorcerer/Sorcerer/Cleric is very weak in the early game because at low levels each person has low health and mana. Use bows and run until your team gets stronger. You're also going to be starved on gold because spells are really expensive. So you need to know what spells are the most useful. Things get really out of control when you fully master water magic and you can teleport places for healing.

Hint: Any spell that fires multiple projectiles like Sparks or Magma Spray deal the most damage per mana at very close range because you can hit the same enemy with multiple shots.

BUT

The most fun I had in MM7 was playing a solo Thief (I drowned the rest of the team). It's not as hard as it seems because Thieves have access to Alchemy which grants them useful power-ups. Further, you can hire people for flying, teleporting, healing you once per day. Hirelings are super duper useful.

I've just played MM7 once again. Hard to recall how much i replayed this game (and other series) but this particular MM game has more than 20 replays (i really like this game).

I have to agree with the opinion that the most easiest game is with full sorc party (or add cleric to make it super easy due to heals). At start you'll have to put some effort into game. Later game difficulty dramatically changes into super easy. Dark path offers liches and shrapnel spell that can wipe anything in close range within a second.

My latest replay was with 4 archers. I think this party pushes full sorcerer party on second place. Once your archers get promotions and level up bow skill to GM the game turns into piece of cake. This of course depends on few factors. If you keep "Fire Aura" spell active all the time the monsters will die quickly as you burst them with volley of arrows. That spell really boosts damage.

This is probably the only party that had zero problems with Proving Grounds in the Pit and probably the only game where i spammed "Slow" spell from Earth magic. Behemoths are tough guys for any party but they were juked with no effort. Archers can master elemental magic and get spells like Fly and Town Portal without a problem, which makes the already easy game much more easier. I've used Invisibility once (through scroll) to get that perfect bow from Titan's Stronghold for Archer promotion quest. The difference between this party and full sorcerer party is probably mana. You ran out of mana and this could stop your offensive power. Thankfully there is no limit for bows. In fact, this game turns in some sort of shooter where you have to strafe and shoot the monster who is shooting you as well - it was much comfortable with GrayFace's Patch due to mouse look.

Well, obviously, when it comes to melee these guys suck and die quickly in late game. So, the idea is to always keep distance. For bosses you can do this tactic as well. Robert the Wise/ Tolberti can be killed by shooting and hiding behind the pillar.

So, for replay this party could be fun. But i don't think it could work for beginners.

! warning this post contains a bit of spoiler !

I played MM many times with diferent parties and found out :

MM6
in general fighter classes are scaling worst then magic classes. Sorcerrers pull out later in game amazing damage and kill monsters before they can do something nasty to you like destroying all your equipment.
The absolute strongest party is 3 sorcerrer + 1 cleric. 1st Sorcerrer specialized in water and later in black magic, 2nd sorcerrer in air, 3rd sorcerrer in fire. Cleric specialized in healing and light magic (for stat boost).

You can get down all type of enemies with this party quite easily and have all the utility spells like curing many negative conditions ...etc. You can use great combo of flight and meteor shower to mow down enemies on the ground. Get elemental resist boost from black magic. Water magic deals not so much damage but when mages are out of mana or the fight goes wrong you can teleport to the church pay tribute get mana and hop back in full strenght into fight. Cleric keeps all the party kicking and happy and is able to pull out some damage outdoor with sun ray.

btw if you are running out of money you can use combo enchanting plus gold finger.


MM7
the strongest party depends on which way you chose later in the game.

For the light path it is melee fighters 2 knight or 2 monks + 1 rogue + 1 cleric.
Knight and Monks are main damage dealers when they are boosted with light magic spells and have great survival. Rogue can keep dps with them as a dagger figher and provides utility like trap removal and object identify.
Cleric keeps like always party up and running plus he is good in merchant skill.

For the dark path it is 3 sorcerrers + 1 cleric all of them specialized in black magic and before you get it then in fire, water, air and body magic. Black magic gives the biggest numbers and very few enemies are imune to this. You have utility spells like transportation, invisibility, curing negative effects. You can outheal damage from traps, only at the begining are traps deadly.

btw the strongest spell is shrapmetal you must shoot it from melee range and big monsters like behemoths or dragons fall like flies.

But what happens when such party meets monsters who can destroy mana?:) And final dungeon in the game is full of such monsters. With standard setup you cast all your best buffs and destroy everything on your way without caring for mana. Getting top end weapons for casters is also great.

Melee classes scale godly with Heroism and Haste, which are provided by spellcasters. Give your melee some heavy trident or something like that, and they will be unstoppable :)
Melee classes are also great for Shared Life healing.

Though, I agree, it would be great to have something like Armsmaster skill from MM7 in MM6. But MM7, on other hand, made hybrid classes worthless in comparison to pure classes. And pure casters are much worse in melee than in MM6.