I FINALLY finished Might and Magic 2 Gates to Another World and I'm pleased to say that playing it was still fun. I remember playing the Genesis version to death, loving it, exploring everywhere, and always getting killed for it (lol) which was a huge pain in the ass.

Anyway...

Gates to Another World is more playable then the first game to me and it is also different in how it handles. First off, the idea of casting spells intimidated me a bit. Casting them meant that you always had to look at the manual as a reference for the spell and number of it. I don't understand why they did this, but I'm glad that the Genesis version fixed this problem and its why I find it to be the superior version so far.

Alignment based weapons/armor was also a major pain. A lot of it doesn't even make any sense and it was frustrating to find a weapon that was good, but couldn't be used due to the differing alignment. Towards the end when I got 30+ gear, I would go to the castles, change my alignment, equip the items, and be done with it because you could always fix that in temples and keep the item you just equipped.

Monsters were sometimes unfair and I couldn't count the number of times I wiped, but I also had fun in developing my characters, improving them, and it was satisfying to figure out how to boost stats like speed which would allow my team to go first and avoid wiping as often. I also find it strange how there is a lack of story quests with your first goal being to take on the juror quests which couldn't be done until your party was way stronger.

Despite my gripes, I still had fun playing what was a blast from the past. Gates to Another World is a game that I mostly enjoyed due to how open it is (like other M&M games) with it being about the adventure. You were suppose to go out there and explore, find treasure, and tackle the various colosseums.

I also liked how there was lot of monster variety and how they had different ways of dealing with your party. Sure some of them were completely cheap like the shaman (until you improved your characters speed) but it was still nice to see a variety of monsters thrown at you.

Overall, I find Gates to Another World to have not aged as well as the other games in the M&M series, but I still had fun going through Crom. I would only recommend this game to anyone who wants a challenge. I'll also admit that I used a walkthrough guide, but that was only because some parts were cryptic.

Sounds like you had fun. It's always a good sign when someone can appreciate a classic blobber. I used to play them a lot when I was a kid.

I have fond memories of both MM1 and MM2. MM2 Was dazzling compared to MM1. Some of the first games I ever played along with Starflight, Bards Tale, and Wizardry.

MM2 is my favorite MM game. I've spent crazy hours with it. It's not exactly the game that did it for me. It was the story in the manual, how that related to the game, and how you used that lore to actually step into it in the latter parts of the game to influence your present.

MM2's overall story and time-travelling is brilliant and could use a grand remake that adds more story elements and better gameplay. Because unfortunately, it simply IS a pain to play it.

I also agree that the Genesis version is the best.

MM2 was my first Might & Magic game, gotten as part of the "CD Rom Challenge Pack" back in the 1990s along with the games of Contraption Zack, Paperboy (1 or 2), Push Over, a 3D Robocop game, and some others.

Having played games like Final Fantasy before this, I basically relied on whatever strategy guides existed so I could merely learn and play the game. Something about MM2 kept me wanting to learn what it was and progress in it. I liked the lore, but only cared about that after playing the game to a notable degree.

I've barely played MM1, but from what I heard, MM2 is like a more extreme form of MM1. The ability to fight packs of 255 creatures, get items with super pluses, and even time travel (with 9ish separate periods, though most barely fleshed out) had me interested.

This was the game in the series that took me the longest to beat (probably over a decade) because I didn't understand how to properly format the endgame cryptogram! I knew it was 'preamble,' but kept losing there.

I'm glad MM2 did well enough to prompt MM3 and onward! Xeen was so influential to me that I made a D&D campaign set in Xeen that drew on material from MM1-6. ( https://campbellgrege.com/work-listing/dnd/ )

I have seen videos of the Genesis version, and there is one thing I *don't* like about that version: When an enemy saves against your spell, it takes 1/4 damage (instead of 1/2 damage); this makes offensive spells much less useful, particularly at high levels. For example, Implosion will only do 250 damage, rather than 500, against enemies that save (and high level enemies save all the thime). Given that physical attacks scale better than spells in this game, making spells weaker is a bad thing.

One other difference: In the Genesis version, Enchant Item's SP cost is 50 *plus* the item's bonus, making it easy (with a little patience) to enchant an item up to +62 or +63. In the DOS version, the cost is 50 *times* the bonus, making it much more difficult; you can't get above +5 with just the fountains, but instead need to actually be a high level. (Note that raising a bonus to +63 can make the game treat the item as cursed, and there is no way to remove the curse from the item.) Funny thing is, I feel that way in general when I am playing video games. This applies even to story-focused RPGs (like most JRPGs from the PSX era onward); while I can appreciate the story eventually, I need to get into the gameplay first. (This means that, for example, I highly dislike opening cutscenes that you must wait through before the gameplay starts in the first place.)

Same for me--CD Rom Challenge Pack had MM2 on it! That one was great! MM2 was the best game on the pack as well, although I remember Push Over puzzles were also good.

MM2 is my favorite for this reason. Other CRPG experts (like The CRPG Addict) also rate it quite highly even without the nostalgia factor.