Ttrue, but those were easy to get. It's even possible to pick them up before leaving any towns, just by using the town teleporters.

I liked how locations like the Enchanted Forest in MM1 were actually really difficult to navigate. It made them feel like unique and memorable locations. And it also meant it wasn't possible to just travel in any direction one wished, there were only certain ways into certain areas of the world. In MM2, the world map didn't feel nearly so varied.

Then again, I remember liking the world map in World of Xeen when I played it long ago, so maybe it's just that the more"open" overworld design improved as the series went on. If I remember correctly, the mountaineering skill at least (can't remember about forestry) was harder to find in World of Xeen, so the world had more natural barriers early on, only opening up later. I've also heard good things about MM3 in this regard, so I'm looking forward to that one.

The thing in MM3 is that the world map is divided into islands separated by lots of water. (Given the game's name, what else did you expect?) The only way to walk between the islands is to use a spell that only Druids and Rangers can cast, and the default party includes neither for whatever reason.

There is one island that has mountains that you can't cross even with the Mountaineering skill, and I believe the Teleport spell is disabled in that part of the world map.

IIRC, I believe Swords of Xeen handles the natural barrier issue nicely, at least earlier. Then again, that game is filled with oversights and balance issues. (For example, there is a way to get a character to have negative HP without the character falling unconscious or dying.)

One other interesting observation: In MM4, Teleport works nearly everywhere and is in fact mandatory, while in MM5, teleport works almost nowhere other than the world map and the Skyroad.

Another question I could ask: Do you prefer thin walls (like in MM2 and possibly MM1) or thick walls (like in 3 through 5)?

Just curious, why did you leave out 9? Is it because it's so bad that fans deny it's existence? Or so incredibly awesome that it's unanimously the best in the series?

I'm not sure I have a clear preference. Honestly I think my opinion is mostly based on playing MM1 followed by MM2 and feeling like the MM2 world map had no walls whatsoever, since I just got mountaineering and forestry early on. So after spending a lot of time carefully exploring and mapping the world in MM1, the world in MM2 felt much less interesting.

It's been a long time since I played MM4-5, so I should play them again (preferably after playing MM3 for the first time) before making a definitive judgment on my preference for thin or thick walls.

It was probably my only issue with MM III-V. MM III allowed some overworld respawns though, as long as you don't destroy lairs, and MM V features gem caves farming. MM III and IV hard Arenas, in MM 3 there were only a limited amount of fights in it, but in MM 4 you can fight there indefinitely and you can choose 20 enemies and 10th tier of difficulty for laughs, giggles and EXP (though as Arena features only Clouds of Xeen monsters, 10th tier of difficulty will eventually become trivial too).

Actually, MM3 (at least the DOS version) has at least two lairs that seem to spawn monsters even after being destroyed; the spider lair in A4 and the sprite lair in B2. (I suspect this is a bug.)

And the spider at least was more "bugging" (triple pun!) than useful. When you first get there, the spiders are very annoying and you can't get rid of them even after destroying their lair, and by the time you're powerful, the XP you get from them is practically negligible.

The former, though I'd say Might and Magic 9 is more excluded out of pity than malice. For a game that is clearly half-finished, it's surprisingly competent and occasionally has some bright flashes that remind you of other, better Might and Magic games. It's undoubtedly the worst in the series, but it might be worth taking a look at if you've played the other ones.
The "Best" Might and Magic is probably Mandate of Heaven or Darkside of Xeen (Of the two halves of World of Xeen, it's the stronger one) I can't speak for the first two games because they're a little too old for me to have made any headway with them, but of the rest I think 8 is pretty phoned-in, even if it's still a totally enjoyable Might and Magic game. 7 is probably my "favorite", because it's more streamlined and polished than 6 at the cost of scale and ambition, and Isles of Terra is a less crazy version of Xeen.

There are a couple issues I have with Darkside of Xeen. First, as I've mentioned before, at high levels the game favors physical attacks too much. Essentially, it becomes pointless to go to the extra effort to cast spells. This wasn't as much of an issue in the others; in 3, Holy Bonus is only single target and some of the game takes place at low levels, plus there's Dragon Breath and a dangerous endgame enemy that is immune to physical attacks, while 4 doesn't take you to levels high enough for this to be a serious issue.

The other issue involves a resource imbalance. In 5, after a certain point, gold ends up being the limiting factor for character advancement, not experience. What makes this an issue is that the endgame (and especially most of the World of Xeen stuff) keeps giving you experience but gives you almost no gold, making all that experience pointless. Even worse, one of the World of Xeen dungeons expects you to pay millions or fave unreasonably deadly traps. 3 gives you more gold in high level areas, allowing you to continue to advance in a realistic manner, while 4, again, doesn't go to levels high enough for this to become an issue.

On the imbalances, I certainly agree. I just think Darkside has more interesting atmosphere and dungeon design than clouds, for as much as it does become "Hope your melee characters are faster than whatever monster can one-shot certain members of your party". But it also has a dungeon that is a crossword puzzle. That's nuts in a way I can get behind. The mechanics in Might and Magic games have always been horrendously imbalanced, lest we forget Knights becoming virtually worthless as anything other than meat shields halfway through 6 in favor of point-blank shrapmetal?

It's been long enough since I've played Isles of Terra that I'd need to give it another look to remember how the endgame was balanced.

Hour of Power + Haste :D
(And of course Day of Protection + Day of the Gods)
And there you go - efficient and awesome physical damage!

But some weapons were imbalanced in MM6. Swords were basically worthless in comparison to Axes and Spears, and even Maces were a better weapons.
It had Maze from Hell, full of Medusas and Minotaurs. It was about using Implosion (can't have those creatures in melee), and each couple of monsters you got level-up. After full clear of that dungeon, nothing was an obstacle for you anymore.

MM 3 had more interesting item generation - items could have 2 affixes instead of just 1, and you could get AC from accessories (unlike in MM4+5).

Yep, I do love some Baldur's Gate. One great thing about being young is that you get to play all of these classic games for the first time! :)

So really, it's like you have plain vanilla cake, no icing, no filling. But for a cake, it isn't bad per say. But you can also choose to eat 9 other (gourmet) cakes, varying in quality.

That's not a bad analogy. Or maybe going even further, it's like eating a slightly undercooked cake. It's still alright, but you've had a lot better.

Personally I've only played 6 and 7 so far, starting with the latter game first and I liked both of them equally as they have a different feeling each.

I have somewhere MM8 as well but I haven't tried it yet, I plan to after I finally finish the first two one day. I've also bought the MM sixpack here, so I'd like to give the earlier games a try, but now I'm not sure if I should start with the first, second or third game as I'm tempted to do them all, however I heard that the first one might not be so easy to get into if you haven't played it before and the latter games are better in this regard.

But yeah, I've also heard that the last game is the worst. A pity, because I remember when the game was coming out and I saw ads for it in our gaming magazine I was really excited! The graphics looked so awesome and were touted to be state-of-the-art at the time, it was the first M&M 3D game with a living world where all characters were doing something during the night and day! It's a pity so many original features were stripped down (not even seeing character's equipment in the inventory screen on them was left) and released it halfway finished.

By the way, did you know there's a game called Legends of Might and Magic released back in the early 00s, which is a multplayer action game similar to Quake and UT team battles? The multiplayer part is offline now unless you use LAN, however fans set up a server that's running 24/7 and it's fairly full according to the site. Would anyone be up for forming a team? ;)