Might and Magic® 9

Just to clarify some of the "really buggy / only one patch" comments -- New World Computing went bankrupt while they were still developing this game. Given that, I am somewhat amazed that it is possible to get to the end at all, and still don't quite know how the patch got made. That aside, how is the game? Fugly would be a good word for it. Low polygon count characters. Every face is only half a face that is then mirror-flipped to the other side (so every face is perfectly symmetric, which looks stranger than you think it will). Lack of polish makes some things problematic. At one point, you will be presented with a monster that is basically a scripted set-piece (which I don't remember ever having in any of the other MM games, so I wasn't expecting it). The thing is indestructible. You can cheat boost your characters to god levels, save in the middle to restore your health, whatever you want -- it won't die. You apparently are just supposed to stay out of its way and let the guards sacrifice themselves to it. A very unusual choice, given that your party is out to "save the world." Class-based skill trees -- you're either going to love them or hate them. I personally preferred the fairly loose requirements in MM6 that let everybody learn archery to a level sufficient for basic crowd control. MM7 and MM8 each progressively made the skill system more restrictive and (for me) more annoying. But for some people, that makes the game more replayable, because it requires totally different builds to get to the advanced capabilities. If that's you, you'll like MM9, because it is the most specialized skill tree system of the MM series. So... I did play this game all the way through with the first patch. I don't remember hitting a game breaker bug, but I did end up using a walkthrough for some of the places where it was very unclear what you were supposed to be doing. It's been a long time, but I remember the final part of the story having both interesting twists and a "well, bleah" ending. On the up side, it does seem like some of the dungeons were more interesting than in previous installments -- but the difficulty level went up quite a bit as well. I leave it to you if that is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing.

Might and Magic IX was touted as the next-gen title in the series, with a brand new 3D engine. 3DO had little choice in this - MM8 already has been criticized for outdated graphics and physics, and the company had to come up with something new. Unfortunately, the result was nothing short of horrible. The retail version of the game, after its one and only patch (3DO abandoned all support for the game short afterwards) kept crashing every few minutes. The lack of proper testing ensured that there are a lot of game-breaking quest hangups, if you do anything wrong. And the story is too far removed from the rest of the M&M universe. The only redeeming feature I can think of is the dungeon design. With a single exception (a jumping-and-running style dungeon for which its designer would surely burn in hell), all dungeons are superbly designed. This was one of the very few games where I actually took great care when moving forward, fearing the pretty nasty traps. All in all, though, if the game didn't get a full overhaul at GOG to make it playable, I can't recommend it.

Wow, a lot of hater reviews already. I mean everybody knew that Might and Magic IX wasn't that great when it came out, but it really wasn't THAT bad. I enjoyed playing it, it had a decent story which even after 10 years I can still sort of remember. Ultimately it is a fun RPG albeit more limited than what RPGers expect. The big problem with the game was that it released almost the exact same time as Morrowind, which was much more ambitious. If 3DO had been as ambitious as Bethesda, maybe the RPG series of Might and Magic would still be around.

This was actually one of the first Might and Magic games I've played. I know, it's sad, but at that time, the older titles weren't anywhere to be seen where I lived. I liked the concept, especially how the classes evolved and how unique they were, but I never managed to finish it because of several game braking bugs. Quests wouldn't finish, sequences would become stuck, and all sorts of stuff that made me throw the game out the window. Still, if those ever got fixed, the end game wouldn't be horrible, but it would be nowhere near the older titles. For me, World of Xeen is still the best one, and compared to that one, Writ of Fate sort of bites.