Might & Magic

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Blades - Betrayal at krondor is insanely good. Its divided into chapters, and your party consists of the main characters from that particular chapter. kind of like a book. Movement is first person (alot like might and magic 6), but combat is turn-based. Abit like heroes of might and magic, I guess. Also, i belive, its the first game ever to have a quick-save function. If you are familiar with the books, you will recognize alot of the characters as well. You get Jimmy the hand, and Locklear in your party, and a few others.

The game is abandonware now, and can be downloaded for free, and legally, at Abandonia.com. It works like a charm in Dosbox. You have to set the cycle thingy to 19 something, though. Hope this helps.

 

Definitely, definitely get BaK if you haven't played it. It combines a good skill system, an excellent plot, open-ended exploration in the same vein as MM6 (I am only just now noticing how similar the world exploration is) and last but not least a very good combat system with some very interesting and challenging encounters. It's really one of the best RPGs of that era. The writing is also insanely good; in fact, playing the game before I had even heard of Feist, I was then disappointed by the writing in the books themselves.

Woops, should have provided an SP-approved GOG link myself. Forive me Tal?

 

Glad you like it! Even though it's an old game I'm sure you can see what a huge jump forward it was compared to the first two games

The manual was quite large actually, but I don't remember what was in it. I think it did describe the classes and races, but you have to sort-of figure out the advantages and disadvantages from the description - no "+2 to INT and -2 to STR" like in modern games. I seem to remember that races don't matter that much, but if you need a description of classes then ask away and I'll throw in whatever I remember. Here's a quick description anyway: Knights are all-purpose, Barbarians are about more health, Robbers are the rogues or thieves, Clerics, Sorcerers and Druids each have unique spells (M&M3 is the only game where Druids have unique spells by the way), Ninja is a fighter/thief, Paladin is a fighter/cleric, Archer is a fighter/sorcerer and Ranger is a fighter/druid.

The party you've created is pretty much the "standard" M&M 1-5 party (they're the 6 base classes from MM1 too). The only problem is that in MM3 you NEED the Water Walk spell - no way around it, and it's a Druid-only spell. However you also need at least 3 people who can fight properly (and the Robber), so you can't switch out one of the starting chars for a Druid. I usually play with the starter party and add in the Archer and Druid and keep them to the end, but that gets very expensive eventually, meaning I have to keep them at relatively low levels. Of course it is possible to play the game without any hirelings and no druid and just rely on casting Water Walk from items (there's quite a few around).

 

Thanks, Rawgrim. I will try it. No Prince Arutha?

 

Arutha plays a role in the story and you see him in a number of "cutscenes", but he's not one of the playable characters.

 

No biggie, Jimmy the Hand is all you need to hook me.

 

You get Pug as well, in the final chapter. That bloke is just nasty. I remember his magic skills were off the charts.

 

Have fun playing Might and Magic 3, it's a great classic game.
Your party is not the optimal one for playing the game, but it's definitely good enough. If you want some in depth information about classes and races for creating a better party just ask, but it's not necessary.

Some advice

- If scrolls crumble when you find them don't worry. That's because you have neither a druid or ranger to learn those spells.
- You have only one savegame, so making a backup now and then doesn't hurt. But there's only one way for messing up unless you want to. Be careful about the crystals in the pyramid. Some of them are time traps which let a year pass without notification, so save before touching one and if there are no other effects check if time has passed before saving again. Unnatural aging can be reversed but natural aging can't.
- Hirelings take their share of XP and cost 20*level*level gold every morning, so I would only hire them for a short time.

 

Indulge your greed, take their crap and sell it. At higher levels, you'll need every single gold piece you can find.

 

dmc, the time issue is no biggies. I don't remember how long it took me on my first try, but on repeats I can finish the whole game in less than 5 years, and that's with clearing out pretty much everything. There is no time limit, but your characters do age, and once they hit the 70s or 80s their stats start going down. When they go over a hundred there's a good chance they'll go to sleep and never wake up! This will normally not happen over the course of normal play, as magical aging can be reverse, but the crystal traps that kmonster was talking about will advance the game clock by 10 years instantly - so every time you touch one everyone ages by 10 years, and there is NO way to reverse this (it's not magical aging). Until you hit the pyramids though (they're endgame dungeons) you don't have to worry about this.

Keep in mind that a week is 10 days and there are 10 weeks per year, so the year is in fact 100 days. That's why it's been going faster than you realised. I don't think you'll need to restart, as you reasonably have at least 40 years to get the game done before you characters start losing attributes, and you've already made relatively good progress. As for the hirelings, you need to strip them of their equipment first, otherwise they'll take it with them. Keep in mind that you can always go back to the inn where you hired them should you require their service (likely with the requirement for Water Walk)