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Awful graphics - it really kills the game

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 31 / 36
Date: April 04, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I have always been a Might and Magic fan. I thought 7 and 8 were great games despite the graphics because the graphics didn't get in the way and still set a good atmosphere. I realize they were dated, but it worked.

The graphics in Might and Magic IX so far are inexcusable. Just in the training area there are a lot of clipping problems, and I have already gotten "stuck" in between textures twice already. The mouse-look is exaggerated which makes it almost useless. The text is blocky and choppy -- it looks like zoomed in text on an LCD panel running at the wrong resolution. They really tried to take the faces on people and improve them, but they look very out of place against the jagged background.

On the positive side of the graphics, the monsters do look good.

The sound is quite good, however, so I'm hoping a good sound card and 5.1 speaker system can help set the atmosphere. Although get to know your sound system very well - I was presented with seven sets of 3D sound options with no explanation of them or recommendations.

The character progression model also looks entertaining, and it obviously has some nice M&M touches that should still make it enjoyable. However, it is hard to get around the graphics.

Also, as of April 4th, 3DO still does not have a support section available for M&M9. That's right - no support. If you're hoping to find an answer as to why the graphics look so bad or why the text is jagged, you're out of luck.

So the pros: M&Ms have always been good in the past. The story seems to have some interesting lines to it. The character model look like fun mix without being overly complex. Good looking monsters.

The cons: Terrible 3D graphics that look flat and jagged -- their old 2D model looked more like 3D. Numerous clipping errors including the ability to get "stuck". Bad implementation of water. Jagged text. No explanation of sound options on install.

I loved Might and Magic - but this is too much

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 17 / 17
Date: May 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I read lots of negative reviews and chose not to believe them - after all, I played Might and Magic 3 to 8 to not overwhelmingly good reviews, too and enjoyed it a lot. Graphics for me aren't the most important part in a RPG and I can live with a story which isn't epic (I do some other things besides playing on my computer). That means, however, that I don't want to bother with stupid details like searching fort an expert for hours or walking through an area for hours on end. In the last installments of MM, there were some brilliant solutions for that. I especially liked the mini map or the Fly spell. These are all gone, and after some hours of playing, I haven't even found Town Portal yet.

To add insult to injury, the handbook is seriously laughable. Character creation is boring and there are many pesky little details in handling simple things that should be intuitive. At least on my 1 MHz Athlon, there were loading times even for a map or a chest to open. Oh yeah - and even if graphics aren't that important to me, there seem to be only about five looks for NPCs - boring.

I didn't listen to the good advice I read everywhere - you should (I bemoan the fate of my 40 bucks). Why 2 stars ? For nostalgia's sake, I guess (and even as I type this, I seriously tend to reconsider).

Might & Magic IX. . .

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 16 / 17
Date: May 04, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Facing the facts, 3DO should have switched to a full 3-D engine long ago where its ýMight & Magicý RPG franchise is concerned, but, for some reason, that didnýt happen until 2002ýs ýMight & Magic IX.ý The gameýs new facelift, though, is anything but pretty, and youýll immediately feel like you just entered the magical world of Polygon. Thatýs not to say the graphics donýt have their moments (certain environments look better than others, and certain NPCs or enemies do likewise), but it all looks very much like something you could have been playing in 1998. But, of course, graphics donýt make the game, and for those who can look past the graphical problems of IX, thereýs some decent adventuring to be done ý primarily if youýre a fan of the past few ýMight & Magicý games (which all have a distinctive style of gameplay, for better or worse).

The storyline in IX is a bit on the soft and ridiculous side, but it works, and at least itýs not as cut-and-dry as ýkill the Dark Lord, save the universe.ý It is your job to unite the six clans of the realm in order to face the looming threat imposed by an Attila-like figure who seeks to conquer the land. Odd twists of fate abound, uniting you with your enemies, and ultimately pit you against the gods themselves. To win the day, you must assemble a party of four adventurers (picking from only two initial classes ý warrior or magician), and venture into the fantasy landscape.

Customizing your party isnýt half as fun as it was in earlier incarnations of ýMight & Magic,ý and gives you far fewer options than the last installment in the series ý which poses the obvious question: shouldnýt a sequel outdo its forebears? Only four races are available to you (human, elf, dwarf, or half-orc), and the portrait selection is limited to two generic faces per race, and two more per sex. You can customize your characterýs voice, but that ultimately boils down to choosing the voiceover that least annoys you. And, of course, you tweak a few stats and traits, but they too are few. Donýt expect the kind of roleplaying youýd get from ýIcewind Daleý or ýMorrowindý here.

When you have assembled your party, the story begins. The game plays essentially the same as previous entries in the series: combat is an optional real-time or turn-based affair, and you visit various provinces and cities seeking quests that can transform your humble fighter into a crusader, or your magician into a lich. Wandering the countryside is somewhat gratifying despite the blocky landscapes, because you often run into things you werenýt expecting, or bump into quests that boost your experience. Unfortunately, monster encounters arenýt very intense, primarily because only two or three different breeds of monsters seem capable of stalking any one given province, and most of them look pretty ridiculous. Combat isnýt very exciting either, since you canýt really even tell when your blows are connecting against your opponent unless you read the scrolling text at the bottom of the screen. Only archery reveals sound cues and splashes of blood (even from skeletons and the like who should obviously not bleed when hit).

The more time you spend with the game, the more it will grow on you, and the more addicted you may even become, but it still feels like youýre playing an early beta of what could have been a far superior game. Outdoor and indoor environments all suffer from a lack of detail that makes them feel mostly generic. This pervading lack of polish makes it very hard to suspend disbelief, since you rarely (if ever) feel like youýre in a living, breathing world. There are graphical glitches to further hamper your adventures, and you can sometimes clip into hills or embankments and become stuck in them. Scenery pop-in often raises its ugly head, and youýll marvel at how an outdoor fog can follow you indoors as well, graying up whatever castle or keep you have entered.

The gameýs scripting can also be broken. For example: in a dwarven mine, you are supposed to break through a wall that, for some reason, the dwarves couldnýt penetrate. Behind the wall is a demoness that is freed by your incursion ý unless of course you donýt break down every piece of the wall. Break only a section of it, walk into the room, and find that nothing happens until you go back and shatter the rest. Then, and only then, you find yourself in a cut-scene, since youýve only now triggered it. This is why games are playtested rigorously before release, 3DO!

The list of complaints that can be leveled against IX is pretty lengthy indeed. Many of the gameýs quests are tepid and tedious and require too much walking across open country that youýve already cleared of foes; the inventory and outfitting screen is unintuitive and not half as interesting as that seen in the previous games (why does my female elven warrior have a male dwarf representing her?); the gameýs sound effects are sparse and generally gratingý All of these flaws make IX a hard game to recommend wholeheartedly, even to fans of the franchise, especially in a year that brought with it great RPGs like ýIcewind Dale II,ý ýMorrowind,ý and ýArx Fatalis.ý But to those who absolutely adore the unique style of adventure that only ýMight & Magicý offers, this should do, provided you brace for some disappointment. I can only hope that 3DO licenses a new engine next time around, and makes sure to take it time polishing up the game before its release. Despite all of the new additions made to IX, it is inferior to its predecessors in almost every respect. This one has all the signs of a game rushed out the door to meet some dreaded deadline ý but if youýre a CRPG addict, and have already run through the yearýs best, then itýs worth a look (despite the horror stories you may have heard).

Final Score: C

might and magic IX

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 39 / 59
Date: March 15, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Might & Magic IX will be built of areas connected by an overland map. Lang compares overland travel to Sea Dogs or Fallout.The new dialogue system will take a page from RPGs like Baldur's Gate with branching conversations. A new class system will stress flexibility throughout your characters' careers. There are might classes (paladins, rangers, crusaders, mercenaries) and magic classes (mages, druids, liches, priests) and you'll be able to change your class as you play. The spell system will be more flexible by opening spellcasting to more classes. Skills will have specific and unique functions for each class to differentiate characters as they get more powerful. The combat system won't change much, offering real time or turn-based modes depending on the player preference. Lang says the LithTech engine will allow combat to be a little more "action oriented" this time around. I think this game is amazing and definitatly reccomend it to RPG gamers.

Don't pre-order - it may be seriously incomplete

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 23 / 30
Date: March 25, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I don't usually preview a game so close to release, if I'm that interested I usually buy it and review it. But bear with me this time...

The Might and Magic series is one of the three "old school" RPG stalwarts - the others being Ultima and Wizardry. Pretty much everyone has owned one or the other at some point.

MM6->8 all used the same dated engine, and didn't sell through very well. I thought the series was dead after MM8. So to some surprise, and little fanfare here's MM9. The good news is that it's boasting a whole new engine using Lithtech Development System (Half-Life, No One Lives Forever, Aliens vs Predator) so everything should look a lot better, and lots more scripting of events. Also another improvement is getting rid of the horrible teacher system for getting higher-level skills. So no more thankless backtracking and mindless searching to find the right master.

Graphically it looks better, but I'm concerned that it may simply be a case of style over substance. What appears to be a week before release, 3DO still doesn't seem to have created a Website devoted to the game. All I can find is a box shot. So if there isn't enough content to fill up a few web pages, I'm really wondering how they filled up a whole game. Also I can't even find the developers (New World Computing) website, the one link I could find automatically redirected me to the box shot on the 3DO site. I can't even find a list of minimum system requirements anywhere.

Also another 3DO game developed by New World Computing, Heroes of Might and Magic 4 (which looks good by the way), is also scheduled for release on March 29 - a bizarre self-competition if I ever saw one. Then again, with the threat of a few A++ RPGs arriving over the next few months, I get the feeling that MM9 has only right now to make any money before the big guns set up shop. Maybe a better option would have been to piggyback MM9 to Heroes 4 and charge a little more for Heroes 4.

MM9 looks like it could be an okay game. Maybe if it had been released last year, I would have excited by it. However 2002 looks to be a banner year for RPGs and frankly it's just not approaching the release date with much to inspire confidence.

If you like the old school RPGs, then you really should have a look at Wizardry 8. It has a similar feel to the Might and Magic games and was just possibly the best RPG of 2001. Both games use a first person point of view. Wizardry 8 manages to get past the feeling of a room full of people carrying a window everywhere, through little quirky interactions and dialogue. It's not clear what MM9 plans to do to overcome this

If you are really more interested in something cutting edge, Dungeon Siege comes out in a week (April 4) and is a much better target to hurl your money at.

My final verdict is: Don't think about ordering this one until you get reviews from people who tried to play the whole game through to the end. (Four stars because I have to choose something)

Dig around for MM6, MM7, and MM8. They are all okay titles and cheap as dirt to boot.

They gave complainers what they asked for

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 13 / 14
Date: December 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

First let me say that I am a fan of MM8, despite all the negative things that people said about it.

MM9 was designed to "fix" all the things people said they didn't like about MM8:
1. Old, outdated game engine - well, now it's a new one, with pretty good first person graphics which don't make me nauseous (some games do).
2. Playing dragons/vampires, etc., made the game too easy - so they took those options, along with the "fly" spell - out.
3. Monsters which weren't smart enough to know others of their kind in the next room were being attacked - well, now they mostly know and come running.

Unfortunately, these "fixes" didn't satisfy the complainers - they'd complain no matter what. What the "fixes" *did* do was take a perfectly good system (one you didn't have to buy a new computer for each time a new game came out, I might add) and make it less enjoyable (not that I don't like the new graphics) than the first. But complainers are always more loud than those who are satisfied, and they are the ones 3DO heard.

Don't get me wrong - I'm still enjoying playing it -- and you should know that many of the quests, while they may not include "insider" jokes, are designed specifically so that the player has to overcome any habits he/she picked up in MM8 (for instance, getting into the water, just to name one). I also like that hack-and-slash is not always the answer.

Oh, and btw, I've been playing it in WindowsXP and haven't had a problem with it - not even one crash, although I'm only about halfway through the game so far.

Very, very sad

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 12 / 13
Date: April 11, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I must say at the outset that my wife an I are huge Might and Magic fans, playing every one of the previous games to completion several times, which makes our experience with M&M IX even sadder.

It is ugly, the user interface is very poor, and much of the original game has simply been left out. For example: the map no longer allows annotations, the map simply shows everything immediately instead of encourgaging exploring by showing only what has been explored, there are no icons to let you know what spells are running, you can't tell if you are hurting the monster (the hit point graph is missing), you can't drop items just delete them forever, you can't fly, half of the spells are gone, the world is tiny, you are extremely constrained as to where you can go, combat feedback is weak, direct manipulation of objects is weak, the inventory system is weaker, the card game is missing, many of the skills are missing, use of voice is weaker, and on and on. Take my advice -- save your money and play Might and Magic VII again -- it is simply a much, much better game.

I remember when I used to like the M&M series...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 12 / 13
Date: July 22, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Unless you are a die-hard fan of Might and Magic, you'll see this title as a slightly buggy, outdated RPG that is outclassed by the other titles released at the same time. As a previous reviewer has stated, the compass on your screen and the directions on the map do not match ("hey, that building to the north is to the east on the map!"). Most of the graphics in this title are also recycled from earlier titles... and this is coming from someone who didn't even play MM8, so you know if I say recycled, its OLD graphics. The character portraits for example... theres 4 of them to start. If you are a human female, get used to that dwarven female portrait.

Some classes are downright difficult to evolve into; like the Lich for example. You can become a Gladiator within the first couple days of playing, but don't expect to become a Lich until the game is 95% over.

Now... if you ARE a die-hard fan of the Might and Magic series, get ready for a dissapointment! The rich jokes and hidden quests and items are completely missing from this title. Worse: the sci-fi theme at the end of MM1 to MM7, my personal all-time favorite, is MISSING from MM9. Why? I was told pressure from their publishers to remove it. Just not "fantasy" enough. Sigh.

Oh... and did I mention the dated graphics?

If you want a time filler and have already played everything else, then buy this game when it goes on sale for [money]. Until then, I suggest you save your money. This is a sad finale to the M&M series.

MM IX: WORST GRAPHICS AND INTERFACE I HAVE EVER ENCOUNTERED

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: April 24, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game is boring, juvenile, and visually disappointing. I have been playing RPG games since Cinema Ware first came out with 'Defender of the Crown' (OK, most of you readers weren't even born yet)and have watched role-playing games advance through 'Wizardry' to 'Eye of the Beholder' to 'Might and Magic' to 'Daggerfall' (the best ever!) Somewhere after that, RPG games seriously lost it, too much emphasis on shooter/3D technology and inane conversation , and not enough on characters and plot. MMIX is a sad example of both the effects of this change in direction, and 3DO's tendency to cheap-out the production costs.
Role-playing is about the character(s): their personalities and skills, what they eat, wear, guilds or careers, loyalties, where they live,who they're friends with. MMIX's 3D engine results in distorted,leering little trolls for supposedly human characters. Having no 'true' 3D was way better than the poor 3D graphics offered by MMIX.
MMIX combines the worst of simple-minded cross-hatch in the screen shooter, boring run around looking for trainer, and endless conversation with with vapid NPCs that I have encountered in 25 years of gaming. Buy something else.

A good game that's been raked over the coals mercilessly.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: May 30, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I'm not quite sure why this game has received such savage tearing apart from reviewers far and wide; while flawed, it is a solid entry in the Might and Magic series.

I've always enjoyed the Might and Magic series, even though I haven't played all of them; I think the last three installments (6, 7, and 8) were all good, though of declining quality from one to the next.

Might and Magic IX certainly doesn't wow you with an amazing intro; the opening movie is quite boring, unlike the others in the series, which really gave you a motivation to get in there and find out what's going on. Here, it feels more like watching an old movie rell in the back of a dusty classroom (but not in a cool way, as in the marvelous intros of Fallout 1 and 2.)

The manual is sadly lacking as well; it's obvious that it was designed to make you want to buy the strategy guide; leaving out information crucial to designing your character is a shady decision.

So, why do I give this thing 4 stars? All I've done is gripe so far, right? Well, it maintains that "just 5 more minutes" syndrome that haunts the others in the series; you want to make it through that dungeon, or complete that quest, or see what's in the next town. I'll break it down with pros and cons.

Positive aspects:
* New graphics engine is nice - a great improvement over the previous versions. Not breathtaking, but well-done (despite the scary faces.) New monsters and models, and great spell effects.
* GREAT music! Laid-back, not in your face, dark, foreboding, whimsical... I'd say it's probably the best music next to 6.
Plus, THE MUSIC NOW LOOPS! Thank the gods.. I remember saving and reloading quite literaly thousands of times in the earlier games to get the music to restart.
* Great character development - instead of forcing you to decide from the start exactly what sort of character you want. I've always liked the skill advancement in the series, and it is preserved here.
* Smarter monsters - they'll run, and call for reinforcements. Good monster models.
* Fairly interesting quests. None of them will blow you away, but some have a bit of humor injected into them.

Bad:

* Dialogue seems juvenile. Interaction still feels very wooden and unfulfilling.
* Party members are still just a jumble of numbers - you don't get the rich feel of controlling actual adventurers, as you do with the Baldur's Gate series.
* Stability - I've had about 8 drop to desktop crashes in about 10 hours of play. Not great.
* Lousy manual.

Overall, a worthwhile game. If you're a fan of others in the series, you should like this one.

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