MIGHT AND MAGIC IX

                 Reviewed by Stefan Herber

It has to be said that the reviews of this game were so bad, even
on the dedicated RPG web sites that I was seriously debating as to
whether to bother with it. However I managed to pick up a second
hand copy cheaply - and after all having played the entire series
from III onwards I could hardly abandon it now, could I? However I
was apprehensive especially considering the travesty that was the
last episode in the series.

If it's any consolation this bears no resemblance to the last 3.
It's a new game engine based I believe on that used for "Unreal".
Compared to previous episodes character creation is simple - you
start off as a fighter or scholar & via subquests get a chance to
specialise into mages, healers, paladins, rangers etc. Here comes
the first rub - I intended to make one character an all out
fighter and the other a ranger; however half the ranger subquest
is to my mind impossible.  It involves rushing through a dungeon
without setting off any traps in a strict time limit. After 2
hours I gave up - and had to settle for a paladin instead.

The plot is the usual but with some twists - you have to unite 6
warring nations against a common foe by doing tasks for all their
leaders. These vary from finding a magic artefact to discovering
who is spreading gossip about the person concerned!  Experience
points can be obtained by slaughtering everything in sight but in
fact (& quite rightly to my mind) much more is obtained by doing
your quests.

Combat is for the M&M series actually quite easy. You have a
choice of real time or turn based action; I rarely had to resort
to the latter even in the final series of battles against the
ultra nasties.

Magic is quite powerful and there are a vast number of spells
available of which I hardly ever used more than two or three. It
doesn't look bad and it doesn't go on forever like the last two in
the series.

And now you're waiting for the downside. There are several flaws
unfortunately. One needs money to train and advance and I never
seemed to have enough. One hint is to enchant everything you're
going to sell but I still ran out all too quickly.  Despite the
numerous shops all I ever seemed to do was to use them to sell
items - everything you want is far too expensive.  There's no real
character interaction - forget Baldur or Planescape if you're
expecting character development. Some skills are useless - most
notably identify monster (even at master level it was a rarity to
get any information on what you're fighting. I can't vouch for
grandmaster level as - guess what?  - only rangers can achieve
that.

Overall then about 6/10. Is this the end of the series I wonder?
If not please can the makers show a bit more imagination next
time?


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