Howard_U's Full Review: Might and Magic 8: Day of the Destroyer for Window...
Did you every just want to kill something? You didn’t want to wrack your brains over puzzles or wander around trying to pick up everything in sight and trying to use it every way possible; you wanted to kill something. Boy, is this game made for you!
No series runs eight games long without having a heck of a lot going for it. Yet the reviews of Might and Magic VIII on this site are surprisingly negative. As a huge fan of the entire Might and Magic series, I can only conclude that the reviewers are expecting the game to be something other than it is, rather than accepting it for its own unique brand of hack and slash fun. And Might and Magic VIII is a hack and slasher’s delight!
The Story Line
As with most such games your goal is to develop your characters, defeat the monsters and assorted bad guys and save the world. It appears that the land of Jadame, where the action takes place, has been threatened by “a mysterious apparition” who has planted a crystal tower in the center of the main town, caused mass destruction, and imprisoned the leaders of the denizens of the four elements (earth, wind, air and fire). You mission is to gather a troop, fight your way through the crystal tower, rescue the elemental leaders, and stop the imminent destruction of the world.
You start with just one character, but quickly acquire allies until you have a troop of five characters under your command. You meet dozens, perhaps hundreds, of other characters, many of whom will reward you for completing tasks for them. Some of these tasks are critical to your party’s success. Others you may choose to do or not as you wish. You will almost always know which is which. If you are at all familiar with this kind of game, you will feel right at home.
The characters come in the classic dungeons and dragons varieties. You may start out as a necromancer, cleric, knight, troll, minotaur, dark elf, or vampire. Along the way, you may add characters from each of these races, plus two dragon characters. Each character has unique strengths and weaknesses. For example, the knight excels in hand-to-hand combat but can cast no magic spells at all. The dark elf is a quite powerful character, with the ability to use ranged weapons (bows and crossbows) with great effectiveness, disarm traps at the highest level and cast all but the most powerful offensive spells. In addition, dark elves can negotiate the best deals with merchants who are scattered throughout the towns of Jadame.
The storyline requires you to make alliances with three other races, destroy an enemy fleet and solve a couple of relatively simple puzzles & riddles. For the most part, you will be hacking and slashing without a lot of perplexing puzzles to slow you down.
The Gameplay
On the whole, the game is played in real time, with the ability to toggle into turn based mode for combat. Night follows day and your characters will get tired and need to rest. They will also need food to nourish them on their way. You will explore towns filled with homes and shops where you may buy weapons, armor, spell books, food, and many other items. Outside the towns, you can fight your way through hordes of presumably evil creatures and explore dungeons and castles of all sizes and types. For the most part, it is in these dungeons that you will find the items necessary to complete many of the quests you will be given. You gain experience for killing monsters and for completing quests. This experience allows you to increase your experience levels (by training in the cities) and develop the skills of your party. Experience is critical to your success.
You can set your characters to always run from place to place. Using advanced spells you may even walk on water or fly through the air. Using even more advanced spells you can teleport instantly from one city or place to another. The further you get in the game, the easier movement becomes.
For the most part you will explore Jadame in real time, pausing only to talk with passers-by, interact with the inhabitants of the cities and battle the monsters. In turn-based mode, you have all of the time you need to decide what each of your characters will do. You also have a limited ability to move around each turn. For example, you may fire at a monster who may only strike at short range, while being sure to retreat each turn to remain out of range of the monster’s attack.
Strengths of the Game
Perhaps the greatest strength of the game is the ability to customize the characters in your party. Each character lives life as one of eight races, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Each character has basic attributes, such as strength, intelligence, personality, speed, accuracy, and luck, which can range from below zero to 255. These are built slowly in a variety of ways (drinking potions, drinking from barrels, wearing items which enhance these attributes). In addition, each character has a number of hit points, spell point and armor points. Hit points and spell points increase automatically as you gain experience levels and all three of these attributes may be increased by special items and (temporarily) by spells. You also may individually develop the ability to resist each of the seven types of magic.
In addition to these basic elements, each character type may develop certain skills. These are offensive (various types of weapons), defensive (various types of armor and shields), spells (7 types of magic) and miscellaneous skills, such as disarming traps, negotiating deals, regenerating hit points, gaining experience more quickly, etc.. You may develop 23 skills in all, by adding skill points to them, which you earn by achieving higher levels of experience.
The ability to shift into turn based mode for combat lends a more thoughtful air to the game than your typical hack and slash. You can take your time, size up your enemy and figure out the most effective way to deal out the most damage while taking the least damage in return. Your choices include hand-to-hand combat, ranged attacks and a large selection of spells, both offensive and defensive.
That leads to another strength, the magic system is complex and very well developed. Magic comes in 7 varieties (body, mind, spirit, air, water, fire and earth), each of which features 11 unique spells. As with all skills, characters start out with limited abilities and, over time, may be promoted to experts, masters and finally grandmasters. With each promotion comes the ability to learn, from spell books, a variety of more powerful spells of each type. The power of many of the spells is directly related to the skill level of each character, so even characters of the same level (experts, for example) may have very different abilities.
The thing that sells me on this game is the combination of very simple game play, through an easy to learn interface, and depth and complexity of the game itself. Your characters can mix potions, cast spells, use hundreds of different items, collect rocks that special characters can turn into a variety of items, shop, complete missions, disarm traps, explore complex dungeons, fight monsters, solve puzzles, use spell scrolls, etc., etc. One reviewer has suggested that the critical path of the game could be played in a day, if you ignored all of the non-critical quests and battles. Frankly, I can’t imagine finishing this game in 24 hours of continuous play. In any event, why would a player want to not take advantage of all the various options available to you? And, if you do everything there is to do in this game, you will be happily consumed for at least 100 solid hours of game play, probably more.
Another nice touch happens when you finish. The game places on your hard disk a certificate that relates your score and the time (game time, not real time) it took you to complete the game. You can then print this certificate to prove you’ve beaten the game.
By the way, one nice feature is the way that monsters are repopulated. Generally, the world of Jadame is divided into sections, each of which is repopulated on a regular basis. However, in the first section, Dagger Island, where you begin your journey, the monsters (pirates, in this case) are automatically replenished as soon as they are all defeated, so you can build your characters against these weak opponents, without having to worry about running out of monsters before you are ready to move on to the more difficult levels of the game.
Weaknesses
Reading the other epinions reviews, you will get a feel for the weaknesses of this game. Whether these matter to you depends largely on what you want from this kind of game. For me, none of these weaknesses is a problem. Nevertheless, they do exist.
The music is unrelentingly depressing and ominous. I routinely turn my speakers off and play CDs of my own choosing in the background. I don’t miss the mood music at all.
The graphics are not state of the art. This is absolutely true, but it doesn’t bother me at all. I happily played adventure games that had no graphics at all back in the early days of computers (one of the advantages of being 48 years old, I guess). These are computer characters, not real people. I don’t want them to be any more lifelike than they are. The graphics are more than adequate to set the mood and let me lose myself in the story. And that’s really all I ask of a computer game.
The quests are boring. Well, okay, most of them are of the usual find or deliver the item variety. Still, they were interesting and challenging enough to satisfy me. A few, I never did solve.
It’s a hack and slash. No doubt about it. If you are looking for Myst like puzzles this is not the game for you. But if you are looking to battle hordes of monsters and develop troops of truly unique characters, you will enjoy this game. It’s all a matter of taste, not a matter of good or bad.
Summary
This is a fine game, as are all the games in the series. It basically uses an interface developed for Might and Magic VI, an interface that now looks a bit dated. But, if you enjoy this kind of game, as I do, it will give you many hours of totally absorbing game play. You will find yourself watching the sunrise and wondering where the night went. Your spouse will be dragging you away from your computer kicking and screaming (you and her/him both!). And you will feel like you have truly accomplished something when you watch the ending video and print out your certificate. I highly recommend this game.
By the way, 3DO has announced that they are working on Might and Magic IX with, unfortunately, no shipping date announced at this writing. I can’t wait.
Info Line: 415-503-9089 Email: sales [at] tekgems.com MIGHT AND MAGIC 8 - DAY OF DESTROYER view larger image Description UPC: 5037999006701 Unit Weigh...More at eBay
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