Gamey doesn’t bug me. I’m still looking for action-RPGs that will let me build characters like I used to do on Warcraft 3 custom games wherein agility was tied to critical chance, dodge percentage, and attack speed, and it didn’t level off (such that it was possible to build a hero with near-zero attack times with weapons with proc effects, which was, of course, utterly broken). So, min-maxing and stuff is A-OK. . . if anything, the trend toward semi-realism in games these days is a little boring!
If you’re into min-maxing, you’ll love M&M. Get the World of Xeen, it’s the 4th and 5th games combined. You start out weak and end up ridiculously munchkin-overpowered. Good fun.
So that’s probably my best bet, then (Includes 4 & 5 for highly rated goodness, 3 for challenge, and 6 if I want to try to deal with bad 3D to start off in the 6-7-8 trilogy without having to buy the whole trilogy)? $10 ain’t too bad. . .
6-7 are pretty good, and while I like graphics quite a lot, I find them very playable still.
Yes, that package is the ideal starting point, covering all the bases and providing a ridiculous amount of game time for your money.
Great deal for ten bucks.
I got the M & M 1 - 6 collection when it was released on GoG a few years ago. Couldn’t get into the games at first; they are pretty old after all (never played them back in the day) and as such, a bit too clunky and UGLY for my tastes. But after about a year or so of half-ass attempts at playing each of the games a few times (and for no more than 10 - 15 mins each) I finally clicked with M & M IV and became addicted.
So from my experience, the first 3 didn’t do it for me - but the 4th game was a smoother overall experience by way of being a a little more graphically pleasing and having a better U.I. After readjusting my mentality to “old-school” mode (like having to use the keyboard for most commands) I had a blast with it.
Haven’t finished so can’t really tell you how the story is, but it’s just a really simple dungeon crawler RPG with that old-school difficulty & unpredictability that made those games so much fun to play.
Reminds me I adore Wizardry 8 but never finished it either (that one’s a little more modern but same basic gameplay elements).
I would rank Wizardry 8 way over any M&M game. If you haven’t played that, do it first. Wizardry 8 is one of the all time great RPGs.
Actually, I would do the same with Wizardry 7. Another legendary game, and the graphics are decent.
Wizardry 6 is a great game but has very oldschool sensibilities and a bit rough graphically. I would rank it below M&M 4/5.
I do not recommend playing wizardry 5 or lower unless you’re ready for a seriously difficult challenge and don’t care about graphics at all. They were wireframes.
I have never played M&M 4 and 5. I loved M&M 1, and loved M&M6. I think I was in a weird head space during the World of Xeen days, and more into flight sims and emerging 3D games… Xeen looked too archaic for my tastes. I also thought they required you to map everything by hand, and had random encounters like the previous M&M games.
These actually look pretty amazing. I’m going to pick up that pack and give Xeen a try.
Yep, M&M3 and up have automaps.
As I recall the monsters do respawn, but it takes in-game weeks for them to do so. You never turn around and find new ones spawning behind you.
D’oh, didn’t play Wizardry either. This might get expensive.
I just looked and couldn’t find anyone selling Wizardry 7 or 8 new, just very expensive used copies. Sir-tech has been out of business for a long time and it appears to be out of print. Since there’s nowhere to actually buy these games, I would treat them as abandonware.
Wiz8 has an automap too.
Wiz7 had an automap, but it was terrible. The windows re-release “Wizardry 7 Gold” had an automap that you could leave active, which worked fine. I couldn’t find any screenshots.
I meant random encounters like the Wizardry, Bards Tale and the original M&M- Walking down a corridor and having a chance to encounter an enemy at any point. You can actually see the enemies in this, along the lines of Eye of the Beholder and Dungeon Keeper.
You can see monsters out in the world in all the M&Ms, including 4-8. They aren’t random, though.
I believe you can see the monsters in Wiz8 as well. Wiz6 and 7, I believe you can’t. I remember spinning in place in win6 to get random encounters to level up my characters after I switched classes.
That’s another cool wizardry feature. You can switch classes, and once you surpass your previous class level you get all the powers of both. Serious, serious munchkinning potential.
Wizardry 8 is indeed one one of the greatest RPGs ever. The developer was on the point of bankruptcy when it was released, think it was distributed through a special deal with Gamestop, so maybe they still have copies online. Wish they’d bring this series to GoG, I’ve not played any of the other entriez.
I bought Wizardry 8 at a garage sale a couple of years ago but haven’t played it yet, with all the good comments here maybe it’s time to fire it up.
It really is excellent, although of course the graphics are very dated now. The series went out well (I don’t count the Japanese games or the Wizardry Online abomination as canon).
I played the heck out of M&M 6. But when M&M 7 came out I was so burned out I couldn’t get into it.
But I have zero faith in UBisoft. They have pretty much ruined every RPG and simulation series I’ve ever loved. Assassin’s Creed seems to get 99% of their attention and everything else just gets scraps.
Anno is pretty awesome as well :-)
Wizardry 8 drove me insane with its leveling (of monsters) and constantly respawning monsters in the overworld. I sold it last year for a good price. Dungeons were fine but man, that overworld… awful design.