Might & Magic VII: For Blood and Honor
Published By: 3DO

Reviewed by _fo0k
7/30/99

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First Impressions:

When I first loaded this RPG into my system, I was immediately ready to take it right back off. I'm a hardcore RPG'er from the old school, and have been playing lots of Quake 3 test of late. Let's just say that visually I was not too impressed.

The premise is pretty straight forward for this style of game. You start with character creation from a choice of 9 different classes and 4 races. The manual does a pretty poor job of explaining the skills system to a newcomer to the M&M series. There are a LOT of numbers to play with and I felt as though I was just tossed right into the thick of it with little idea of what sort of effects my decisions would really have on my poor group. I ran around on the island for a while (the first adventure) and was pretty quickly bored. I had to set this title aside for a good week or so before I picked it back up to give it a second chance.

Graphics:

Cutting edge visuals circa Duke Nukem 3d. We are talking poor quality here. As I understand it, this is the first Might and Magic game to use "3d graphics" (they aren't really 3d, but 2.5 d) and they need to hire some new artists. The 2d character inventory screen shows a complete image of your character, which you can add armor and weapons to. The pictures are very poor. They look hand drawn (one arm significantly longer than the other, this sort of thing). DO NOT think twice about buying this title if you need flash.

Sound:

I'll give them just slightly below average here. The sound effects are acceptable, but the voices of people are bitterly annoying. All of the women characters sound like valley girls, wimps, or prostitutes, and the male voices aren't much better.

Gameplay:

This is a more subjective topic than the others. In my first Might and Magic group, I didn't much like the interface. It has a real time mode (for wandering and exploring the world) and a turn based combat mode, which you have to initiate. Very annoying at first, but once I figured it out, I actually really liked it. Under most circumstances, I have found real time combat to be disadvantageous to my survival, because enemy creatures get more attacks per round than in turn based mode. However, using my first person shooter talents, I was able to slay the dragon on the island with a group of first level characters! I used the circle strafe technique, and armed each character with bows. This took 45 minutes of dodging fireballs and pummeling the creature with arrows before it finally died, and gave up some very nice gear. I don't think the game intended a group of new adventurers being able to kill the dragon this way, but persistance and a bit of manual dexterity can do the trick.

The gaming system itself is what I liked most about the game. Skills are grouped into schools. Each character class has a number of limits on advancement in the various skills, which balances out the party pretty well. There really is quite a bit of distinction between different class characters at very high levels. It also adds to the replay value for those who REALLY enjoy this game ("Hrmn, let's see if putting in a Monk to do the Thief's work will make much difference!") The magic and skill system impressed me. This game system is the sort that you will either love or hate. I tend towards the former... when I started my second group, I had a much better idea of how I needed to balance my party and all of the loose ends started making sense.

Enjoyment:

The quests, game system, and character diversity is good enough that I actually enjoyed this game quite a bit, once I gave it a second chance. There is too much frustrating backtracking, trying to find a missing puzzle piece, but the combat is fun and watching the characters get more skill points always makes the time spent worthwhile.

Multiplayer:

Zilch, Zero, none. It would be hard to make multiplayer really work in this interface. It works fine as a single player game.

Overall Impression:

If only they could have given this thing good visuals and fixed the voices, they might have broken this out of the "hardcore" rpg group and gotten a bit more mass appeal. I love this kind of game, but many won't. Don't let the pretty box fool you, this game looks pretty pitiful visually when compared to other new rpgs. The meat and potatoes is in the world they've created and the gaming system they are using. Good stuff. Not too complex for a regular rpg player. They definitely need to hire someone else to write the manuals. In summary, you probably won't want to buy this game unless you are already a pretty big rpg fan. If you are really into rpg's, you'll see this as one of the better ones.

Marketing Efforts Towards Women:

None that I saw. This is definitely geared at the teen male demographic. When struck in combat, my female characters would usually say "It's just a cut, but I need it fixed!" or some other similarly non-heroic statement. Where's my Red Sonja?

Cheats, Hints & URLs:

In the market for a great cheat book? We highly recommend Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor: Prima's Official Strategy Guide. Usually ships within 24 hours.