A look back at: Might and Magic Book One: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum

 

Here we go! I dive into yet another CRPG series that is super old and takes well after the classic Dungeons & Dragons formula. And yet, despite all this, the game really is a lot like Wizardry, or at least the first few Wizardry games! Lots of getting lost with dungeon crawling, annoying enemies with nasty attacks, a few sidequests to provide degrees of nonlinearity, it's all here, in this multi-ported Might and Magic game. A whole lot of this stuff seems completely inspired by Wizardry, which really wore the pants better in my opinion. At least so far, since this is only the first Might and Magic game I've played and I'll get to the others later. Better options for classes and races. Better usage of magic (this one with the numbers take some to get used to, if we're being honest).

Naturally, the diverse element of customizing your party right at the beginning probably is not just the biggest hassle, but the biggest strength for this game overall. Beats grinding like crazy at least. What would I do without a buttload of customization? Even though you can grind up your stats and all many enemies can really kick your ass, or in some cases, eradicate your characters. Like deader than dead, like failing to revive an Ashen character in Wizardry, well, not really, in this game you CAN bring back eradicated characters. But that's one thing that can take you by surprise, if the old school difficulty doesn't already prove that.

Not too much in this game's plot overall, since this is all divided into "books" each plot ends up different for each segment. Thankfully that makes some of these games short, assuming you cut all the grinding out of it. Find the secret of the inner sanctum? Sure, an almost typical adventure plot. I definitely will plan to play more in the Might and Magic series, even going as far as to playing the tactical Heroes of Might and Magic when I get to them somewhere along the line. And then when I finish with this stuff I'll move on to Ultima, hopefully rounding out all of the old school CRPGs that got directly inspired by D&D then!