A look back at: Might and Magic II: Gates to Another World

 

DOS RPGs are sure fun aren't they? For the seasoned console RPG player like myself, I really do gotta get down to the nitty and gritty to play this, as well as the first game and the Wizardry games. Amazing how despite not being made by Japanese developers who certainly made their first RPGs difficult, this proves to be almost, if not much more difficult. Especially for newer players. Ya gotta grind man. And lots of it.

Sure enough, Might and Magic II like any other sequel just proves to expand upon what was already brought to us with the first game. The same dungeon crawling and battle mechanics, the same character system. All classic stuff. A couple of new classes, but what I wasn't expecting were special quests made for specific classes, meaning you can only take them with those particular characters. The hirelings kinda resemble a few other RPGs I played, as they are mercenaries for hire (the Silva Saga games for example had a similar mechanic). There's quite a lot of balancing, as well as getting specific skills, and sadly I'm certain I didn't get everything this time.

It's certainly always interesting to watch as a fantasy-themed RPG series decides "let's put in the technological stuff!" In a way, the plot of this game sort of resembles that of Phantasy Star 3, despite all the medievalness you all of a sudden realize you're in a floating biodome. But it seems to be heading towards the sun at the very end, and the way to solve it is to solve one of those cryptogram puzzles you probably saw in a newspaper or something. Quite funny, I don't think I've ever seen anything like that yet in an RPG! Might and Magic looks like it will continue to improve in its sequels the more I go through it, and I'm itching to go through the whole franchise at this point now.