Your Favourite M&M

[Arret]

6 and 7 dominating. No surprise there.

Didn't think 5 would be 3rd even though I voted for it. Seeing as 10 will be tile based, I wouldn't be surprised to see more people pick up the DoS games.

[Queen Hera]

Definitely MM3 Isles Of Terror. Long gameplay, great puzzles/quests.
I could never play it now because of the old style game mechanics - arrow arrow (move 2 spaces etc) lol.
Its a shame they can't revamp it with modern graphics & game play configurations. This was the game that I lost the most sleep playing.
I STILL enjoy replaying & replaying MM6-9.

[Arret]

Unless there was a localization I am not aware of, the name for MM3 is Isles of Terra (Latin for Earth) not Terror.

[tolich]

I think that it's a pun about the title of MM3.

'Terra' and 'Terror' sound alike.

[Tress]

Voted mm7, even though mm6 was my first mm RPG game.
MM6 is bit unpolished to be my favorite, even if it had more content. (Although I don't really liked huge dungeons of mm6). MM6 also have same taste as mm3-5 have. It have old school(read - almost none, go to 6 lords get approval, kill demons) plot, and world is designed as mm4-5 was with random monsters and more as rpg, less as real world. With that I mean that mm6 is basically mm3-5 with 3d engine(if we transfer mm4 to mm6 engine we wouldn't feel difference that very much) while mm7 is already somewhat modern RPG, with decent narrative for plot, etc.
Class restrictions is another thing that I like, since they move apart classes. By end of mm6 I couldn't feel much difference in melee damage between sorc and knight(in fact I think sorc was hitting even more due to fast daggers), and difference between stats was miniscule because main bulk of stats was due to day of gods anyway. Restrictions for hybrid classes in mm7 was too harsh which made non standard party not that useful but it was step in right direction.

P.S who voted for mm9? Guess it's nice to have developers of the game in this board......

[GreatEmerald]

Heh, when I checked this poll a couple of days ago, the results were pretty much in a normal distribution curve, with the average being The Mandate of Heaven. Though it seems like there's no love for Clouds of XEEN - but I suppose that's because people mean that their favourite is the whole World of XEEN and thus they vote for Darkside.

[Queen Hera]

I don't know what I was thinking Arret. Yes, I did mean to type Terra & not Terror. I even looked at the box before I typed it so that I'd get the name right!!!.

[ShardofTruth]

I'd prefer 7 over 6 if it weren't for some of the nasty bugs I had back then, one even ruined a playthrough (those @$#§%&! lich jars).

Harmondale was a great idea though and it was overall better designed than MM6. I wouldn't have a problem with the bigger dungeons if they weren't repopulated.

[hellegennes]

Voted mm7, even though mm6 was my first mm RPG game.
MM6 is bit unpolished to be my favorite, even if it had more content. (Although I don't really liked huge dungeons of mm6). MM6 also have same taste as mm3-5 have. It have old school(read - almost none, go to 6 lords get approval, kill demons) plot, and world is designed as mm4-5 was with random monsters and more as rpg, less as real world. With that I mean that mm6 is basically mm3-5 with 3d engine(if we transfer mm4 to mm6 engine we wouldn't feel difference that very much) while mm7 is already somewhat modern RPG, with decent narrative for plot, etc.
Class restrictions is another thing that I like, since they move apart classes. By end of mm6 I couldn't feel much difference in melee damage between sorc and knight(in fact I think sorc was hitting even more due to fast daggers), and difference between stats was miniscule because main bulk of stats was due to day of gods anyway. Restrictions for hybrid classes in mm7 was too harsh which made non standard party not that useful but it was step in right direction.

P.S who voted for mm9? Guess it's nice to have developers of the game in this board......

MM7 and MM6 didn't have that many differences. Only the class system was a bit different, almost everything else was copy-pasted. They shared the same engine, spells and skills were almost identical, game mechanics were practically the same, character interaction was the same, even the items were all the same, just different graphics and description.

MM7 had a bit more content, I think, but you couldn't really tell because almost a third of the game was different for light and dark paths, hence you were experiencing only 3/4 of the game on each play-through.

[Tress]

MM7 had a bit more content, I think, but you couldn't really tell because almost a third of the game was different for light and dark paths, hence you were experiencing only 3/4 of the game on each play-through.

I rather meant that style and plot wise game seemed much more mature. For example 90% monsters in mm6 were just placed there for sake of it, just as they are in mm3-5. Just random archers, random wizards, etc. In mm7 all placed mobs, and world seems much more natural. We know why there is goblins in harmondale, we can see dragonfly attached to swamp in emerald, etc. There is much deeper feel in mm7. Raw content wise , I would say mm6 had more stuff - larger dungeons, more flavor texts from peasants, etc.

[tolich]

who voted for mm9?

I did.

Guess it's nice to have developers of the game in this board......

Alas, I'm not one of them.

[hellegennes]

MM7 had a bit more content, I think, but you couldn't really tell because almost a third of the game was different for light and dark paths, hence you were experiencing only 3/4 of the game on each play-through.

I rather meant that style and plot wise game seemed much more mature. For example 90% monsters in mm6 were just placed there for sake of it, just as they are in mm3-5. Just random archers, random wizards, etc. In mm7 all placed mobs, and world seems much more natural. We know why there is goblins in harmondale, we can see dragonfly attached to swamp in emerald, etc. There is much deeper feel in mm7. Raw content wise , I would say mm6 had more stuff - larger dungeons, more flavor texts from peasants, etc.

They weren't random, they were at least dungeon specific. Goblins were seen around Goblinwatch, followers of Baa around the great temple of Baa, dragons in dragonsand, lizards in the desert regions, etc. They all had specific habitats.

[Ryder]

Heh, when I checked this poll a couple of days ago, the results were pretty much in a normal distribution curve, with the average being The Mandate of Heaven. Though it seems like there's no love for Clouds of XEEN - but I suppose that's because people mean that their favourite is the whole World of XEEN and thus they vote for Darkside.

Clouds of Xeen is awful compared to Darkside. By the time you're strong enough to defeat Morgana and Xetoc? in Sandcaster, you can go back to Clouds and map the whole continent with Day of Protection and Day of Sorcery cast. The amount of experience you get on Clouds pales in comparison to Darkside too.

In my book, Clouds is only better than Secret of the Inner Sanctum.

[Arret]

Clouds is a good game, but not the best and possibly the worst of 2nd generation. That being said, you should try actually playing Clouds, as in don't go to Darkside at all until you have cleared Cloudside with the Volcano Cave, Dragon Cave, and of course killing Xeen.

Level scaling is a huge deal in Clouds as you are halfway to cap when it starts taking a million per level. Item scaling is much more profound as well.

[Bones_xa]

I voted for 8. Although it did lack content and could have been even much better than it was, I really did like what they did here, the story, character classes, etc., and it was the game I've probably played the most out of all of them.
6 was a very good game too, probably overall I think it was the best.
3 was good too but I still haven't actually finished it and although it was very good, I think I enjoyed the next generation ones a little more (6,7,8) and found more replay in them.
I have not played 1,2,4,5, or 9.


Anyways, I pretty much agree with this:

MM6, hands down. There are more than one reasons. It was longer and harder than 7 and had the best dungeons in the whole series, by far. Also, I quite like the story and how it blended the elements of scifi, the stories of the Heroes games and was so full or references to both previous MM titles and popular culture at the same time.

MM7 was great, but although in theory the restriction of classes made for a more strategic play, I wasn't too happy about it. It felt like it was developed by Apple. Restrictions is not my thing. In the same fashion, the game did not really allowed you to visit every place right from the start, while MM6 did. Overall, it felt much more linear.

I'll add that one of the main things I don't like about 7 (besides more class restrictions) is that there seemed to me like a hell of a lot of walking around in the earlier parts of the game, which takes up huge time.

And also for 6, I think the story was excellent. A classic in my mind. I wonder if the developers came up with this story themselves or if it was inspired from somewhere?

[Secret_Holder]

The story is of course a continuation from previous games, but the two warring pretenders to the throne could be inspired from English history.

If I were to guess for an inspiration for the Kreegan invasion, I would guess Starship Troopers, but I don't know.

[Nomad]

Starship Troopers, Zerg - it all came from the planet-devouring Tyranides.

[Marzhin]

Starship Troopers, Zerg - it all came from the planet-devouring Tyranides.

Starship Troopers, the original novel, was published in 1959 and already had bugs in it. Just sayin'
And the Tyranids owe at least a little something to the good old Xenomorph

[Sir Charles]

I voted for MM2 Gates to Another World. Unlike Ryder, I started with the first game, but leap in quality and depth from 1 to 2 was amazing.

There were clearly 3 incarnations of MM games.

1-2
3-5
6-9

Each group was vastly different from the previous and each game was strikingly similar to the others in their group.

#2, 3 & 6 were the best games IMO from each group. While I liked the Xeen games, Gates and Mandate were far and away the best MM games made.

[Nomad]

Starship Troopers, the original novel, was published in 1959 and already had bugs in it. Just sayin'
And the Tyranids owe at least a little something to the good old Xenomorph

Whoa! Nice to know, thanks.