well having finished wiz8 recently, i bought might and magic nine, looking for a continued role playing goodness.

but what i apparently purchaced was a big turd in a pretty blue box.
M&M9, despite bieng much more recent than wiz8, looks absolutely crap in comparison!

for starters:
the box contained 2 cds... in cheap paper covers! couldnt even give me a jewel case!
1 cardboard instruction manual. yep. thats it. the REAL manual was in PDF format... no nice manual like wiz8.
when in the game, you are stuck to 800x600 resolution.
graphics are 3d, but look crap. trees look fake, houses are very plain square cubes, bugger all shading, nothing like the nice stain glass windows in the monestary or the shiney floors in the arnika temple!
character creating is pretty limited. small range of skills.
paper doll avitars are crappy too. hell even the might and magic 6,7&8 ones are better!
and to top it off combat is feeble.

ouch!
within 1 hour i was back to wizardry 8, creating new characters!

warning to all RPG players out there.... AVOID might and magic 9!

Yah, for me, too, both W7 and W8 have a certain smavor, or maybe it's a flell; they're just really attractive environments. Only one other game i've played that i liked that way, the old German game, Das Schwarze Auge.

So M&M9 is worse than the previous versions? Good to know. I was planning to get that next, just because I love the fly spell in those games... [img]smile.gif[/img]

Well, not just because, but I always get some "special" feeling, when I get that spell, and don't need to walk anymore :D

MM9 is a buggy mess. They didn't really bother debugging it before they released it (and yes, I played it through to the finish).

If you don't do certain quests exactly right you can derail them (meaning one innocent misstep and you have to reload and start over again).

My favorite non-lethal bug is the guy who's supposed to be on the docks to give you a ride on his boat - he ends up *under* the docks and you have to go swimming to hitch a ride. Glug, glug.

It would have been another nice MM if they had bothered to finish it. As it is, it's a piece of crap.

Gee Bomb, I'm really glad you didn't buy M&M9 for Fly. It hasn't got it.

I've been playing that series since M&M2 first came out, and I don't think I could have not spent the money on it, but if you're not that dedicated to the series, stay away. Not worth the money, not worth the time.

IMHO, Wiz8 is the best of both worlds -- Wizardry's great skill system and the great immersive environments that M&M6-8 had.

Yeah, M&M 9 was no good. The graphics in Wiz 8 may not be Doom III, but they're clean and do what they're meant to do. I got M&M 8, which wasn't bad, but it never hooked me in enough to complete it. The only two games to really hook me in were BG2 and Wiz8. Xcept for M&M6 and some of the ultimas, prolly the best 2 RPGs of all time, at least after '95.

And i can tell you that it is NOT a fly spell in M&M 9. But the game is not THAT bad i enjoyed it and it have some nice places like the monastry i Wiz 8 to and many other cool places so i think the game is pretty cool but it have lots of bugs!

MM9 lasted about 25 minutes, 30 max before being un-installed and shelved (likely to never see the light of day again). Maybe Wizardy (8) has spoiled us too much.

[img]smile.gif[/img]

ive gone back to Icewind dale now... a nice fun rhomp, but without the character and party building finess that wiz8 had.
hopefully icewind dale II will come out here shortly.