DESCRIPTION

The original Might and Magic was a first person role playing game set in a massive and fictional world. It consists of towns, dungeons, towers, castles, and external environments, all of which can be explored. You are permitted to have six characters on your roster that can have any of 6 classes, such as knight, archer, or paladin and have the machine determine their attributes for you. Attributes are items such as might, endurance and intellect that determine the particular nature of your character.

Once you characters have been created you are placed in an inn of the city Sorpigal to begin your adventure. With no clear objectives you must strike out adventuring. The controls use the arrow keys for navigation. Up and down maneuver your team forward and back while left and right turn them 90 degrees in said direction. As you navigate your way through the environments you will encounter other creatures, sometimes friendly and sometimes not. Interaction with the characters is done through a series of call up menus where you use short cut keys to determine how to proceed.

The most common interaction is the encounter. In a combat encounter you will be doing battle and you will prompted for the method to proceed. Being a turn based system each character is given a chance to determine what they will do, be it attack, or cast a spell, or flee or one of the other options. Each selection often has a sub menu, and then you indicate which of the creatures you wish to exercise your option on (if there is more than one). After all your players have had their turns (turns are based on your attributes during character generation) the opponents have their turns and either attack or act in a manner the machine determines for them. If the monsters have a higher Speed characteristic than any of your team members the monsters will be allowed to proceed first.

As you perform more adventures, kill more monsters and complete more quests you will gain experience points that will raise your characters level, giving them more hit points and spell points. The characters will also increase in their natural characteristics too, enabling them to do battle against fiercer and stringer opponents and allowing for advancement into more dangerous terrain and quests.

The hit point and spell point work in a similar manner to almost all RPG's. All creatures have a certain number of hit points. When a character hit points reach zero they die. In battle, attacking an opponent, or casting a spell on them decreases their hit points. Like wise, being attacked reduces your own hit points. If your opponent should reach zero hit points before you do, then you are the victor. Restoring hit points can be done by curing through spell or item or by resting.

Spell points work in a similar manner. Each spell requires a certain number of spell points to cast. If the character to cast the spell ahs the requisite SP than they may cast the spell. If they do not, they are not able too. Spell points can also decreases to zero, but at that point one can simply no longer cast spells. Resting and certain spells and items will raise spell points.

To aid in your adventuring you must by goods from shops found across the land. One can buy weapons and armor to aid in battle and also items to cure or to perform a certain function. Your team must also have enough food to survive and food is measured in days of food. After an extensive excursion you may find that your food has been depleted so you must return to bars and stores to replenish it lest your characters perish.

The over all graphical content of the game is not excellent. Inside the walls of the cities are quite plain, and although the different places you can visit, such as dungeons and castles, have representative graphics they are copied for all castles and for all dungeons. The outdoor graphics are similarly duplicated. The graphical representation of the monsters is good, as it indicates what you are fighting but they are static images. The sound is standard blips and beeps.

There are literally hundreds of quests to complete, and they will be handed to you as you meet different people throughout the land. Some may be long term while many will be short-term rescues, assassinations or relic recovery.

There is no auto mapping in the game so navigation can be confusing.

Overall, the game is extremely long with hundreds of hours of game play promised if all quests are explored and attempted. ~ Ryan Glover, All Game Guide