Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra

This is part of a five game package of Might and Magic games that GOG.com goes on sale for like three dollars every few months. I gave the first game the old college try but that was pretty painful even with third-party mods. The second game seemed like more of the same. This third game is probably the first one that’s even remotely accessible to a modern gamer.

It showcases a rather large graphical jump up to VGA. The character designs and pixel graphics are pretty great:

The game may look like Eye of the Beholder but it plays more like The Bard’s Tale. You control a party of characters who you recruit from a guild, and then you map your way through grid-based dungeons and towns fighting monsters and picking up text clues. The combat is a simple turn-based system that barely requires much strategy aside from knowing when to cast healing spells. If your team is powerful enough, you can just click attack, attack, attack and you will burn through most foes. That is, until you can’t. In some areas the enemy difficulty ramps up exponentially.

Where Might and Magic III begins to set itself apart from The Bards Tale is its large open over-world. This is also where the game begins to fall apart for me. The world is expansive, with many places to map out and explore, and yet you are given very little guidance as to what your goals are. After spending countless hours walking everywhere I realized I still had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. That’s when I just gave up. There were quests here and there within the towns but there was no meat to the story. Say what you will about simple “kill the evil wizard” RPG plots, but at least they give you a reason to continue playing. The satisfaction of leveling up kept me in there for a while and that might be enough to sustain hardcore role-players, but not me.