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Happy Movember, guys!
I'm Dafe, aka Flaose, and this is a GOGgame story.
Not very pleasant sounding, is it?
Behold the PC speaker in all its glory!
Today I'm going to talk about the first Role Playing Game that I ever played:
Might and Magic II: Gates to Another World.
Ironically enough, I think the reason that this game first drew me in was the
fact that for the longest time I couldn't figure out how to play it.
I would boot it up,
select Start Game and GO TO TOWN,
choose my characters...and then get stuck.
The only options I could really see were 'Z' to exit, and 'ESC' to go back.
I didn't want to go back, and I didn't want to exit to DOS, so I didn't know what to do.
Little did I realize that "exit" didn't mean "exit to DOS"
but rather "exit the inn registry".
Finally, one day in frustration I pushed the Z-key, and my life changed.
I had spent hours poring over the manual,
reading the backstory of the land of CRON,
imagining the wars of the Elementals, the desolation of the Dead Zone,
the sunny skies of Murray's Resort Isle,
the downfall of King Kalohn the Conqueror,
but finally I was experiencing it for myself.
The spirit of Corak appeared to my party,
and we were off!
Now, Might and Magic II is an old-school RPG,
VERY old-school.
In fact, if it hadn't been my first,
I probably never would have continued with it.
While it's played from a 3D view,
that view doesn't take up the full screen, and you can only see a few blocks in front of you.
Might and Magic II is incredibly unforgiving when it comes to your first fights,
and I died multiple times just trying to record the clips for this video.
The biggest indicator of its age, gameplay-wise at least,
is the lack of any sort of quest log.
I still have pages, and pages, and pages,
and pages of notes, spanning over various years of playing it.
Luckily, there's an auto-mapping feature built in, or I don't think I would have ever been able to finish it.
Might and Magic II's graphics were outdated even when I started playing it in the early 90's,
but they have their own unique charm.
I especially like the monster graphics, despite the fact that they only have a
few frames of animation and are reused for different monster types.
I also love the fact that Might and Magic II gives the sense of a living, breathing world.
Time passes, day turns to night,
the circus visits every year,
your characters age and can grow old and die.
What's more, later on in the game you use a time machine to visit past centuries
and even change the course of history.
That brings me to one thing that I love about the Might and Magic RPGs;
even though on the surface they're just regular fantasy games,
as you go deeper you start to run into science fiction elements.
In Might and Magic II you fight robots,
bring down force fields, fire ray guns, and fiddle with a spaceship control panel.
Are you intrigued?
Do you also have fond memories of Playing the Might and Magic games?
Then head over to GOG.com!
There you can pick up a pack of the first six games for only $10.
You can also find for sale the other three games in the Might and Magic series,
along with the Heroes of Might and Magic series and many other fantastic games,
all DRM-free, Windows-ready, and for a great price.