Might and Magic 2: Gates to Another World

Might and Magic is among the longest running RPG series in gaming later sporting spinoff games as well. Might and Magic: Book Two or Gates to Another World as it's also known, once again puts you in the shoes of six heroes who have to save the world of CRON. Not only that but the gates referred to in the title allow you to transport to other worlds and even timelines! You'll have to travel through time and one of the levels is even onboard a spaceship where you must solve a puzzle in order to complete your final task.

You start off in the town of Middlegate, one of five big town you can get around at the beginning of the game, here you will gather your starting equipment and get some experience fighting lower level monsters. Of course occasionally you will come across people who are in need of adventurers and you can help them to gain gold and experience as well items which you will need to complete your final quest. Most of the town will have a dungeon in which there are monsters aplenty but while in town things aren't exactly safe as you will sometimes run into creatures but you will have a choice of fighting, running or even bribing them. Combat is a turnbased affair and the fastest characters will get to act first and you can use melee or ranged weapons or cast spells to help the party or attack monsters directly. You press buttons to select the appropriate action like A for attack but casting a spell requires you to know the level and number of the spell from the manual, there is no description of any kind inside the game which is a bit annoying but once you get into the game this isn't that big of an issue.

The entire game is viewed from a first-person view with the world drawn in a 3D screen, on the bottom you can see your part and on the right any actions you can perform and a small minimap of the area. There are six classes which are available to you from the first game: knight, paladin, archer, cleric, sorcerer and robber but there are two new ones. The ninja is a roguelike character but with special assination abilities and there is the barbarian who has big hitpoints but can't use many different weapons. Since this isn't a D&D product the statistics differ a bit but they should be instantly recogniseable suck as luck, speed, accuracy might. Alignment is also simplified with only good, neutral and evil available. It's essential for the game to gather a group with a good range of classes, aligntments and races because quests and areas are only available to some of them. You can create your own character or use the six premade ones which is quite a balanced group for starters.

Might and Magic was always geared towards action and fighting and it shows, most of the game requires you to level up and gain equipment in order to advance the game. There are some problems with this as the maximum level you can get is level 255 and hitpoint can get over 65.000 which is quite a lot. All of the dungeons reset once you go out so you can go into good experience dungeons over and over to gain in power but the fact that you need to do this to advance is a bit of a letdown. This fact means the game is more for the hardcore RPG players. Might and Magic 2: Gates to Another World is well worth the effort.