Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra (1991)

Might and Magic 3, for SNES

Rating: 7.5/10; Good

Highly recommended and is an excellent starting point for the series. The SNES version may not be the best though there is always save states and turbo mode.

MM3 is a 1st person turn based western style rpg which has significant improvements over MM2, almost making it into an action rpg. This is because the biggest change is that enemies occupy specific spots in the world and get to move and/or attack every time you take an action. If it were not for this turn implementation the game would be an action rpg more akin to The Elder Scrolls. As it stands, the turn based combat is necessary to manage the party of 6 (no option to add 2 hirelings like the PC version unfortunately).

You start with a premade party of 6, 2 hirelings available at the inn and the option to make new characters. Each race and gender combination comes with a unique animated portrait and there is a hard limit of 2. So at most you can have 4 characters of a single race, forcing a mixed race party. Racial bonuses and penalties are huge and pretty much pigeonhole races into specific classes but these effects are less prominent at end game. Half orcs get +2 hp per level with similar penalty to mana and static penalty to thieving. This pretty much forces them into knight and barbarian but gives significantly more survival ability to the point where they have a very good chance of being the last man standing where any other race would have been a full wipe. Elves are the opposite with -2 hp per level but their mana bonus only applies to archer and sorcerer. I had 3 in my party and they were glass cannons that went down a lot and required a lot of babysitting from the cleric. You are also shooting yourself in the foot if you make an elf that is not an arcane caster or thief. The other races are less extreme but I think the entire race system is unbalanced and encourages min maxing.

Rolling stats for new characters is not bad and I found it only took a couple of minutes per character to get good rolls. They use similar to Dungeons and Dragons with 21 being the max, and you can swap values between stats. The same classes from MM2 return and are pretty much the same though it does not seem like robbers and ninja get sneak attacks. Druid is a new class that is like a mix of cleric and sorcerer while the ranger is that with better combat ability. Rather than create new magic they carved some spells from the cleric and sorcerer list to be exclusive for nature magic. None of this is a big deal because you can use hirelings, secondary characters or items to cover any spell. You visit training places in town to level up and rather than penalizing training at early towns there is a fixed level you can train to for each town. There is a much better sense of balance and progression with you having to earn the way to each town. The game is a little more linear than MM2 but still offers considerable freedom as an open world. There are portals that link towns and a few other locations, which require passwords. It is possible to find these outside the game and cheat.

After creating your party you will be forced to deal with the worst part of the game; the atrocious inventory system, which is somehow worse than MM1. Each character can carry 14 items (might be more in PC version) and that INCLUDES equipped items. Combine all the different item types: chest, head, gloves, boots, off hand, main hand, ranged, neck, 10 rings, some badges and you literally cannot carry enough to fill every equipment slot. Never mind carrying loot to sell and quest items, the most important of which cannot be traded or discarded, even when no longer needed! Speaking of trading, in order to do so you must click on the discard button, answer no when it asks if you want to permanently destroy that item (careful not to say yes!), then answer yes when it asks if you want to give that item to another character. Who the hell designed this and thought it was a good idea?

Navigating the world is user unfriendly like the previous games. The walls and scenery viewed from 1st person are largely the same though the POV is high enough to see things off to the side up ahead instead of making you turn to look when you get there. Interactable things (like chests, traps, holes etc) are usually visible before you get to them, which helps with navigation and eliminates the need to enter every single tile. The compass is not visible without learning the direction sense skill, which makes the early game even more tedious. The automap only fills in where you have been if you have the cartography skill, but just like in MM2 the sorcerer starts off with it and you can learn it cheap in the first town. So not a big deal. Navigation without the mini map is mind numbing though. The wizard eye spell activates the mini map and shows areas you have not been to yet and secret doors. It can take some time before you learn that spell but you can get it cast on you for a very small price just outside the starting town. However, the game would be much better with the mini map always present. Just hide the secret doors and unexplored areas unless the spell is cast.

The combination of good level design, being able to see interesting objects before reaching them, and enemies being on screen and moving around makes for a very enjoyable gameplay loop. There are tactical choices you can make for easier battles, such as buffing and healing upon seeing enemies, using movement to lure them into better positions (even using magic to kite or ambush) and using doors or impassible terrain. I particularly liked climbing mountains and raining arrows on enemies who could not enter my tile. As I mentioned previously you can make 1 move, a simultaneous ranged attack from every character with ranged weapons, or a single offensive magic spell for each move of the enemy. The enemy seems to be able to move and cast spells during the same turn and can get free hits if they flank you. Once they reach you a more traditional turn based menu driven combat takes over, with each character and enemy able to perform a single action. Ranged weapons are not usable in this combat; an excellent design. Characters can spend their turn defending or even running away to rejoin the party after the combat. You can set up a quick fight button to have a character perform the same action with 1 button but I never bothered to change it from attack.

Using magic is tedious because when you press the cast button (out of combat) the cursor defaults to the first party member and you must use "L" and "R" to cycle characters with no option to go left from 1st character. I found it useful to move the caster to the 1st spot for repeated casting. Combined with the incredibly weak healing spells it is often better to just rest whenever you need healing. The only good healing spell is divine intervention. The others simply cannot keep up with the astronomical hp characters can get and really should have been redesigned to heal as much as needed with a single cast, especially outside combat. The spell system also requires you to scroll through the spell list to pick a spell to ready (think of it like being able to equip 1 spell at a time) before you can cast. This makes repeatedly casting the same spell more convenient but makes frequent switching of spells a pain. If only there was a way to sort the spell list to put your favorite spells all at the top.

The story is almost as lackluster as the previous games but has plenty of interesting flavor text. There is far less wandering around trying to figure out what to do from cryptic clues, though there are quite a few puzzles ranging from simple riddles to so obtuse you will want to smash your head against a wall. Most puzzle solutions are available in optional areas, or you can look them up online. MM3 is a vast improvement over the previous games, introducing multiple fun and user friendly features and pretty much establishing a new rpg subgenre. It still clings to a few archaic mechanics from its pen and paper roots with the inventory system being the main thing holding the game back. You know, pen and paper players can get porters, wagons and bags of holding to help with that...

Pro

• Immersive first person world with sprites for objects and enemies visible from distance
• Enemies are present in fixed numbers that do not respawn (there are some creature generators though) and combat takes place fully in the game world
• Tactical applications for the environment and mobility magic
• Ranged weapons are only used to attack outside melee range
• Open world with good sense of progression
• Save anywhere
• Excellent combat system, even allowing individual characters to flee from battle
• There is no button or menu command for thievery. Approaching a lock automatically asks you who will try to open it
• Can freely make and delete characters to have more than can fit in the party
• Random magic item system where items can have a material, prefix and suffix (though I never found a single endgame tier magic item)

Con

• Limited inventory where equipped items are not separate from the general inventory
• Inventory limit has no visual representation
• No way to sort inventory
• Have to pay gold at a shop to see basic item stats (classes that can use, damage, AC etc)
• Have to visit mage guild to see descriptions of spells
• Trading between characters is cumbersome, obtuse and comes with a chance (user error) of destroying the item
• Quest items take up valuable inventory space and cannot ever be discarded or traded
• Race bonuses and penalties are so significant that races are pigeonholed into certain classes
• Mind numbingly unfriendly navigation with skills required for a compass and auto mapping, and a spell required for a mini map
• No text in combat, which can make it difficult to figure out how much damage you are doing and whether enemies resist certain damage types
• Bashing doors and walls (whether successful or not) causes damage to the lead characters
• No way to disarm traps
• Gnome and orc portraits were switched?
• No way to zoom out the map, including inside dungeons and the world map
• Most places in towns are only open during certain hours, which is stupidly tedious. There is no way to speed up the passage of time
• Some materials and item combinations give armor penalties, like wooden and brass jewelry
• Sometimes enemies can get stuck on nothing, making for easy ranged kills. This can be repeated by luring enemies to the same spot
• Some enemies seem to be stuck inside walls
• Wells that grant huge temporary power ups; ruins proper sense of progression and achievement
• Many spells are poorly designed: too many increase in mana cost per level, all buffs are single target with no party wide options, healing spells are woefully inadequate, gem cost is not very balanced
• Spell cast menu shows cost in mana and gems, but does not clearly indicate this (it was quite late game by the time I figured out the 2nd number is gem cost)
• Spell cast interface is tedious, especially for casting a variety of spells
• Using healing magic outside combat is extremely tedious: the spells are weak, there is no cursor memory and every time you must move the cursor from the party leader to the healer, and then from the party leader again to the target with no option to press left to get to the last character
• Many spots grant permanent stat boosts or spells but do not indicate what will be granted beforehand. Forces you to waste time saving and reloading because it is unlikely you will correctly guess
• Many spots come with negative effects (like massive damage or death), which again waste your time with saving and reloading
• Charm and understanding stat boosts both increase intelligence. There are no boosts for personality (bug unique to SNES version?)
• Portals and many puzzles require passwords that you can find outside the game

Beat the game and did almost everything there was to do. I started off by deleting the starting party and using my own characters. I had to change the races around because of the ridiculous race bonuses and penalties. No way am I having a team of mostly elves with that kind of health penalty, especially with literally no advantage tradeoff for most classes. For some reason the half orc and gnome race portraits were switched so I was able to make a half orc knight with the beautiful blonde gnome portrait. I normally would not touch a half orc with a 10 foot pole regardless of stats but with that portrait I say she is more like a genetically engineered super soldier, kind of like a Sacred Seraphim. My team:

Golden the half orc knight: 21 might, 19 endurance and speed, 14 accuracy, 17 luck (I misread the 4 as a 9), 10 personality, 9 int

Chovus the human paladin: 20 might, 16 speed, accuracy, endurance and personality, 5 int

Valcaria the elf ninja: 18 might and speed, 16 endurance and accuracy, 12 luck, personality and int

Aevariel the elf archer: 19 might, 18 speed, 14 accuracy, 13 int, 12 personality and endurance

Crystal the human cleric: 22 personality, 20 speed, 17 endurance, 16 might, 13 accuracy, 11 luck, 10 int

Endora the elf sorcerer: 19 int, 18 speed and endurance, 15 luck, 13 might, 11 accuracy and personality

I definitely felt the low hp of the elves; they went down a lot and required constant healing. The hp difference between the half orc and the elves was ridiculous, but it became manageable once I got them some endurance improvements. I decided not to buy any equipment and killed what I could. I decided the dungeon in the starting town was too hard and went outside. I followed a general pattern of doing 1 zone at a time, including dungeons. I focused my money on training and skills, and fairly early found all the boosting wells and the merchant skill. It was only then that I purchased new equipment.

I did not play the game in the optimal way difficulty wise. I abused the wells to defeat enemies and clear dungeons that were way too hard for my level. The best character was the sorcerer because of the massive damage from nukes and the amazingly useful mobility spells. Jump was my favorite, which I used to kite melee enemies and kill from range, and to jump into spellcasters to melee them before they could cast. I piled speed on the ninja so she could go before enemies and one shot them. She was also the first to get an obsidian weapon. I cleared out the starting continent and by then I had found town portal, allowing easy access to the last 2 towns.

I found the puzzles to either be silly easy (mostly the riddles) or mind numbingly obtuse, so I used a walkthrough to quickly solve them. The biggest wall I hit was the limited inventory space to the point where each character only had 1 to 3 free slots. I hated it and it was so tedious and demoralizing that I almost did not want to play. But I got rid of some jewelry and kept it manageable. Did not help that I only made the knight a merchant and tediously moved every item I wanted to sell to her, often selling items 1 or 2 at a time. I did make some mules to keep at the inn but I never bothered to use consumables. One mule even ended up with a hologram card and I had to take him for the ending.

I tried to make as much gold as possible and found over 650 million in a pyramid. By the end everyone was at max level 200 and I still had 600 million gold in the bank. Everyone except the sorcerer had top tier obsidian weapons and all had AC well over 100 with plenty of obsidian gear. I went everywhere but did not bother with every sidequest or little thing. The last thing I did was kill all the terminators in the last dungeon, and the paladin and cleric with mass distortion did the best there. I liked the game and it is a massive improvement over the first 2 games. The core gameplay reminds me of 6 and 7, which I grew up with and love. I did not care for the obtuse riddles, archaic navigation, and power up wells. The only thing the game really needs is to allow each character to carry more items, like 255 each.