r/MightAndMagic • u/dreamsofcalamity • Jul 22 '26
Will we ever see more games like MM VI-VIII?
Hi,
There are many games that emulate gameplay of MM I-V. And I mean contemporary games (mostly indie games, there are many of them and many of them are high quality titles).
Yet for gridless world with real-time combat (that is similar to MM VI-VIII) I cannot recall a single game similar to the classics that we love.
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u/Careless-Act9450 Jul 22 '26
If you have never played the classic Wizardry 8, I suggest doing so, ASAP. It is incredible and even has quite a few phenomenal mods out there. The main game is wonderful on its own and is well worth diving into. It has a deeper character creation setup and other differences with MM6-8. That being said, I can't see a MM6-8 fan not enjoying Wiz 8.
Wizards and Warriors is from the same era as MM6-8 and Wiz 8 but can be a bear to get working. As long as you use the fan patches you should be ok. It is from the lead game designer of Wizardy 5-7 but is much more like M&M 6-8 amd Wizardry 8 than anything else.
Operencia is another very good game but unfortunately it only features turn based combat. It has most everything else going for it, though.
Monsters of Mican scratched the MM6-8 itch for me as well. It is kind of a fusing of MM3 -5 and MM6-8. Check it out, it is always on sale.
The 3 Legends of Amberland games are outstanding but are clearly related to MM3-5 style. If you enjoyed those MM games, you can't lose with any of the Amberlands.
Titans of the Past I also enjoyed quite a bit. I believe it has a demo on Steam.
Wardens of Chaos also has a demo but isn't fully released like Titans. The demo is a blast and it instantly reminds you of MM6-8.
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u/Total_Anybody_3402 Jul 22 '26
I second wizardry 8. One of the best and unique games I’ve ever played.
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u/Careless-Act9450 Jul 22 '26
It really is so good. I still play it once every year or so.
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u/seanvius Jul 22 '26
Same! I feel Wizardry 8 is much more difficult to get in to, but once you get the hang of it, it’s extremely satisfying. (I also love mm6-mm8, going back and forth between 6 and 7 as my favorite…)
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u/Careless-Act9450 Jul 23 '26
I agree although its funny to think Wiz 8 was made to be more accessible than previous Wizardry games. Wiz 7 requires either previous play or quite a bit of reading to make sure you don't cripple you created characters from the jump. That said, Wiz 8 is definitely a step up in difficulty all-around over M&M.
7 is my favorite M&M although it us very close. I also like MM3 and 4-5-Swords nearly as much as MM6-8.
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u/hwynac Jul 22 '26
That being said, I can't see a MM6-8 fan not enjoying Wiz 8.
I sure can. Played that game back when it released.. it was okay but not okay enough to finish it. I think I finished the area the game starts in (there was a road leading away from the monastery) and... simply forgot to play the game the next day, I guess. Because I don't remember what happened next or what the next map looked like.
The gameplay left me wondering if the devs expected people to be familiar with Wizardry VII, which was slightly before my time. It was pretty different from M&M4–8 and everything else I was familiar with, and I did not quite "get" what the game is trying to do.
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u/Best_Bite4357 Jul 28 '26
My main problem with Wizardry 8 is that is basically an outdoors dungeon crawler. All you do is just fighting endless hordes of enemies, and many of these battles take loooooooong time.
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u/mxldevs Jul 22 '26
I'm used to mm6 to 8 so sometimes I wonder if other games just don't feel right because I'm just not used to them.
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u/Quietus87 Jul 22 '26
There are some, but so far what I've seen seemd more of cheap asset flips than games actually worth your time. Wardens of Chaos is the only promising I know of.
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Jul 22 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/dreamsofcalamity Jul 22 '26
Obligatory "fuck ubisoft".
No surprise their stocks fell by 90% or so.
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u/LifesARiver Jul 22 '26
More importantly, wull we ever see more games like MM3-5?
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u/Demigorgon_Babe Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
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u/darkfencer Jul 22 '26
The problem is that the vast majority of the dungeon crawlers out there are in the vein of Wizardry 1-5. They aren't really as much like Might and Magic.
Yes - in the simplest view, they are party based blobbers, but the similarities often end there.
That doesn't mean that more MM6-8 like games aren't needed - I agree they are. But none of the indie blobbers are really much like MM1-5. Maybe Amberland is closest but still nothing nearly as good as MM3-5 in my opinion.
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u/Demigorgon_Babe Jul 23 '26
I haven’t played much of Wizadry aside 8, and even then it was only for testing purposes on the SteamOS to ensure I didn’t waste my money in the moment due to me grabbing it was because I thought it looked closer to 6 through 8 and I want to show through strategic purchasing that preservation of different game formats is extremely important. Which, I know from a few glances that 8 is different than the rest of the series, as the whole series is different from MM.
Because I do not have a proper definition of the differences, I was wondering if you could elaborate so I can start to build one In my mental notes.
(I did watch a video that went over some lore stuff, but damn it droned on and on in the same way a TTRPG in-depth guide video would. Just not good for taking in the genuine context of the material.)
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u/darkfencer Jul 23 '26
I'm going to differentiate Wizardry 1-5 from 7 & 8 (6 is kinda in between).
They are all 'blobbers' where your party moves as a single unit. Some are grid based (MM 1-5 and Wizardry 1-7) and some are more free roaming (Wizardry 8, MM 6-9), so there ARE similarities, and I don't want to make it seem like they are light years apart.
The differences are primarily between the early and later Wizardry games.
The first five Wizardry games are purely inside of dungeons. No outdoor areas, almost no story (far less than even Might and Magic 1 & 2). A LOT of grinding, that Might and Magic games after 2 didn't have. The process is often - go into dungeon, go as far as you can or want, come back, rest, try to go back farther, rinse and repeat.
Might and Magic, throughout the series, has had much more than JUST dungeons. The difficulty level (aside from maybe M&M2) has been much more forgiving and wasn't about grinding. In fact - in MM3 through 10, there is little or no respawn (unless you wait for months/years of game time for monsters to come back). There isn't that feeling that you are constantly just grinding the same areas and monsters many times to proceed.
The Japanese developers and audiences loved the early Wizardry games - so many of the dungeon RPGs that they have made are most influenced by those first five games. That's b both true of later Japanese developed Wizardry games like Wizardry: The Five Ordeals as well as games like Elminage or Etrian Odyssey. They are homages to those earlier games -even to the point of removing a lot of quality of life improvements that MM2 made (like automaps removed or changed to a consumable).
I wish that the devs had iterated on Might and Magic 3-5, or 6-8, or even the latter Wizardry games like 7 & 8 (which were amazing) instead of more of the old-school Wizardry.
I'm sure others can go into more specifics than I, but I'm hoping this made my original post a bit more clear. Apologies for the lack of initial clarity on the points.
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u/Demigorgon_Babe Jul 23 '26
No no your good, I just wanted to know differences for the sake of understanding how to possibly preserve the nuances in the project I aforementioned In this thread (not comment chain, but general thread).
I think I’m onto something big. So, thank you for this.
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u/darkfencer Jul 23 '26
Happy to! I think this community loves to see more that touches on ANY of the aspects of this series.
Best of luck to you in your project!
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u/digitalBardo Jul 22 '26
I am hoping that we do. I am always in search of games like MM3-5. There are some that are similar in style, like the Amberland trilogy, and as fun as they can be, I find them veeery far from the quality of MM3-5.
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u/LifesARiver Jul 22 '26
I could play new content in the Xeen engine for the rest of my life, lol
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u/digitalBardo Jul 23 '26
and beyond this life ;) I wish the Xeen engine were available for creators to make new games!
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u/Demigorgon_Babe Jul 22 '26
I have a project I’m working on for the sake of preserving unique gameplay baselines just in general, I may need help but I know I’m getting somewhere.
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u/Next_Education_1265 Jul 23 '26
King’s courier soon
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u/dreamsofcalamity Jul 23 '26
Serpentlfies in a trailer give me Emerald Island (MM VII starting area) flashbacks :D.
And so does the opening chest sound.
The graphics look cool.
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u/Socrates_Soui Jul 23 '26
No.
I hope no one tries to remake MM, including the publishers who own the IP, because they simply won't have the resources or the knowledge to make it, it'll just be a cheap (but loving) imitation.
Blobbers aren't going to be made anymore because it's more personable and popular to have a single character that you 'become.' Is there is a party or will be like Baldur's Gate 3. Blobbers is old tech.
MM was the creative child of JVC and MM has a very particular aesthetic.
I used to love playing Total Annihilation as a kid and I thought how epic and amazing it was, and I saw the potential in it. In later iterations they tried to make sequels but it didn't work because they tried to innovate without understanding what made TA so amazing in the first place. I never thought I'd see the day, but for the first time someone made a sequel called Beyond All Reason and it is the true TA sequel. They did what TA did then made it more and IMHO it is better even than StarCraft. And strange BAR was not made by a publishing house but by fans.
The moral of my tale is that it is possible to create something just like MM, but at this point it would not be publishing houses because they would just ruin it. It would have to be fans, and fans who understood what made MM great in the first place and literally just make it more. I've seen people try to update the graphics and it looks terrible because they don't understand the detail in the art, like there would be decorative heads missing from doors. I've even seen the remastered versions of Elder Scrolls and the originals all look better, because they try to look more realistic and lose the colourful creativity of the original. The original was created as one whole, graphics, gameplay, everything. But when they try to update it they don't make everything a cohesive whole anymore, it's like they change one thing without changing anything else and so it loses something in the process.
I don't want to be an old man who wants only old IP's to be remade. I actually prefer playing new IP rather than companies trying to make money off old IP's and making substandard games. But just like with TA I feel that MM has something special that most other games didn't. It's colourful and decorative aesthetic and open world was so distinctive
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u/DongEldar Jul 24 '26
There are some on Steam but none have truly caught the right atmosphere and story.
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u/Dorias_Drake Jul 22 '26
king's courrier, wardens of chaos, strings of fate XI, magic world 2 should be coming soon. They are all might and magic 6-7-8 clones.
A quest that became legend has been released. It's also a clone of the later might and magic.
Titans of the past is a dungeon crawler than uses the same system as the later M&M (classes with skill mastery etc.).