Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven

"The RPG revolution begins"

Nowadays we are pretty much flooded with RPGs, practically every month sees 50 new and diverse RPGs for us to feast upon. Not so when Might and Magic 6 (MM6) came out. No, one RPG a year was considered good (well, not quite that bad...) and then came this game. Wow. Everybody wanted RPGs again after this and I for one was a happy man.

MM6 has a fairly uncomplicated story: King Roland has disappeared and the land is in turmoil. 'Devils' from another planet have landed in your hometown of Sweetwater and are terrorising the place. It is up to you and three other people to stop this terror before it can begin. While a little cliched and it doesn't really overshadow the game at all, it is nicely interwoven with Heroes of Might and Magic 2 and will please fans of both series.

Character creation is very easy. You must create 4 adventures, you may make them a Knight, Paladin, Sorceror, Cleric, Archer or Druid. My personal choice is Knight, Cleric, Sorceror, Sorceror, but thats just me. You can assign each character two skills to start off with in addition to the initial two each class begins with. You have 50 points to spread over the 4 characters attributes and can change the face and name. Once complete you are introduced to the wonderful world of Enroth. You start in the town of New Sorpigal and your first item of duty is to deliver a letter you found to the Regent. From here the game truly begins, and you will find yourself battling demons, minotaurs, robots and huge alien queens, among others.

The game operates largely on a skill system. Every level you receive a set amount of skill points, this amount increases every 10 levels (for example for levels 1 - 10 you receive 5 skill points/level, for levels 11 - 20 you receive 6 skill points/level etc). Skill points may be spent towards improving any skills you have, be it a weapon skill, armor skill, spell skills or miscellaneous skills such as merchant, learning, perception etc. As the skill increases so to does your mastery of it, allowing you to do greater damage or whatever the skill does. Also, there is three levels of expertise within that. You may have basic knowledge of the skill, or expert, or master. Expert and Master require a certain amount of skill points before you can reach them. Sometimes they also require a set goal to be completed, for example a dwarf asks you to complete a quest for him before he will teach you Axe mastery.

The graphics in this game are all three dimensional, except for the monsters and townsfolk who are two dimensional sprites. The sprites for the most part look rather good from a distance but close up look horribly pixelated and gross. The music is generally non-intrusive and relaxing, much like Heroes of Might and Magic 2's music.

Throughout the game many people will give you quests to complete. These can range from your basic retrieval quest to a more complex assassination quest. Sadly, most of the quests, even the later ones are usually retrieval quests. Once complete you go back to the person who asked you to do the quest and you earn experience and money.

Each of the six classes may be upgraded twice, and this is done by the recognised master of that field. The first promotion quest is usually very easy, but some of the second promotion quests will have you tearing your hair out. Promotions usually give a 50% bonus to HP and MP, depending on your class.

The dungeons are usually very well done, be they in dank dungeons or castles. The maps can be at times very twisted and convoluted, and this is a good thing. Sometimes the auto-map should not be relied on though as some of the maps are too small or have too many levels for the auto-map to reliably show where you are.

The towns are huge and full of people and quests, guilds and shops. In the various shops you may buy and sell weapon and armor and various items. Guilds allow you to buy spells (from the 4 sorceror, 3 cleric and 2 special classes) once you have bought membership from various people scattered about the place.

Overall, this game is great. While the graphics just don't stand up these days, that should not be expected. The game is very large and will be quite a challenge to any RPGer. Definitely recommended.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/16/01, Updated 07/31/02