Enter the land of Xeen, a mythical place ruled by two villainous overlords. Solve many quests and puzzles as you attempt to unravel the secrets of the World of Xeen. This special version of the game is really two games (Clouds of Xeen and Darkside of Xeen) rolled into one, with two differences: One, your characters are able to travel from one game to the other, doubling the size of the world available for exploration. Two, CD-ROM technology has made possible the use of digitized speech in all places that call for it.
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this whole series is like the guy who wears a star trek costume to the renaissance faire (as opposed to wizardry, which is like the guy who wears a wizard hat to a linux convention). personally i find that kind of charming.
that said, xeen is probably where m&m peaked for me, and it's still not as interesting as wizardry or etrian or old school roguelikes. probably because it's very easy. it might be a good entry point to dungeon crawlers, but who's getting a DOS game for that purpose today?
that said, xeen is probably where m&m peaked for me, and it's still not as interesting as wizardry or etrian or old school roguelikes. probably because it's very easy. it might be a good entry point to dungeon crawlers, but who's getting a DOS game for that purpose today?
Star in the crown of classic CRPGs. A genre, which, is perhaps, forgotten nowadays. World of Xeen is a combination of Might and Magic IV and V entries in the series into one giant game. In CD version - with full voice acting. This game will be the last "classic" Might and Magic game before series moved towards other directions.
For those who don't familiar with subgenre - it will be very hard to describe what it is, sadly, all I can tell are things from conext of the time when it was made. And at the time, game had wonderful visuals, with colorful maps and covers, made by Mike Winterbauer, lots of awesome in-game art (especially in the dark side), lots of colorful and varied places with lots of fully animated NPCs. This game has user friendly fully mouse driven graphical interface, awesome for the time voiced cutscenes. While combat-action driven, the game has no "grind" in classical RPG sence of this word - all monsters are hand placed and gone once you killed them, this is not infinity encounter-based grinder like older CRPGs (including Might and Magic 1-2) or JRPGs. Same time as being fully open world, as you can explore anything on both sides of world of xeen from the start.
Game made on Might and Magic 3 engine, but makes a number of incremental improvements to anything, in particular, to difficulty curve - starting cloud side of xeen is most easy and accesable from all classic Might and Magic series. Some remnants of old engine still present, however - inventory is still pure text and tiny icons in list. There are no mouse drag and drop for items or character paper dolls, like in some other CRPGs of the time, Dungeon Master clones such as Eye of the Beholder and Dungeon Hack in particular. Same as you need to learn item stats in shops, for a price. However, this is not hard to memorize as its have fixed base set of weapons and armor + modifiers. This is probably the only major complaint for this game from me.
WoX, combined version of the game also have additional content and concludes story of all 5 previous games to the end. But don't worry, since Might and Magic 6 linked Heores series and old MM series, their foundations of the universe will continue to evolve beyond Xeen. If you like classic dungeoncrawlers, or a novice for the genre and want to start your turn-based action-driven adventure in VGA 256 color world of xeen - good luck, I hope you will love it!
Game, including CD version can be played vide ScummVM, modern engine port, natively. Sadly at the date of this review made it does not supports Mac version, that one had higer resolution and had more portraits, but anyway, it is not much different.
For those who don't familiar with subgenre - it will be very hard to describe what it is, sadly, all I can tell are things from conext of the time when it was made. And at the time, game had wonderful visuals, with colorful maps and covers, made by Mike Winterbauer, lots of awesome in-game art (especially in the dark side), lots of colorful and varied places with lots of fully animated NPCs. This game has user friendly fully mouse driven graphical interface, awesome for the time voiced cutscenes. While combat-action driven, the game has no "grind" in classical RPG sence of this word - all monsters are hand placed and gone once you killed them, this is not infinity encounter-based grinder like older CRPGs (including Might and Magic 1-2) or JRPGs. Same time as being fully open world, as you can explore anything on both sides of world of xeen from the start.
Game made on Might and Magic 3 engine, but makes a number of incremental improvements to anything, in particular, to difficulty curve - starting cloud side of xeen is most easy and accesable from all classic Might and Magic series. Some remnants of old engine still present, however - inventory is still pure text and tiny icons in list. There are no mouse drag and drop for items or character paper dolls, like in some other CRPGs of the time, Dungeon Master clones such as Eye of the Beholder and Dungeon Hack in particular. Same as you need to learn item stats in shops, for a price. However, this is not hard to memorize as its have fixed base set of weapons and armor + modifiers. This is probably the only major complaint for this game from me.
WoX, combined version of the game also have additional content and concludes story of all 5 previous games to the end. But don't worry, since Might and Magic 6 linked Heores series and old MM series, their foundations of the universe will continue to evolve beyond Xeen. If you like classic dungeoncrawlers, or a novice for the genre and want to start your turn-based action-driven adventure in VGA 256 color world of xeen - good luck, I hope you will love it!
Game, including CD version can be played vide ScummVM, modern engine port, natively. Sadly at the date of this review made it does not supports Mac version, that one had higer resolution and had more portraits, but anyway, it is not much different.
If I were but a small child living in the 1990s (or for that matter, the early 2000s), this game would have taken up a lot of my time. However, these days the game has aspects that make it boring, grindy, and repetitive. In short, it's just not fun to play. Let's take a look at why.
1) Ugly graphics: I do not mean primitive graphics. I grew up as a retro gamer, and I'm OK with old graphics. And in fact, a lot of the art in this game is quite impressive, even today. I can only imagine how good the pseudo-3d environments looked in 1992 (keep in mind that this was a full year before DOOM; the only competitor was Ultima Underworld as far as I know).
However, today these graphics are less impressive, and not just for technical reasons. First, the art style is corny and cartoony. Every enemy looks like it stepped forth from a hideously ugly Saturday morning cartoon. Character portraits start to look like comic-strip characters whenever your character has a status effect. Every other NPC (and there aren't very many) looks silly. Combine this with the corny and decidedly non-fantasy names (one of the first NPCs you hear about is "Joe") and the lackluster "jokes" (comedy in gaming needed to be smothered in the cradle) and it becomes an unpleasant experience. How can I take the game seriously when it doesn't take itself seriously?
The second and more grave problem with the graphics is the repetitive environments. While the game might have looked impressive in the early 90s, it no longer does, and the drab nature of the environments becomes very apparent. The first dungeon, for example, is eight floors of the same exact textures and sprites. This quickly becomes repetitive. I can't even chalk this up to the game being old; older games with more primitive graphics or no graphics at all (e.g. text adventures) actually work better in this regard, because they require you to use your imagination to fill in the details. Worlds of Xeen sits in an awkward spot where the graphics are detailed enough that you can't really use your imagination to fill in the gaps but ugly and primitive enough to where you can't become immersed in the game.
2) Grinding blindfolded: There are some quality of life issues with this game that make it slightly irritating for someone accustomed to newer games (e.g. having to unequip a weapon before you can equip a new weapon); however, the biggest quality of life issue is one that has nothing to do with the game's age--namely, the way the game hides important stats from you. Worlds of Xeen is a turn-based RPG, not an action game. Being able to see the numbers in the game is important--and yet, the game hides important numbers from you. Your party members' HP is displayed onscreen by a gem that moves from green to yellow to blue (KO'd). You can view party member's HP in the information screen, but not in the heat of battle. Is my character 100% healthy or barely healthy? Should I use a healing spell or can this character in the yellow afford to stick around another round? Who knows? Similarly, enemy HP is only telegraphed by the color of the enemies names. Did my "Magic Arrow" spell do a lot of damage or a little? Who knows?
But the absolute worst offender is the fact that nowhere in the game are you told the stats for weapons and armor.
Let me repeat that. The game conceals the stats for weapons and armor!
This is an absolutely insane design decision, made even worse by the fact that this game was released before the internet. What is the point in grinding for new gear if you don't even know whether or not it is worth equipping?
This is combined with a combat system that is barebones, both tactically and visually. There are really only three options for battle: use attack, use item, and cast spell. Since you can't really know how much damage is done by any one of these, you might as well just stick to attacks and healing spells, which makes the game's combat brain dead.
Combat is visually uninteresting as well. There are no indications that you've landed a critical strike or inflicted a negative status, and, of course, you can't see the numbers, so combat becomes a boring slog of clicking the attack key and occasionally casting "Cure Wounds."
3) Did I mention that this game has no storyline?
Overall, these factors make the game not worth playing for me. Unless you have a lot of time to kill, are addicted to CRPGs, or have some sort of nostalgia for the game, avoid Worlds of Xeen.
1) Ugly graphics: I do not mean primitive graphics. I grew up as a retro gamer, and I'm OK with old graphics. And in fact, a lot of the art in this game is quite impressive, even today. I can only imagine how good the pseudo-3d environments looked in 1992 (keep in mind that this was a full year before DOOM; the only competitor was Ultima Underworld as far as I know).
However, today these graphics are less impressive, and not just for technical reasons. First, the art style is corny and cartoony. Every enemy looks like it stepped forth from a hideously ugly Saturday morning cartoon. Character portraits start to look like comic-strip characters whenever your character has a status effect. Every other NPC (and there aren't very many) looks silly. Combine this with the corny and decidedly non-fantasy names (one of the first NPCs you hear about is "Joe") and the lackluster "jokes" (comedy in gaming needed to be smothered in the cradle) and it becomes an unpleasant experience. How can I take the game seriously when it doesn't take itself seriously?
The second and more grave problem with the graphics is the repetitive environments. While the game might have looked impressive in the early 90s, it no longer does, and the drab nature of the environments becomes very apparent. The first dungeon, for example, is eight floors of the same exact textures and sprites. This quickly becomes repetitive. I can't even chalk this up to the game being old; older games with more primitive graphics or no graphics at all (e.g. text adventures) actually work better in this regard, because they require you to use your imagination to fill in the details. Worlds of Xeen sits in an awkward spot where the graphics are detailed enough that you can't really use your imagination to fill in the gaps but ugly and primitive enough to where you can't become immersed in the game.
2) Grinding blindfolded: There are some quality of life issues with this game that make it slightly irritating for someone accustomed to newer games (e.g. having to unequip a weapon before you can equip a new weapon); however, the biggest quality of life issue is one that has nothing to do with the game's age--namely, the way the game hides important stats from you. Worlds of Xeen is a turn-based RPG, not an action game. Being able to see the numbers in the game is important--and yet, the game hides important numbers from you. Your party members' HP is displayed onscreen by a gem that moves from green to yellow to blue (KO'd). You can view party member's HP in the information screen, but not in the heat of battle. Is my character 100% healthy or barely healthy? Should I use a healing spell or can this character in the yellow afford to stick around another round? Who knows? Similarly, enemy HP is only telegraphed by the color of the enemies names. Did my "Magic Arrow" spell do a lot of damage or a little? Who knows?
But the absolute worst offender is the fact that nowhere in the game are you told the stats for weapons and armor.
Let me repeat that. The game conceals the stats for weapons and armor!
This is an absolutely insane design decision, made even worse by the fact that this game was released before the internet. What is the point in grinding for new gear if you don't even know whether or not it is worth equipping?
This is combined with a combat system that is barebones, both tactically and visually. There are really only three options for battle: use attack, use item, and cast spell. Since you can't really know how much damage is done by any one of these, you might as well just stick to attacks and healing spells, which makes the game's combat brain dead.
Combat is visually uninteresting as well. There are no indications that you've landed a critical strike or inflicted a negative status, and, of course, you can't see the numbers, so combat becomes a boring slog of clicking the attack key and occasionally casting "Cure Wounds."
3) Did I mention that this game has no storyline?
Overall, these factors make the game not worth playing for me. Unless you have a lot of time to kill, are addicted to CRPGs, or have some sort of nostalgia for the game, avoid Worlds of Xeen.
I beat the Mega Dragon in this game. Take that, Might & Magic: Gates to Another World!