One of the quite important games both for the RPG genre and the Might and Magic series in general. This game did a lot of things: moved from complex encounter-based combat to in-world battles. The primary platform became IBM PC with VGA cars, giving a huge step up from the previous base platform (Apple II). Music becomes a major part of the environment, the same as mouse-driven almost fully graphical-driven GUI.
Move to in-world combat where monsters move inside the world map, without any separation of combat-exploration modes, in the style of dungeon crawlers like Dungeon Master, same as the fact that this is a fully hand-made open world without restrictions where all monsters (except spawners) placed manually marked for me most major change in how CRPGs decided to approach their presentation afterward. JRPGs have not moved to this for decades to come.
Because of all of that, this game is much more acceptable than the first two titles for modern players and not the worst point to start exploring the series. Of course, later on, the same engine were built Xeen games, which are, arguably better in all ways - art, music, animation, game design of the world, and content, but MM3 still has its charm and its minor features worth to discover. For example, the game still has some of this MM2 cheese DNA with sometimes brutal monster effects, timed to specific day quests, more funny and goofy presentation of the world.
This game is hard to call perfect or give it a high score, but same time, I want to acknowledge what it is and what it tried to achieve (mostly, successfully). Can't recommend the Amiga port, it is a PC version cramped into ECS machines. SNES port supports a mouse, and, besides some censorship, despite lower graphical specs, very nicely re-drawn by artists who knew how to do their work. The Sega CD version has original portraits re-drawn in anime style and has added an intro inspired by the lore inside the original manual.
Move to in-world combat where monsters move inside the world map, without any separation of combat-exploration modes, in the style of dungeon crawlers like Dungeon Master, same as the fact that this is a fully hand-made open world without restrictions where all monsters (except spawners) placed manually marked for me most major change in how CRPGs decided to approach their presentation afterward. JRPGs have not moved to this for decades to come.
Because of all of that, this game is much more acceptable than the first two titles for modern players and not the worst point to start exploring the series. Of course, later on, the same engine were built Xeen games, which are, arguably better in all ways - art, music, animation, game design of the world, and content, but MM3 still has its charm and its minor features worth to discover. For example, the game still has some of this MM2 cheese DNA with sometimes brutal monster effects, timed to specific day quests, more funny and goofy presentation of the world.
This game is hard to call perfect or give it a high score, but same time, I want to acknowledge what it is and what it tried to achieve (mostly, successfully). Can't recommend the Amiga port, it is a PC version cramped into ECS machines. SNES port supports a mouse, and, besides some censorship, despite lower graphical specs, very nicely re-drawn by artists who knew how to do their work. The Sega CD version has original portraits re-drawn in anime style and has added an intro inspired by the lore inside the original manual.