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.