I played a couple of them, and I put it in the “ordinary computer RPG”. Well made, but with nothing out of the ordinary. Yet another clone, IOW. Anyway, my computer being now really old, the last I played was MM VII.
For the record, my preffered RPGs (of course I didn’t play that much) are :
1 note on the copies of HoMM, HoMM was really just a copy of the ancient classic Warlords. Great Graphical, single diskette, single map game for the Amiga and a less colorful but still good diskette game for early IBM’s. This is really the Grand Daddy of all the Turn Based Fantasy strategy games.
Using my might (I already have the magic), I’ll move this to Cafe Society. Ovar thar be monsters. 
I’m curious as to why they are using the Source engine. FarCry is a Ubisoft game - so why didn’t they use the CryEngine?
I haven’t enjoyed a M&M game since Light Side and Dark Side of Xeen way back when. I have some hopes for this new one.
Marc
Ubisoft would still need to license the engine from CryTek (who owns it) and it’d be a lot easier for Arkane Studios to use the Source engine since Valve is going above-and-beyond to help lesser developers use it. Not to mention that the beautiful lush environments that the CryEngine produces would be wasted on what seems to be a dungeon crawler.
Arx Fatalis was pretty good, which is amazing given that Jowood published it. That’s a good sign for this new Might & Magic title.
Shows you my age–when you say “role-playing game” I automatically think books, dice, paper and pencils.
I feel old.
Don’t feel old. While computer games are kicking the ass of tabletop games, we tabletop gamers are alive and kicking. I just got back from GenCon, and I can tell you that the halls full of tabletop gamers were pretty active.
My last strong memory of a Might and Magic game involved entering a large temple, and realizing that it was actually a crashed spaceship. As if that weren’t bad enough, the temple’s central puzzle comprised discovering that the ship’s captain was named Krik, the first mate was named Kcops, and so forth. Nobody else knew I was playing the game, but I still felt mortified.
Has the game’s sense of humor risen above eight-year-old nerd yet?
Daniel
I might add that the Heroes of Might and Magic series at least shamelessly rips off of pencil and paper RPGs.
LHoD – I have no idea. The HoMM series seemed to have a better sense of humor, especially in how things were drawn, but it didn’t seem to try to make outright jokes like that… thing.
I will note that the last attempt to insert science fiction elements from the MoM series into the HoMM series was an unmigiated disaster (remember the Forge)? Hopefully, the new owners of the franchise will go for straight fantasy without that nonsense (aliens disguised as devils!)
I don’t remember the forge, and I’m guessing that I’m glad. HOMMIII was the last one I played. And you’re right: the humor in those games was pretty well-done. I still look back fondly on the Legions of Peasants maps as one of the most brilliant and hilarious depictions of necromancy that I’ve ever played.
Daniel
Not even remotely. Heroes of Might and Magic was an update of New World Computing’s King’s Bounty, released the same year as the original Warlords*. King’s Bounty let you pick one of four classes, tasked by the king to locate a number of escaped criminals who have holed up in castles on four different continents. Gameplay was pretty much identical, only with fewer bells and whistles: you’d explore a map, looking for treasure chest which you could either keep, or give to your soldiers to increase your leadership, thereby increasing the number of troops you could lead. Captured castles generated a certain number of troops every week. There weren’t any other resources other than gold, and no special buildings on the map besides the castles, as near as I can recall. Each captured criminal gave you a piece of a map that led to a magic gewgaw that you had to recover to win the game, much like the Grail quests from the HOMM games. Combat played out almost identically, and almost all of the units in King’s Bounty carried over into later incarnations of Heroes of Might and Magic. I always preferred King’s Bounty to Warlords, although it lacked multiplay, and considering the state of the respective franchises (is anyone excited to hear about another Warlords game, anymore?) I’d say that King’s Bounty is the true “grand-daddy” of the genre.
*If you want to get really nitpicky, the original Warlords came out in 1980 for the Atari 2600, and was basically a four-player version of Breakout. But that game was unrelated to the later PC series by SSG.
I stand corrected.
For the record, my preffered RPGs (of course I didn’t play that much) are :
MM VII had a Battlestar at the bottom of the sea that you had to enter. That was kind of annoying and kind of cool at the same time.