Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra
Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra is a turn-based 3D fantasy role-playing video game developed and published by New World Computing for DOS in 1991, and then for several other platforms.
My brother borrowed this game from a friend shortly after it was released and I played it on my family's 386SX Packard Bell. I was really blown away by this game. It looked far more impressive than any game I had seen before. I was even more impressed when I played it with my Sound Blaster, which not only added music, but speech.
As a child, I didn't get very far into to game because I was too creeped out by the Screamer monsters to venture far past Baywatch. Instead, I tried recording the stats of every item I got in the game. I had a stack of papers and never realized that I only needed to record each individual prefix and suffix! After discovering that Fountain Head had a place where you could work odd jobs for a week to earn gold, and that the bank earned you interest over time, I spent hours making my characters work over an over again. I ended up with millions in the bank, but all my characters ended up dying of old age!
Status
I own the game for DOS in a Might & Magic collection. I have not beaten it.
Reviews
Good
- The graphics are state of the art for a game from 1991.
- The combat system is simple enough to not be an obstacle, but complex enough to handle different tactics.
- The prefix/suffix system for items was a great way of creating nearly countless variations of items.
Bad
- The music and sound is pretty bland.
- The dungeon traps are pretty obnoxious. Even though they're clearly visible, they're often unavoidable and only serve to slowly weaken your party.
Ugly
- The original release had a pretty bad game-breaking bug that made it nearly impossible to win.
Box Art
Links
- mobygames.com/game/might-and-magic-iii-isles-of-terra - MobyGames.
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Might_and_Magic_III:_Isles_of_Terra - Wikipedia.
- jeffludwig.com/mm3/index.php - MM3 modding.