Might and Magic: Book One - Secret of the Inner Sanctum

aka: Mech i Magija
Moby ID: 1619
Apple II Specs
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Description official description

A party of adventurers in what appears to be a medieval fantasy world called Varn is looking for an entrance to the highly coveted Inner Sanctum. Before long the heroes realize that one of the four kings that rule the countries of Varn is in fact an impostor, a creature from outer space. Their task is to find the real king and ultimately stop the mysterious space traveler, revealing the truth about the world's origin in the process.

The Secret of the Inner Sanctum is a role-playing game and the first installment in the Might and Magic series. Core gameplay concept is similar to that of Wizardry games, though the game does not focus solely on dungeon crawling and features overworld areas and towns that can be physically navigated. In this way the game resembles The Bard's Tale, though it has a significantly larger playing environment with several towns. The entire game is viewed from first-person perspective, and the game environment consists of maze-like passages made with pseudo-3D graphics.

In the beginning of the game, the player creates a party of six adventurers. There are six classes to choose from: knight, robber, sorcerer, cleric, paladin, and archer. Each character has six main attributes: might, endurance, accuracy, personality, intelligence, and luck, with each class requires proficiency in a specific attribute for effective functioning. There are also five races to choose from: humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, and half-orcs.

As in most RPGs, the gameplay revolves around exploring the game world and leveling up to be able to proceed to the story-advancing challenges. The party starts in a particularly weak state, equipped with only clubs and having no money. The player is free to explore most of the game's locations in any order, and there are few hints as to what needs to be done to advance the plot. Turn-based battles against randomly appearing enemies typically take place against a group of monsters more or less equal in size to the player-controlled party, but enemy reinforcements can appear once their comrades have been slain. It is also possible to try and bribe enemies or surrender to them before entering combat.

The game has no auto-mapping feature of any kind and it is only possible to save the player's progress at inns located in towns.

The TurboGrafx CD version of this game has significant differences.

Spellings

  • Меч и Магия - Russian spelling
  • 魔法門 - Traditional Chinese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Apple II version)

8 People (7 developers, 1 thanks)

Designed and Created by
Programming
Art Director
Book Illustrations
Map Illustration
Technical Writing
Computer Graphics
Special thanks to
  • our playtesters and everyone else who made this project possible.

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 68% (based on 14 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 69 ratings with 4 reviews)

Good but why bother.....

The Good
The vast selection of items, monsters, spells and combat mechanics.

The Bad
The storyline is pretty bad, actually there is no storyline. Also the game is simply way too difficult and time-consuming.

The Bottom Line
A vast world to explore with lots of weapons, equipment, magic items, spells and monsters to fight make this a somewhat enjoyable game, but finishing the game is a different matter. The game and storyline (if you can call it that) is very hard to figure out and finish, you will literally walk around not knowing what to do. You will spend at least 40-60 hours leveling up your party and only then will you actually begin your main quest to discover the Inner Sanctum. Hmmm…this doesn't sound like too much fun. You will need incredible patience for this one.

DOS · by cimerians (49) · 2002

Great game design -- highly difficult, but extremely rewarding

The Good
As about every other reviewer noted, Might and Magic I is an extremely challenging game. From the beginning right to the very end, there is a real chance of your party being wiped out at each and every step. This may not sound so hot to the casual gamer, and indeed this game is not meant for casual gaming -- you have to really dig into it. But once you do (and you have survived the insanely hard beginning), you'll realize how well this game is designed.

Leveling up really MEANS something here -- your party gets stronger, but it does so slowly, and your characters do not evolve into some kind of fantasy superheroes capable of slaying a handful of dragons with a single stroke. Loot is always something to carefully check out and never something you'll routinely just cust a Detect Magic on and let it lie -- gold is sparse and keeps being valuable throughout the game, so at least pick it up to sell it (but as the backpack sizes are very limited, you'll have to choose carefully).

The monsters and their powers are very varied, and you'll have to study them and prepare for combat as best you can. And even at the end of the game, you'll meet monsters that you should run away from.

The game is highly non-linear, so you'll have can (and have to) freely explore the vast world on your own. However, I found the difficulty levels of the areas well balanced, so that you'll quickly steer into the right (= not too difficult!) direction.

The user interface is easy to learn and effective to use after a few minutes, and even the graphics are nice -- not really colorful or opulent in any way, but the monsters are nicely pixeled, and the graphics never distract from the actual game play -- indeed, the game has, IMO, more atmosphere than MM2 or Bard's Tale due to the nearly abstract feel of the graphics.

The Bad
The only thing that comes to my mind is the beginning. It's INSANELY hard. Even after finding a good grinding place, it will take you hours to get your characters to level 2, allowing you to venture a bit further than just a few steps from the inn. It would be nice if Mr. Van Carneghem would provide the starting party some more gold to get some decent equipment instead of a few clubs and daggers.

The Bottom Line
Might and Magic 1 is definitely not something for beginners or for casual gamers. In the end, it's -- like any other good RPG -- a complex resource management game: You'll have to think and keep thinking about what to carry, and what to use when, and what to sell and buy, and how to improve your party.

It is highly difficult, but this means it provides a challenging experience for many, many hours -- it took me at least a hundred gaming hours to win this game, and even this with some help from walkthroughs. However, I never felt bored once -- once you get into it, it keeps staying a challenging, but highly rewarding experience.

I can heartily recommend this game to all those looking for a challenging early RPG. It could be seen as a great mix of Bard's Tale and Wizardry, taking the best elements of both and evading their weaknesses.

DOS · by General Error (4329) · 2015

An excellent and often forgotten start to this long running series.

The Good
This was the first RPG I ever played. It had a 1st person perspective with, great for the time (Commodore 64 version at least), graphics that were quite a step up when compared to the already old RPG series like Ultima and Wizardry.

The game let you make a party of 6 characters who set out to find the secret of the Inner Sanctum. Character stats, races and classes are your typical D&D stuff. Each class did have a role and need in the game although you could experiment by leaving out some classes in your party.

Combat was a simple text affair. It was quite fast and efficent and best of all apart from the preset encounters, all the battles would try to match your party's strength so the battles remaind competive.

The most notalable thing about this game is that it is HUGE. There were dozens of wilderness areas to explore, 5 towns and 5 castles. That is not counting the dozens of dungeons for you to find and explore. Each area had unique encounters and quests for you to do. You could win the game and still not have run into all there was to find and do. Also the game is a rare RPG with a non-violent ending to it, not that you won't do a lot of fighting to get to the ending though.

The Bad
Its is easy to loose track of the plot. Dungeons would reset after you left them, this meant you could battle the "boss" creatures again and again to get easy experience points but it felt as if you accomplished nothing when you returned to an area you previously cleaned. Random encounters in the towns are annoying. Shouldn't towns be safe for humans? You can only save in the Inns in the 5 towns, which was inconvient. No automap, be prepared to map A LOT.

The Bottom Line
This is an excllent old school RPG, still worth playing today, as the interface is quite good despite the aging graphics and sound. I'd reccomend finding the hint book to ease the amount of hand mapping you have to do.

DOS · by woods01 (129) · 2001

[ View all 4 player reviews ]

Trivia

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • August 1988 (Issue #50) – Introduced into the Hall of Fame
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) - #23 in the “150 Best Games of All Time” list

Information also contributed by PCGamer77

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Old man gamer.

Commodore 64 added by Quapil. FM-7, Apple II, PC-88, Sharp X68000, MSX added by Terok Nor. PC-98, Sharp X1 added by Unicorn Lynx. Macintosh added by Garcia. NES added by Billoute.

Additional contributors: Adam Baratz, Unicorn Lynx, Bullyt, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, ZeTomes.

Game added June 17, 2000. Last modified March 24, 2024.