Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra

The Good
Great 256 Color VGA Graphics for it's time. Sprites were also highly detailed.

The Music is rather good. Simplisitc but good. Make sure Soundblaster or Midi is enabled though unless you enjoy PC Speaker rendrations.

Big parties. You can have six characters yourself and two more characters as hirelings. This makes sure enemies don't overpower you. The hirelings are also several levels above you and are strong enough.

Big Game World! The gameworld is HUGE! For it's time it's almost impossible NOT to get lost sometimes. There's also so much stuff to do and places to go into and such.

Character stats are very detailed and have a big chart to them.

Huge level of items with random mixed stats to go along with it. Such variety that is hard to come close to.

You can either help good or evil with the orbs.

The Bad
The enemies can be overwhelmingly hard at times. Even at the beginning of the game going anywhere EXCEPT the first few steps away from the town will result in the death of several characters.

Walking in new towns can almost guarantee you a side of beatdown unless you keep your levels up.

Really GOOD Items cost a LOT and most of the really GREAT stuff has to be found. Or picked which means you need a thief character with not too good stats to be in your party at all times.

Being brought to life crushes your hitpoints. Every time you die and are brought back to life you lose max hit points. Imagine having a Level 12 Wizard at 15 hitpoints while a Level 1 Wizard can have 19 hit points. Extremely frustrating.

The game gives you NO sense of what to really do to really progress the quest. In the strictest fashion this game is NON LINEAR! That can be a good thing or a bad thing to me in this game it's just a bit of a bad thing.

Though the world is huge there isn't that many people around so it does feel kind of barren. A small complaint but still it's worth noting. Where is everybody?

The Bottom Line
How would I describe this game to others? I'd describe it as one of the most challenging games I've ever played. Even though I spent several hours on it I have never actually beaten the game myself. The monsters themselves get to a point where they become too powerful and then eventually overpower me.

Do you like rpgs in the style of 1st person perspective? Do you like the prospect of tons of status? How about characters that age and die from old age? Are you a true rpg fan in the dice fashion?

The characters you get in this game are actually dice rolls. Keep rolling for better stats but in all honesty no matter how you slice it this game will offer you plenty of challenge and a very non linear and open ended quest. But the game is just a little too big and hard for it's own good..... If your a die hard rpg fan then by all means go ahead. However if your a newbie OR a fan of Japanese style rpgs then steer far FAR away from this game as the difficulty and lack of storyline will make you run for the hills. Overlal I'm conflicted since this is a very good PC Rpg but very difficult to the point where your discouraged from playing. I give this game a 8/10