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Originally Posted by galraen  The game was a lot smaller and too easy, I wasn't happy with the character development (too much undead involved for my tastes). It also had the 'problem' that the central storyline of the M&M series ended in VII, with the result that VIII lacked cohesion for me. |
Speaking only for myself, I never went to M&M for the storyline, which I found cheesy from the start of the series. I played it as a series of fun, colorful quest encounters with lots of more-or-less randomized booty, in a very freely available environment. Which is pretty much as Van Caneghem envisioned it, if I recall correctly. He once laughed at the mention of the over-arching plot behind the series ("Plot? What plot?" he said), and told me they never wasted much time on it. (I was something of a semi-regular visitor to their offices before they joined Tripp's Evil Empire.) A bit showed up at the start, and they threw in bits now and again. But it was all about the fun of dungeon crawling.
Whether you look at simple dungeon crawling or beautifully crafted RPGs with plots and interactive environments, there are still very few being made these days that work well, IMO.
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I think it's unfair to compare a game retroactively, IMO you should compare it to it's predecessors and contemporaries. In my recollection, M&M VI had more of a positive impact than VII did. Seven is excellent, but VI broke the ground, VII improved the character development, but I'd still recommend newbies to play VI, then play some other games, then play VII. Of course if they're into retro gaming, then go from II up (I never saw 1).
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I'm not dissing VI in light of VII. In my initial review of VI, when it first came out, I found that it possessed very long dungeon crawls, with unimaginative design. I still found that to be the case, when I attempted to play it again, recently. Then I played M&M VII, and the team had rectified this by shortening dungeon lengths. It also tried to diversify the types of monsters you'd encounter.