25 Years of Might and Magic, Parts Two and Three

The second and third entries to Ubisoft's overview of "25 years of Might and Magic" are now available, with these latest installments taking us from Book 1: Secret of the Inner Sanctum all the way to Might & Magic IX. I absolutely loved this game back in the day:
Created almost single-handedly by Jon Van Caneghem, Might & Magic was a first-person RPG in the tradition of classics like Wizardry or The Bard's Tale - but instead of confining the player to some obscure maze of caves and dungeons, Might & Magic featured a vast open world, with forests and mountains and castles and cities, a land of mysteries and wonders and a great sense of humor, too.

It also introduced many legendary characters such as Lord Kilburn and Crag Hack, who would later enjoy recurring appearances in one form or another throughout the next installments of the series.

This first quest took place in the land of Varn, pitting the players against an impostor masquerading as the good King Alamar. This usurper turned out to be Sheltem, an intergalactic Guardian gone mad and rampaging throughout the cosmos. The old Might & Magic universe was not your classic fantasy setting: it possessed a sci-fi background prefiguring the Stargate movie and TV series. The storyline of the early games revolved around an advanced race of precursors, the Ancients, who had built artificial fantasy worlds linked together by an intricate web of galactic portals.