Debuting a little over a year after the last game, Might and Magic 7: For Blood and Honour brings with it many mechanical expansions, additions, and changes and a different overall vibe to the previous dungeon crawling masterpiece of the year before. It also had some not-so-good improvements, but let's start with the good before the bad.
For the purpose of this review, I’m going to assume you have read my previous one (linked at the top), as that review has a good summation of the gameplay elements shared by this game and the previous one; it’ll save us some time by not needing me have to go over what a ‘skill’ is in the context of the game, or what a class promotion is.
The game's story is a direct sequel to the events of the previous game, as well as being a sequel to Heroes of Might Magic III: The Restoration of Erathia which came out only a month before For Blood and Honour. In it, your party once again journeys across Enroth, this time on the continent of the catchily named Antagarich. You play as four up and coming adventurers who start out in one of the most high stakes openings of any fantasy game; a scavenger hunt where you have to collect a seashell and a fancy hat.
Sorry, my bad, it's not a fancy hat; it’s a wealthy hat. There’s a difference.
It of course spirals from there and sees you win a castle from the scavenger hunt which sees you become embroiled in a political land dispute and a few wars. Before we go further on the storyline department and end up talking about a rather large decision you get to make as part of it, let’s detour to the things the game changes up.
It has a distinct aesthetic style that's changed from 6, feeling more ‘gritty’ rather than the previous game’s more traditional heroic fantasy; For Blood and Honour has some serious dark fantasy energy. The new enemies are often more monstrous or straight up evil looking, with the various undead having missing limbs and bones sticking out (even if they are sort of goofy bones) and the game also has darker and more bleak feeling environments. It’s even down to the item sprites, with the majority being dirty looking, many of the armour sprites are stained with rust.
In terms of graphical power, the game is the exact same as the last one; which is to say it still has the nostalgic early 3D environments and adorable sprite work. There is technically one improvement this game has, however, as it is capable of being modded to have full widescreen support as you’ve no doubt noticed in the images so far. It looks crisp as hell, and I highly recommend the widescreen mod as well as the same mouse look mod from 6.
For Blood and Honour brings several major additions to the gameplay department as well. First is something about the character creation process; returning from earlier games in the series is the ability to make your characters different races. Oh yeah, you can be an all goblin party again.
Get wrecked, humies; us goblins will inherit the continent of whatever-its-called.
Characters can be a human, dwarf, elf or goblin with the non-human ones affecting a character's stats. Each of those races has two improved stats that have a discount to improving in the creation, but also have two bad stats that are doubly as hard to improve. This makes certain races more suited for certain classes, such as goblins making for strong knights with their jacked might, or elves making for perfect sorcerers with their jacked intellect. It's a simple system, but it works perfectly fine and doesn’t need to be any bigger.
Speaking of classes, the game keeps all the previous ones from The Mandate of Heaven (knight, cleric, paladin, archer, sorcerer, druid) and adds in three new ones to play around with; the monk, thief, and ranger. The monk and thief both get my personal stamp of approval, with both being versatile and effective at what they do. The thief can end up being essentially a more versatile knight-tier damage dealer with the right skill investments, and the monk can learn decent enough body and spirit magic spells to be a capable off-healer while also being surprisingly lethal in combat with the higher ranks of the unarmed skill. The ranger? Don’t play a ranger, they definitely do not get my stamp of approval. They are a combination of druid and archer, meaning they are essentially two hybrids further diluted; they are terrible fighters, terrible spell casters, and have no good skill potential over other classes.
Also speaking of skills, this is the most improved upon system from the last game. Previously in The Mandate of Heaven, the majority of skills could be learned by any class, and any class could become a master rank in any skill they could learn. Now, skills are far more restricted in which classes can learn them, and most important is that now some classes can’t learn certain ranks in skills. No matter how hard your druid studies and trains at the archery range, they are never getting beyond the initial rank with the bow skill, just as your knight will never be able to become a master of almost any non-combat skill.
Kickinlady is a monk who will one day dodge just about every attack thrown at her and roundhouse kick demons to death with no mercy, but she will never be able to level her bow past Normal rank. So it goes.
Wait, there’s more; there is now an additional rank of skills above master, being the aptly titled grandmaster. This new skill system is an incredible change, and greatly improves the game. In the last game, as great as it was, your class selection was largely just down to what combat skills you wanted. Every class could essentially learn every non-combat skill, so those types of skills never really affected what party you’d make. In For Blood and Honour, your choice of classes matters that much more. Since no longer can every class learn essentially any non-combat skill, and even if they can learn it they may be locked at only ever being an expert at it, you have to take more into account when designing the party since you want to cover as many skills as possible. Just like the last game, you never want to be without the disarm trap or ID item skill.
Monsters the continent over came to fear the sight of Cool Tony the Druid (he has an eye scar) and the arcane might of the most terrible sorceress, Susan. Of Kickinlady, we do not speak.
There are also new skills as well. The stealing skill I would almost say is borderline useless, despite letting you ‘obtain’ items from merchants for free as its name implies. It's not the best for a few reasons; its largely unnecessary given that you’ll find plenty of loot from playing the game, if you’re caught (since it’s not an automatic success) the shop will ban you for what I can only guess is permanently or at least for a very long time, and you cannot steal spell books which would be really the only worthwhile thing to steal in the first place. The dodging skill improves your defence when not wearing armour, making it essentially only for monks; the unarmed skill is likewise also only for monks giving bonuses for punching. The other martial classes get something still with armsmaster which simply improves every melee weapon skill, and the identify monster skill lets you learn things about a monster when you right click on it. I have never put points into this skill once. The biggest new skill is the alchemy skill, letting you combine different ingredient items with empty bottles to make various potions. It gets pretty complicated when you really get into it, with a whole bunch of different recipes to make and some very powerful effects only being obtainable through alchemy potions.
Tying into the new skill system, the magic skills have been changed from the previous game. Each spell is affected by the caster's rank in its respective skill, with some spells getting some cool effects when casted by a master or grandmaster.
Just look at this adorable little Skeleton Lord, dude. I almost feel bad for annihilating him and the vast hordes of his bony brethren. Almost.
Overall, the gameplay on a mechanical level is greatly improved over The Mandate of Heaven with a variety of expansions and additions. Going back to the storyline discussion, there is one new addition that definitely deserves mentioning, and even affects the other new things in the game such as the new skill system; at a certain point in the story, you have to choose to be evil or good.
Might and Magic 7: For Blood and Honour has a morality choice around the mid-game mark. This is more than the simple ‘reputation’ stat that both games feature that only affects if peasants will actually talk to you, and has a major impact on the game from that point on. The opposite aligned cities will declare you an enemy and become hostile zones for one, and even bigger is that depending on what you choose, your characters have a different class promotion after the second and if they’re most of the magic classes, can learn either light or dark magic. Crusaders can be promoted to heroes or villains, thieves become spies or assassins, and in the coolest one of all, sorcerers can become archmages or liches; complete with their portrait becoming a skeleton if they become a lich.
Simply adorable.
The game's story changes from that decision on of course, with you gaining different quests largely themed around screwing around the other moral faction as you make your way through the game. Your HUD changes too, for what it’s worth.
You also get to hang out with ‘Queens of the Dead’ if you go evil, so that should be an obvious choice.
One last thing that deserves mentioning, and easily one of the greatest things the game features; the best game-in-a-game, For Blood and Honour has a playable card game called ArcoMage. You can play it in any tavern across the game once you obtain a card deck from an early side quest, with each of the taverns having different win conditions and opponent skill levels. It sees you attempting to build up your castle and wall while surviving attacks from the opponent by playing cards drawn from a deck, and it is fantastic. I won’t get too into it as that’s kind of beyond the scope of this article, but it always deserves to be mentioned as it’s incredibly fun.
I’ve lost hours playing a fictional card game inside a game just in this playthrough alone, and I have no regrets.
For Blood and Honour has many improvements as we’ve seen, but it also has some things that aren’t pulled off so well. The amount of overall content and side-quests is lower than the previous game, owing to a rushed development time; 3DO (the company, not the console) was pushing New World Computing to develop both this game and the next Heroes of Might and Magic spin-off game at the same time, and to have them come out at as close to the same time as possible. The amount of dungeons is also smaller, with fewer optional ones. Design wise as well, they are generally much smaller scale and are usually simple corridors with maybe only a single gimmick as opposed to The Mandate of Heaven’s larger scale dungeons. There are still a few standout ones that have a decently sprawling map, but the majority are simply kind of forgettable. One you can encounter fairly early, the Barrow Downs, is a series of different tomb-like areas connected by doors that essentially forms a complicated maze that you must navigate and is definitely a standout. It has multiple outdoor entrances and each door in each area can be changed to one of two different other connecting tombs; it's pretty easy to get lost, to say the least.
When most of your party is diseased from ghoul attacks after you got lost in the Barrow Downs for approximately 7 weeks of in-game time, always remember the golden rule of combat: cheese the hell out of everything you can, including attacking enemies stuck behind walls.
To bring everything together, For Blood and Honour is still a great game, and deserves to be talked about as an old-school PC RPG classic just like Might and Magic 6: The Mandate of Heaven. When compared to that previous game, however, overall I don’t think it compares despite its numerous improvements. It lacks that same sense of wondrous adventure that 6 has, due to both its darker look and also due to its smaller scale content and dungeons. The skill system is greatly improved of course, but overall the game around that I feel is a notch or two lower; which still puts it high in my book.
Get a castle, find out it's full of rats and goblins. What else is new?
Do I recommend you play Might and Magic 7: For Blood and Honour? Hell yeah, that’s obvious. While inferior to its predecessor in some ways, the additions the game brings are fantastic, and the way skills work in this game is honestly one of my favourite RPG systems in a video game. It all flows, and makes sense; it's deep, but not too complicated and, most of all, it brings a lot of decision making to party creation which is entirely the appeal of these party based dungeon crawlers. Classes feel unique despite not having any mechanical gimmicks or super special unique abilities outside of their skills, and it just feels great.
The next game in the series, Might and Magic 8: Day of the Destroyer, brought even more changes to the gameplay and character system and was the first game in this little trilogy to drastically change the way things worked. It’s also the one I only played for the first time about two years ago, so I don’t know it like the back of my hand like 6 and 7. Keep an eye out for our next time jump in that article; we’ll be going to the unfathomable 2000.
So yeah, go play For Blood and Honour. While you’re at it, play 6 if you haven’t already; even if you have, play it again. It can never hurt.
Pros
- + Much improved skill system over Might and Magic 6.
- + More gorgeous sprite work.
- + Some standout dungeons.
- + Interesting moral decision at a point that changes the game substantially going forward.
Cons
- - Shorter overall length.
- - Less content, and less side quests.
8
out of 10
Overall
Despite some shortcomings over the previous Might and Magic 6: The Mandate of Heaven, For Blood and Honour still offers some fantastic 3D dungeon crawling fantasy. You can kill goblins and become a lich, what else do you need?
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