Today's Mobile Monday takes us to the fantasy realm of Erathia where the demon Daraka is attempting to break free and destroy everything. I sort of skipped part of the story because it was a lot of reading on a small screen*. Building on the popularity of the PC game series and the previous mobile title Might & Magic 2 continues in the RPG footsteps of its predecessors. There are at least 19 levels in the game but as some levels are multi-stage there is a good amount of playing time and a story to guide you though you do on occasion have the opportunity to take on side quests and make some extra money to upgrade your gear. 

This game shines in several aspects the first of which is the graphics. We have said in the past that many games have good graphics of an SNES quality and this game is no different. But this game even looks better than some of the SNES games I remember playing. There are some excellent panoramic shots, one that comes to mind is when you are entering into the third chapter and a siege is taking place. They give you a bird's eye view of the battlefield, literally, as the camera follows the flight path of a crow flying over it. A nice touch I thought. The enemies that you face are diverse and range in size and shape and type. A well thought out area of the game overall.

 The second area where the game shines is the sound. In a world where the music in many mobile games seems almost an afterthought this game makes itself known, or perhaps heard would be a better word here. The music in the game is great and gives the game a larger than mobile feel to it. One might even call it an epic score if it were more robust. But that's not all folks! There are combat sounds and magic sounds and well you get the drift. Sure these are not the 5.1 digital surround of the consoles but like we keep saying, it doesn't matter. The sound is great for the game. I'm just curious why they don't use one of the compression technologies like mp3 for sound though. Then they could manage to get deeper sound into the games. Most mobile phones nowadays can handle mp3 so it shouldn't be too hard I would imagine. Of course I'm not a game developer and it's just an idea.

A game can be pretty and sound good but still be nothing if the gameplay is lacking. Might & Magic 2 Mobile has good gameplay but at times it feels slightly repetitive. There is a lot of button mashing for combat until you level-up and get some cool chain moves and specials. The game has all the standard RPG elements including varying levels and types of armor (armor, helmet, boots...) and weapons, potions and power buffs (time-limited attribute modifiers). Of course there is also a quest system in place that gives you money for doing specific tasks. In the starting village you're allowed to take on non-storyline quests but for some time after that you are limited by the story. When you are in Minasdril Palace, for example, there is little else to do but follow the story. As it's a mobile title you wouldn't want to spend 120 hours playing it like you would a PC title and so limiting what can be done makes sense from both a practical as well as a storage view.

 The controls are of course limited to what is available on mobile phones. I found myself using the thumbstick for directional movement mostly and then my other thumb was on the 5 which is attack. Some activities required a more fine control and so I would switch to keypad only because the small thumbstick is tricky at times. The gameplay is somewhat limited to: attack this, push/pull this, perform this move, etc but it's all very well implemented. Mobility is an issue as well since it's only cardinal directions but on phones without a thumbstick it would be a serious problem to do eight direction movement and still have enough buttons for other features. It would be nice to see Gameloft make multiple versions of the games to take into account different features though I'm not sure if this thumbstick is four or eight directional. Either way CigDangle blames it for him not being able to beat the first major boss of the game which I crushed in a matter of minutes. He never was a major RPG guy anyway. Though the RPG element is lacking in this title which I also blame on limited storage space.

Overall Might & Magic 2 is a very well done mobile RPG title. It offers not only a robust game experience but also a cohesive story to follow and pretty good gameplay. The graphics and sound really make this title and while nothing is perfect, this game is extremely well done and made me want to keep going back to it. As a matter of fact as soon as I am finished with this article I will be heading off to take back the Orb of Magic from the Morgost army, wish me luck!

  Update: I just found several mini-quest games in the Palace after the battle. One of them is a rhythm like game where you must hit the proper button to sing well, sound familiar? Another was basically whack-a-pumpkin where they popped up and you had to hit them with the sword. Nice additions to an already very good game.

*For your information I have been playing many of these games on a Sony Ericsson K800i which has a 240 x 320 pixel screen with 256K color, a thumbstick and, in my opinion, a very small keypad. But it is an accurate representation of gaming on a wide range of mobiles. 

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