The similarities between this latest installment and the previous seven are way too numerous to mention. Instead, I will focus on what’s new. If I don’t mention a certain aspect of the game, just assume that it is the same as it was in Might and Magic VII.

The graphics and sound are not mind-blowing by today’s standards, but definitely impressive. No complaints there. I particularly liked the mist that shows up around dawn; it added to the environment immensely considering I was on the shore at the time. And the number of characters that move around your screen at once is also worth noting, even when the screen is full of people there is virtually no slowdown of animation.

The story takes place in the land of Jadame. This is a land where Humans are not the only sentient species. In fact, they are not even the dominant species. In your travels, you will come across villages of Trolls, Minotaurs and Lizardmen, to name a few. This has the effect of making it difficult to distinguish between friend and foe — a good thing in my book, as it adds realism to the game. I walked out of a friendly Troll village and right up to a Cyclops and tried to strike up a conversation. He responded by bending down, picking up a good-sized rock and dropping it on my head.

The prologue to the story is this: One fine day a mysterious figure strolls into the Dark Elf Village of Ravenshore. He casually walks to the center of town, does some hocus-pocus and raises a crystal monolith in the town square. Which apparently has the unfortunate side effect of unleashing the four elemental planes that the Might and Magic storywriters are so fond of, and killing a lot of people from all those races I mentioned. You later learn that this cataclysm is the result of some out-of-whack cosmic forces, and can be fixed by uniting the races of Jadame to stop the impending disaster. Guess who gets that job?

The biggest difference in this game compared to its predecessors is found in the character department. You can only create one character from scratch, and are given the option of Knight, Cleric, Necromancer, Troll, Dark Elf, Vampire or Minotaur. This lack of control of your party is offset by the fact that when you do encounter individuals wishing to join you, you are able to dictate the distribution of their skill points. Plus, if you turn a character down, he journeys to the Adventurer’s Inn, where you can hire him at a later date. This is the case even if you dismiss a character; he can join up again later, no hard feelings. Oh, and while you can’t pick them initially, dragons can join your party later. Yup, that’s right. Big, winged, brontosaurus-on-steroid dragons. They can’t wear armor or use a sword, but they can still throw down.

Each species/class has its own special abilities, which increase as their skill levels go up. Dragons for example, can breather fire, create gale force winds and fly the entire party around. I highly recommend hiring a dragon.

My only gripe here is that you can’t rename the characters you hire. One of my favorite aspects of any RPG is being able to command a party using names of office coworkers or celebrities. I mean, come on, wouldn’t Marilyn Manson make a cool Necromancer?

So once you create your one character, the game begins. You have just arrived on Dagger Wound Island, at the village of Blood Drop, somehow having missed the cataclysm that occurred in the prologue because you were busy guarding a merchant’s caravan. Rather quickly you are swept up by the events, as is the case with any RPG, mainly because you feel the need to barge into stranger’s houses. There are numerous quests for your party to take on, but a few are mandatory.

Though this is not a new feature, I have to mention it: I absolutely love the fact that you can lead your enemies back to a village, and assuming you haven’t angered the villagers prior to this, they will come to your aid. The definite highlight of the game was leading a swarm of Nagas back to Quixote’s Dragon Hunters camp, and watching them hack each other apart. This works the other way too; the villagers of Blood Drop plead for your assistance to defend against the pirates who are raiding their village.

While the interaction of villagers with each other and enemy forces is terrific, I was very disappointed by their interaction with your party. They are still the same bunch of mindless clones who all say the same thing, and tend to get in your way more often then not. This is remedied slightly by the Yell command, but not enough. Inside buildings it’s even worse. The Necromancer’s Keep was especially problematic.

Even more annoying than obtuse peasants are the canned responses of the NPCs in your party. The game gives you a plethora of different voices and portraits for that one character you can create on your own. Even an Australian accent. Some of the effort gone into designing them would have been much better spent thinking of new things for the NPCs to say. The first time Simon Templar said "That was too easy" after we had just dispatched a Dire Wolf, I thought it was pretty cool. When he started to say it while there were seven more Dire Wolves chomping on our toes, I wanted to shout, "Stop talking and fight, you cocky fool!"

And while the game doesn’t slow down when the screen is filled with Ogres, there are still timing issues. The most blatant is when opening a chest. Usually the trap goes off, and two seconds later one of your characters will say, "Look out." Amusing the first time, but it got old fast.

Sure, it’s nice to have most of the spells be worn in and familiar to us veteran Might and Magic players, but some more variation there would have been appreciated as well. The way the real-time combat works, there is little difference between having an archer or a spell caster. Some more impressive and creative variations of magic would have spiced up the game immensely.

All in all, Might and Magic VIII: Day of the Destroyer is different enough to make it worth your money. It’s a very good RPG. I wasted hours playing it. But this is solely because all of the ones previous to it were good as well. Bottom line, it’s Might and Magic VII with a different plot.