For the most part, the graphics in Warriors of Might and Magic are actually quite nice. The various areas that you go to are quite well-detailed, and the game has a pretty impressive viewable distance.

However, that's pretty much as good as it gets, graphically. The character animation is almost humourously jerky, with way too few frames of animation used while you play the game. The camera manages to get into some of the worst possible locations, making hitting enemies a complete crapshoot. And there are often visible seams between textures, where they are complely misaligned, letting you see through into the Great Beyond. Uh . . . ? Isn't this the sort of thing that playtesting is supposed to catch? And the framerate plummets frighteningly frequently.

The sound is strictly standard, with your normal grunts, groans, clangs, and screams that accompany any game of this genre. I wish that there were better things to be said about the sounds, but they're strictly mediocre fare. The music is almost nonexistent, playing quietly in the background and usually overpowered by the various environmental sounds that loop throughout the maps. You have to listen pretty hard to hear the tunes, and even then, they're more ambient than anything else. That's actually a Good Thing -- it's better than overpowering music.

It's something of a shame, therefore, to find that Warriors of Might and Magic plays like a barely-improved version of Crusaders of Might and Magic, 3DO's other entry into the genre. While the environments in Warriors are much more intricate, the gameplay is the same difficult-to-control hack and slash, and it's simply not enough to keep the game interesting throughout.

You play as Alleron, a man cursed to wear a Mask and thrown into the dungeons to die. Of course, Alleron doesn't handle dying terribly easily, so the first part of the game consists of his escape. It gets more interesting from there, but only marginally so.

The core gameplay is what you expect from any 3D action RPG. The camera floats behind Alleron for the most part, and you run around whacking enemies into oblivion and throwing the occasional spell -- it is Might and Magic, after all. There are quite a few levels to go through, and they all have some pretty simple puzzles for you to solve -- it never gets much more difficult than switch-flipping and key-finding.

Of course, if the battle engine were entertaining, all of this would be forgiven. But, alas, fighting in Warriors of Might and Magic is what you come to dread the most. While it's easy enough to lob spells at your opponents, hitting them with your weapons quickly becomes a crapshoot, and as the levels get more and more claustrophobic, the camera starts to work against you while you fight. Pretty soon you'll learn the tactic of staying out of the detection range of the enemies while you throw fireballs or what have you at them, waiting for your mana to refill so you can cast it again and again on all of the enemies. When you actually have to get into fights with more than one opponent, you can be sure that running and picking them off from a distance is often a key strategy.

There are some cool ideas here -- the various enemies are all elementally-aligned, and setting yourself up with the proper elemental combinations will keep the damage they do to you down and the damage you do to them up. The various spells are all aligned as well, so careful balance of all of this is necessary for beating many of the enemies. There's also quite a variety of weapons in the game, each with different speeds and many with different abilities.

But all of the cool features of the world don't save a game that's just not fun to play.

Warriors of Might and Magic lets you pick your difficulty levels, and unless you like being frustrated, you may want to pick the easiest level. The enemies don't have to fight with the poor controls of the game, and will often wail on you with ease as you try to line up your attacks. The game likes to throw lots of enemies at you at once to make up for the fact that the AI isn't the sharpest, and it makes the game all the more frustrating. Hitting enemies that are low to the ground is another exercise in irritation. Prepare to make frequent use of the save and load features of the game.

Controlling Alleron is simple enough, but the camera makes it more difficult than it should. And attacking is often a completely frustrating experience, with it being way more challenging than necessary to target the enemies properly. There's an auto-target feature, but it locks you onto a single opponent and makes multi-enemy battles even more frustrating. Judicious use of long range spells can be helpful, but then you have to wait for your mana to recharge after each throw of magic. And precision jumping is nearly impossible. I did like the way that the game paused while you scrolled through the in-game menus. There are load times, but they're not too often and not terribly long.

There is a bug in the game, however, that can get you stuck in one of the levels. If you encounter a door that you have the key for and still can't open, restart the level and be careful to avoid the door entirely as you play. I didn't personally encounter this, but the message boards around are rife with complaints about this. So consider yourself forewarned.

Warriors of Might and Magic is better than its predecessor, but that's not saying all that much. The improved graphics and somewhat improved mechanics don't make up for the frustrating combat engine and reliance on cheap ways of using spells. Combined with the difficult controls and the graphical issues, Warriors of Might and Magic is really only for the hardcore fans who want every Might and Magic title released, or those who need every action/adventure game. Even they should make sure to rent the game first. Chances are good that it'll be more frustrating than enjoyable.