Tips for doing the whole series in one go

[Lira]

I'm currently (re)playing the whole series. I only ever extensively played the first one and finished the second one. I once started the third one but only played a few minutes for some reason.

I have now started over with the first one and intend to complete the whole series "perfect" - with all quests, all secret rooms, etc.

I remember that promotions can be done again in every part.
What about the orbs and the trainings? Does anything of them carry over? Or is it better to save up the orbs and simply take them with me to the last game?

Any important warnings for the later parts? I mean places where I can get to only once and where I have to make sure to get everything (all items, all secret rooms). (Spoilers welcome)

[loof123]

Okay this is a tough question, and it's gonna be hard listing this off the top of my head, but here we go.

First of all, trainings do NOT carry over, and neither do the orbs, so use them at the end of the game in the latest. By the end of the game, I mean:

MM1 - Heading into the cave next to the Sapphire Cave
MM2 - Talking with Merline in Green Grass
MM3 - Heading into Turquoise Cave
MM4 - Heading to Mystrock
MM5 - Heading to Mystrock


Okay, MM1-3 are generally more forgiving on the quest/secret room aspects, even though they still have some secret rooms that are inaccessible after you leave, such as the ones in the Pit/Mystrock/Toad Island in MM2 or the Entrails/Orcish Fortress ones in MM3 (If you blow it up.)

MM4 and 5 are way less forgiving. MM4 has so many chained quests that if you basically miss one, you have no other way of progressing with the other quests. Did you know that if you go through a particular dungeon after you have completed it once, instead of walking back on foot again, you will not be able to complete a quest because once you leave that dungeon on the way back, you can't enter it again.

MM5 is all about dungeons like that though. You visit every place once. It is like, there is one town, which will basically serve as your HQ, but MM5 involves split parties a lot, and stuff in that town will change like after every party change, so you gotta look around the town all the time, which can be annoying.



If you have more questions, don't be afraid to ask. We would love to hear your thoughts as you play along!

[Lira]

Okay, MM1-3 are generally more forgiving on the quest/secret room aspects, even though they still have some secret rooms that are inaccessible after you leave, such as the ones in the Pit/Mystrock/Toad Island in MM2 or the Entrails/Orcish Fortress ones in MM3 (If you blow it up.)

MM4 and 5 are way less forgiving. MM4 has so many chained quests that if you basically miss one, you have no other way of progressing with the other quests. Did you know that if you go through a particular dungeon after you have completed it once, instead of walking back on foot again, you will not be able to complete a quest because once you leave that dungeon on the way back, you can't enter it again.

MM5 is all about dungeons like that though. You visit every place once. It is like, there is one town, which will basically serve as your HQ, but MM5 involves split parties a lot, and stuff in that town will change like after every party change, so you gotta look around the town all the time, which can be annoying.

Urgh! Those are not really the good news that I had hoped for. Thanks for the answer anyway.
Anyway I refinished MM1 with all quests and all rooms. I only managed to get the ant king because I remembered that I had done him before. But I even found a weapon I had never found before, so I'm quite happy with myself.

Party splitting and lots of places I can't get back to, that's stuff that I hate.
But I'm usually playing with walkthroughs close to hand anyway, so I should do allright, I guess. - as between work and some other demands on my time I simply don't want to invest the time (and frustration) it takes me if I need to figure out most things by myself and having to go back and redo things all the time. Maybe I'm also a bit lazy - but I play games to have fun, not frustration.

[loof123]

Okay, MM1-3 are generally more forgiving on the quest/secret room aspects, even though they still have some secret rooms that are inaccessible after you leave, such as the ones in the Pit/Mystrock/Toad Island in MM2 or the Entrails/Orcish Fortress ones in MM3 (If you blow it up.)

MM4 and 5 are way less forgiving. MM4 has so many chained quests that if you basically miss one, you have no other way of progressing with the other quests. Did you know that if you go through a particular dungeon after you have completed it once, instead of walking back on foot again, you will not be able to complete a quest because once you leave that dungeon on the way back, you can't enter it again.

MM5 is all about dungeons like that though. You visit every place once. It is like, there is one town, which will basically serve as your HQ, but MM5 involves split parties a lot, and stuff in that town will change like after every party change, so you gotta look around the town all the time, which can be annoying.

Urgh! Those are not really the good news that I had hoped for. Thanks for the answer anyway.
Anyway I refinished MM1 with all quests and all rooms. I only managed to get the ant king because I remembered that I had done him before. But I even found a weapon I had never found before, so I'm quite happy with myself.

Party splitting and lots of places I can't get back to, that's stuff that I hate.
But I'm usually playing with walkthroughs close to hand anyway, so I should do allright, I guess. - as between work and some other demands on my time I simply don't want to invest the time (and frustration) it takes me if I need to figure out most things by myself and having to go back and redo things all the time. Maybe I'm also a bit lazy - but I play games to have fun, not frustration.

Well, I kinda don't like lots of places I can't get back to either, but the party splitting is kinda one of the main reasons MM5 is my fav game of the series. Plus, I gather you are a perfectionist, so it might not help you much, but the first time I played both MM4, and MM5 I didn't care about the secret rooms or the side quests. The second time I played those was the time I did the quests.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask, there are several items the walkthrough may have missed. Or it may not be clear enough.

And I wanna ask you, what did you promote Marine as?

[Lira]

Well, I'm nearly through with the second one now: basically there's just Gigantine and the griffin left now. The animal kings are history (though the best I could with the trickster king was to have Marine and Abu left standing. He kept killing off Benoit and Jezabel faster than I could resurrect them, so in the end I stopped bothering.) I played all day long yesterday (pretty much in one go till the end of spider territory) and this morning doing a lot of the side quests such as the animal kings.

My promotion for Marine is Shiva, always Shiva. I love her second attack.

I'm indeed kind of a perfectionist. If I play the game, I want to play it in full. (Though I will not go back and redo the whole game if there is just one item or one quest I missed.)
When I first played MM1, I ended up starting over like three times to have a complete game with all secret rooms and everything. It took me like three weeks every afternoon/evening after work. (I was perusing walkthroughs and the forum here and on bigfishgames like crazy, trying to find everything - in particular in the later stages of the game where the walkthrough which started out very detailled became rushed-through only touching on the main points)
It would of course be easier to play the game through once without any pressure and then go back and do it perfectly the second time. If it was just one game, I might do that. I've done it before, playing and replaying a game till I had it perfect. But investing this amount of time into a series of games, meaning I need nearly twice the amount of time per game, I'm hesitant to commit that amount of time.

With MM2 it was easy to get through fast - even though my memory of this game was more than hazy: the walkthrough on bigfishgames for this one is so very detailled till the end. So I play with the walkthrough close by hand, every so often checking if I found everything important. And I have noted down the approximate location of the secret rooms so I can cross them off when I've found them and if I missed one, go back for it without having to do a lot of backtracking.
I only messed up twice: I might not have collected all items on Toad Island (though I got the secret room) and I didn't unequip Karine fully. This one annoys me quite a bit. It's okay for the chars to leave to train (making space for other chars) but I really didn't like having Karine leaving right after the fight: I didn't want to unequip her fully before the fight, and while I switched out some of her items to minor stuff, I forgot to take off armour she crarfted the rogue skin. I really hope I get this back when she returns in later games. (But as I realized this only a couple of hours later, I was loathe to basically restart the game.)
I hope that there are walkthroughs that are half as good as that one for the other three.


Even though I had played MM2 before, I had only vague memories of her finding her mother dead in the swamp and the discouraging ending.
Now that I'm playing the two back to back, there are similarities and differencies which I noted:
both the swamp and the ancient temple area are strongly reminiscent of the areas in MM1 (though fortunately smaller and shorter. I absolutely hate the temple in MM1)
I rechecked several times if I really was playing on Hard, as the monsters seemed relatively easy to me - even though I did no pre-training of my chars. Usually when playing in a harder mode, I train and retrain my chars to be just a bit higher than the norm for an area. I didn't need to do this at all. With some exceptions of course most of the fights were easy to me.
There are a lot of exp baskets around. Sometimes it felt if I was collecting more baskets than slaying Mobs.
Concerning items I found it strange to refind very many of the same things as in 1. As I imported my chars, I now own a lot of stuff twice. This feels weird to me.

Another question that may be silly: what exactly does Marine's Gut do?

[loof123]

Awww you are about to finish my 2nd fav MM game onto my least fav MM game which is MM3. I loved MM2 because of the dungeons really. Excluding gigantine's lair, all of them had a magical aura that made me feel enchanted. Especially Eternal Autumn and Crystal Crown. I didn't get that amazing feeling until MM5 with dungeons. Especially MM3, which was less magical and more... Building-y?

Make sure to get Gravitron in your party for Gigantine. It is basically impossible otherwise.

I guess I am like the only person to promote Marine to Wild Goose. I love the faster Marine, plus the Counter-Hit.

And I get that you wanting to restart MM all over again especially after missing something, it annoys me as well. But that is what these forums are for! Peruse the forums thoroughly, especially in MM4 and MM5. But seriously, you are bound to miss something. And that is what makes replaying in the future so fun. I love discovering new stuff I didn't know about before.

Yes, MM2 was faster IMO also because, one, there is no Rocky Path to go back and forth and back and forth etc. Seriously. Hate it.

Two, the story got a bit maturer. I mean, you start to learn about Mystrock guys, Marine's mom, the stuff she has to go through. Plus that scene at the end. Sorry but I love the MM2 ending, despite the Jeanne stuff. Remains to date one of my fav scenes. It gives me goosebumps whenever I read it. That moment Flying soundtrack kicks in...

About the stuff you missed, if you got the secret room, don't sweat it much. There was smth in a boat and in some slowers but that was it IIRC. As for Karine though, I don't remember, but after MM3, you won't need the Titan Great Corset anymore. Just a tip

As for swamps and ancient temples... I am afraid I have bad news. The only game that doesn't have an ancient temple is MM4. And every game has some sort of a swamp. Each one has their twists, but still swamps. I love the ancient temples though. Especially MM1 and MM5 ones. :p

The monsters are hard compared to easy mode, but if you compare MM's hard mode to Aldorlea's other games, this Hard isn't hard at all. Bosses can be challenging yes and some regular enemies in like MM4-5, but yeah, kinda easy.

I love the collecting aspect of MM. Especially baskets with the Karenina ring and gold bags with Baron's Monocle. Please tell me you have Baron's Monocle.

About the items, you have to remember that not all players are importers. Yes some stuff are foumd twice, but this is a game series after all, shouldn't be that weird. But there are many unique MM1 items, and many MM2 items.

And okay, first I would like to congratulate you on never having Marine die. When Marine dies, she revives next round with some HP depending on your items/promotions. She does this only once per fight though.

I love conversing with you like this, keep me updated. Have fun.

[Indinera]

Sorry but I love the MM2 ending, despite the Jeanne stuff. Remains to date one of my fav scenes. It gives me goosebumps whenever I read it. That moment Flying soundtrack kicks in...

I'm glad you do. ^^
I do, too.

I prefer the ending of MM3 though, and Flying kicks in as well.

Spoiler: show

And when Bokden shows up in MM4.
And when the Bear finally accepts etc

Flying = the best moments

[loof123]

Indeed, though none of them can eclipse the MM2 ending for me.

Spoiler: show

That whole breakdown of Marine and her saying she has only five warriors and Benoit says "Six. You have six. " and that split second where you don't realize what he means. And then you realize what he means. Plus flying. One of the main reasons Benoit is one of my fav characters.

[Indinera]

Yes and crucial to the story because

Spoiler: show

in the canon story (not game) he loses his 1st two fights but then defeats 9 in a row before losing the last one cuz of stress.

[loof123]

Spoiler: show

In the canon? Interesting? How do the others perform in your canon Indy? :p

And he loses the last one to Dragon? :p

[Lira]

Awww you are about to finish my 2nd fav MM game onto my least fav MM game which is MM3. I loved MM2 because of the dungeons really. Excluding gigantine's lair, all of them had a magical aura that made me feel enchanted. Especially Eternal Autumn and Crystal Crown. I didn't get that amazing feeling until MM5 with dungeons. Especially MM3, which was less magical and more... Building-y?

Those are indeed nice areas. They are nicely lit.
I absolutely abhor dark areas - which is why I dislike the swamps and even more so the ancient temple which is even worse combined with those atrocious neon lights. I hate not being able to see the surroundings well.

Make sure to get Gravitron in your party for Gigantine. It is basically impossible otherwise.

That didn't even occur to me. I usually run around with one party of 4 and rarely switch. I prefer games where I don't have hard choices about this and only 4 chars for the whole (or at least most of the) game. Also as he doesn't gain any exp, I don't use Gravitron at all. (Though as Jezabel died the Moment she saw a king, might as well have used Gravitron instead, seeing as she got no exp anyway.)
I didn't find her that hard. The monkey king - and the ant king in MM1! - were much worse. I think that she was quite vulnerable to stun. The fight was no cakewalk but far from impossible.

I guess I am like the only person to promote Marine to Wild Goose. I love the faster Marine, plus the Counter-Hit.

You get Counter-Hit from Strategy also, and there you can turn it off before meeting a boss who has Counter-hit also.

And I get that you wanting to restart MM all over again especially after missing something, it annoys me as well. But that is what these forums are for! Peruse the forums thoroughly, especially in MM4 and MM5. But seriously, you are bound to miss something. And that is what makes replaying in the future so fun. I love discovering new stuff I didn't know about before.

I intend to. Hopefully I can also find a good walkthrough. The MM2 on bigfishgames was outstandingly detailled.
I want to have the games as perfect as possible - but there are so many things I want to do also that I don't want to invest the time to replay it over and over. I have dozens of games (mostly courtesy of 2 for the price of 1 or similar from bigfishgames) which I didn't even get started on or played just partially: either I didn't like them much or was short on time or thanks to bad luck with my computer I lost the save game and didn't feel like starting over at that time.

Yes, MM2 was faster IMO also because, one, there is no Rocky Path to go back and forth and back and forth etc. Seriously. Hate it.

Yes, this helps a lot. Having to go through somewhere only once is very helpful.

As for Karine though, I don't remember, but after MM3, you won't need the Titan Great Corset anymore. Just a tip

I found it in my inventory when I imported to 3.

As for swamps and ancient temples... I am afraid I have bad news. The only game that doesn't have an ancient temple is MM4. And every game has some sort of a swamp. Each one has their twists, but still swamps. I love the ancient temples though. Especially MM1 and MM5 ones. :p

Well, here's to hope that they won't be as bad on my eyes... *sigh*

The monsters are hard compared to easy mode, but if you compare MM's hard mode to Aldorlea's other games, this Hard isn't hard at all. Bosses can be challenging yes and some regular enemies in like MM4-5, but yeah, kinda easy.

I recently played 2 of Eridani's games, both of them on Easy. They were plenty hard enough for me. I wouldn't even want to think of Normal in Witch and Warrior. Though the first real mobs I ran into in 3, the Poltergeist lions, gave me quite a shock at first after the cakewalk in 2.

I love the collecting aspect of MM. Especially baskets with the Karenina ring and gold bags with Baron's Monocle. Please tell me you have Baron's Monocle.

Nope. Didn't even know of this item. Checked the Forum for it now. Must be one of the few things the guy who wrote the walkthrough on bigfish had missed.
As going back would mean replaying all of 2, I'll do without. Between having stocked up on healing items in 1 and selling 38 diamond nuggets in 3, I'm all set for money anyway. I have like 50k. I'll just have to find it in 4. (I might have gone back otherwise. I'm not so far yet in 3 as to mind restarting that one.)

About the items, you have to remember that not all players are importers. Yes some stuff are foumd twice, but this is a game series after all, shouldn't be that weird. But there are many unique MM1 items, and many MM2 items.

Yes, of Course. Still having so many "unique" items two or three times is strange. I would have limited it to the "must-haves": magical key, air sandals, seal of the brave and the like, not every second item.

And okay, first I would like to congratulate you on never having Marine die. When Marine dies, she revives next round with some HP depending on your items/promotions. She does this only once per fight though.

What gave you that idea? Of course I had both her and the whole party dead at times (usually when trying a boss too early. But then I've learned to always save before Experiments.) I like this in 3 that the Party gets resurrected with just some loss of gold. Found that out by stumbling into the Uzza queen...
Edit: figured it out. I didn't know it was Guts that resurrected my char, I always thought it was the Promotion! I can't remember if I had her die in between getting Benoit into her Party and the Promotion (though I'm sure I died dozens of times against the Rogue the first time I played.) Anyway I never figured out why she alone got resurrected once when there was one other member still Standing.

I love conversing with you like this, keep me updated. Have fun.

Thanks, it's fun having someone to share my Progress and my thoughts with.
Anyway just got started on 3. only made it as far as the Hungry Caves so far.

*waves to Indy*

[Indinera]

*waves back*

[Lira]

One more question: now that I've progressed to 3, I seem to be acquiring more and more (temporary?) party members.
I prefer playing my games with just one party of four chars. (For instance 3 Stars of Destiny I played basically with just my 3 Stars + Spark, only training the other chars for a bit before the 3-way-split)
Which means for now pretty much Marine, Abu and Benoit - and now I can't quite decide between Salome and Karine...
Do I need to train all extra-chars? For instance I would hate leaving Merline on Level 1 and then suddenly stumble upon a place where I have a split party and I suddenly need to have her as an active char...
(While I have the walkthrough on hand and have written a list of secret rooms to cross off once I've found them, I don't want to spoil the whole game for me by reading the whole thing through beginning to end. I just refer to it every so often, so I don't miss anything or can go back easily without having to redo large parts.)

[loof123]

Sorry for not responding for a long time :p Anyways, well, it would be wise to train your 13 warriors for the showdown. And in MM5, you will have to use every char as an active member during the 5-way party split. But don't worry about giving them an extra training much, the non warriors. The warriors will carry you throughout.

[Lira]

Sorry for not responding for a long time :p Anyways, well, it would be wise to train your 13 warriors for the showdown. And in MM5, you will have to use every char as an active member during the 5-way party split. But don't worry about giving them an extra training much, the non warriors. The warriors will carry you throughout.

Well, having to train my warriors for the Showdown, that's pretty much what I expected for 5.

I have now finished 3 and while there were things that I liked about it, such as having the chars being resurrected in some parts with just losing some Gold - instead of having to go back to the last save - and the guiding arrows, it's weaker than the first two.
The story line for the main plot is very short, apart from the library quests and the animal kings there are not a great many sidequests. The library quests are mostly annoying because you have to do A before C and then B so you can then finally finish Z. Most of the maps are mazes - I really would have hated wandering around the swamp and the desert without those arrows pointing the way the first time I explored.

And while some of the secret rooms in the first two games were tricky (such as the ones the boatmen takes you to and having to find a second secret room within the first one), most of them were possible to find - as either the cursor changed or there were sparkles - something. In 3 a lot of the time I would never ever have found some of them without knowing exactly where they were from the walkthrough - and even then it took a lot of clicking here and there and trying to move Marine both with mouse and Keyboard till I finally hit the right spot.

And I absolutely hated suddenly having a fixed Party (and not the one I was training with obviously) for the final showdown (which came a lot earlier than I expected). I had used Marine, Abu, Karine and mermaid-Salome for the most part, I only had Jack for a short while before I found Hirado (and then he either died or was blown away), so he was all of Level 28 and unpromoted when I first stumbled upon the Dragon... I also had no idea that I could equip Gravitron (as I never use him), so my Party wasn't doing much but tickling the Dragon! I fought him for several minutes before my chars finally succumbed. This nearly made me quit then and there! Finally I went back to a save just before using the Cup and started doing all sidequests + Training Jack and Salome. When I went to face the Dragon again, it was altogether anticlimactic. Suddenly it was an easy fight...

Anyway I've now started number 4. I'll see how I like this one. Off to train my (soon-to-be) 13.