Might and Magic/YMMV

• Broken Base: The "back to basics" approach of Might and Magic X: Legacy (adapting the old-style system of play with a modern feel) has a few fans - mainly younger ones - up in arms. Many of them would like to see the free movement system of the later games like VI through VIII and the turn-based system done away with.
• Demonic Spiders: Shows up in nearly every game. There are enemies that age your characters (nigh-impossible to reverse), enemies that drain your MP to empty in one hit, and enemies that flat kill you (or worse) in one shot.
  • Instant death effects should not be a problem once you level your healer, in VII and VIII at least, to cast master Protection from Magic. Just keep an eye on the spell icon in case it ends prematurely. Mana drain effects, however, can very swiftly neutralize your ability to heal your party, turning moderately threatening enemies into this.
• Good Bad Bugs: In VII, the range of melee attack for the players is slightly longer than the reach of monsters. The strongest versions of monsters are often the biggest ones - especially the gargantuan Minotaur Lords. The easiest way to deal with Minotaur Lords in Thunderfist Mountain and The Maze is to lure them to chokepoints where they can't reach you and whittle them down in complete safety. This also works on behemoths in The Pit and the tunnels to Eofol.
• Narm: The Evil Laugh of Lord Xeen, the Big Bad of Clouds of Xeen in the game's intro is simply hilarious to listen to.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Might and Magic VIII:
    • Several quests require you to take a specific character into your party to complete them, which is especially annoying considering that the characters are usually underleveled by the time they can join you.
    • The merchants will call you a cheapskate if you have over 10K gold and leave their shops without making any transaction.
    • The boat to Dagger Wound Island offers traveling there on only two days of the week, being completely useless the other five days. This is especially frustrating considering that the boat from Dagger Wound Island to Ravenshore is available all week.
• That One Sidequest: The Ninja promotion quest in Might and Magic VII. Your goal is to find the "Tomb of the Masters", and you're given a scroll with a cipher (whose keyword is on another scroll located in the School of Sorcery in Bracada). Then you need to use letter substitution to decode the cipher (which, by the way, you can't do in the game itself), only to learn that while it tells you how to get into the Tomb of the Masters, it says nothing about where that tomb actually is (you can get a vague clue about its location from a "Journal Excerpt" in your castle dungeon, which does nothing to relieve the frustration). Then, when you finally find the tomb and open it, you learn that you must not only enter the Tomb, but also loot a certain item from one of its sarcophagi (which you weren't told about when you got the quest). Guide Dang It! indeed.
• Tier-Induced Scrappy: In Might and Magic VII, Clerics are the only class that can cast grandmaster protection from magic, which is the only defense against monsters which can automatically kill or eradicate players by hitting them. This makes the Cleric more or less essential, and an annoyance to players who like playing different classes for variety and would like to do 4 different class playthroughs rather than 3 different classes + cleric playthroughs.
• Unwinnable by Insanity:
  • In Might and Magic IV, people running around with no space in their inventory can lose the Xeen Slayer, and therefore the only means to harm the Big Bad. It is actually possible to get another copy of the weapon with a cheat code – then again, you might be playing a translated version where the code was changed into something undocumented.
  • It is possible in Might and Magic VII to make the game unwinnable during the Warrior-Mage promotion quest. The quest is to replace a pulley belt on the elevator mechanism in an abandoned mine with a weak belt that's meant to break after an hour, rendering the elevator useless (and you unable to leave the mine if you're still on the lower level at that time). You can still get out of the mine by having the party wiped out by the many medusas and oozes in the lower level... unless you've defeated them all, and aren't lucky enough to have a teleport spell on your person.
    • Actually, it's really not that simple. In that game, the two teleport spells - Town Portal and Lloyd's Beacon - have some conditions. Town Portal can't be cast with hostile monsters in the area, unless the caster is a Grandmaster of Water (and likely isn't at that point) so if that is to be an option, defeating all the monsters is likely required (and in this dungeon, they're tough). Lloyd's Beacon can't be cast at all unless you're a Grandmaster. Basically, unless you do wipe out all the monsters, making a run for it (maybe with Haste) is the best idea, after saving the game first.
    • It is still possible to kill your party by resting without food for too long.