![wink ;)](/forums/images/smilies/wink.gif)
I'm a little disappointed in the classes and the general design. I remember it to be a lot more varied than it actually is. I guess 10 years will do that (either in knowledge gained, or more games to compare it with, or just the game showing it's age).
For example, I remember taking a Troll in MM8, just because you get the recruit a Knight right away... and you can get a Dark Elf very early and Blazen Stormlance around level 30-35ish.
But the troll is a very bad class when compared to the Knight... that you might as well just take a Knight. I don't think I realized just how powerful GM Armsmaster was compared to only Master.
Because the Troll can't use a shield, and there aren't any 2-handed maces for the Troll to use that I can tell, the Knight is going to have 50-75% more armor class automatically, just because sword and spear give a lot of AC, and because you can use a shield too if you want. I'm even using an item that subtracts 20 or 40 from my AC, and he STILL has more than the Troll. The Knight is also going to do 50% more damage too.
The only things the troll has going for it are the GM Mace and the Body Building... but by the time you get the Troll Promotion, you already have Blazen Stormlance with 700 HP. Yes, the Troll will have about 800 at a lower level, but does it really matter? And more importantly, does this HP even make up for the loss of Armor class? Regeneration doesn't seem to be worth it either. I can almost never see it working.
So the only real benefit the Troll has is the ability to Stun/Paralyze targets. That's a nice perk, but does it really add up to all of the benefits the Knight gets? Nah.
The problem with 7 & 8 is that all of the mixed classes are too weak to bother using. If it's not a Knight/Cleric/Sorceror, it's not worth using. So with all the class options available, the game is actually really narrow. If the game didn't impose someone on your team to disarm traps, it would even be more narrow still.
Having said all of this, I can't think of many games today that do the first-person party-based RPG better M&M did. The last one to do it well was Wizardry 8, or the Etrian Odyssey games (which are a mix between M&M and Final Fantasy).