Combat can be played in real-time or paused and played out in a turn-based format.
You see the world through the eyes of your party (though your party is treated as one entity with one set of eyes) and through this window you interact with NPCs, cast spells, and enter into combat with monsters and other enemies. What I can say is that it's a surprisingly robust open-world RPG for its time, with a treasure trove of hilarious experiences scattered throughout its world. Mandate of Heaven remains to this day the only Might & Magic game I have played, so I can't offer any comparisons to its prequels or sequels. Or it may have been that fateful moment where, due to a simple misclick, I accidentally mixed one potion with another in my inventory and caused a chemical explosion that instantly killed my entire party. It may have been when I went on a murder-hobo rampage through the starting town of New Sorpigal, killing every peasant, every guard, every trader and then heading to the temple and donating gold until my reputation had improved from 'Notorious' back to 'Respectable'.
It's very difficult to pick a favourite moment out of the unsightly behemoth that was Might & Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time. Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives.
