The game compromises on the magnificent dungeons of the previous game by making its own less prevalent and less sprawling. With less breadth of content comes more depth, however. Everything you do here is meatier, denser and more fine-tuned. There is more monster variety, more mechanical complexity, more diverse rewards for exploration and more ways to customise your party.

You begin the game as in M&M6, creating your blob of four adventurers, but with an expanded catalogue of classes, races and skills. Then comes a rare treat in an RPG: a genuinely interesting tutorial area that ties naturally into the rest of the game.

Rather than shove you down a content-tube, Emerald Island is a micro-cosmos of the actual game, with its own dangerous swamp, a small township, quests, dungeons, a choice that will affect you much later in the game and even a menacing dragon!

The game also features perhaps the best minigame in RPG history. Before Witcher 3's Gwent there was Arcomage, a decidedly deeper and more balanced trading card game that is still played in online, multiplayer lobbies today.

M&M7 even makes room for a bit of roleplaying, among other things presenting you with a game-changing fork halfway through: join the angelic forces of Celeste or cast in your lot with the brutal fiends of The Pit. Depending on your choice, your characters earn different promotions and abilities, and the main quest line changes completely. Even the game's UI alters to reflect your decision.

In short, Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor might be the point where cracks start to show in the series, but it is also the series at its peak, developed using every lesson learned over the 10 years since it began.