It’s a unique action game, but if you’re looking for a great RPG, you’ll be disappointed.
The game starts up (immediately after the Ubisoft logo screen) with a dramatic reading of an ancient prophecy that sets the stage for the game’s story. I can’t tell you what it says, because I have never had the patience to sit through it all or read it, and that is because it is mind-numbingly boring. To be blunt, the game’s setting and characters are totally derivative, and the story is drek. It’s as if the story were written by a computer algorithm called “fantasy story generator”, and it spit out generic names like the city of “Stonehelm”, an artifact called “The Skull of Shadows”, and a main character called “Sareth”. The game has the usual cast of fantasy characters like humans, orcs, goblins, and undead, and they all fulfill their stereotypical roles in the game. Dark Messiah is not the only game in recent memory to fall back on traditional fantasy conventions. However, other games like Gothic, Arx Fatalis, Divine Divinity, and Baldurs Gate have still crafted unique worlds out of these ordinary building blocks. Dark Messiah fails in this regard. The Might and Magic universe, if this game is any indication, is wholly uninteresting.
The blandness of Dark Messiah’s story is a problem, because the game appears to be genuinely trying to provide a quality, story-driven experience. The amount of time telling the game’s story isn’t insignificant. There are a lot of story sequences and conversations that act a lot like cut scenes. Instead of enhancing the action by providing a sense of purpose though, they just get in the way of bloodying up your sword and kicking enemies in the gut.
Combat is undoubtedly the centerpiece of Dark Messiah. The game’s shallow role-playing system provides some simple variety in how you go about killing things, but not much else. You’ve got melee skills, archery skills, magic, and stealth. You can choose what skills to develop, but in general, melee combat is the bread and butter of the game. Another major part of the gameplay involves solving simple puzzles, and navigating challenges that are puzzles in disguise (like a scripted chase scene early in the game). The level design is fairly mundane and it generally falls back on ordinary conventions for first person shooters. It also has some jumping puzzles, a convention that seems to have died out years ago, but thankfully, none of them are hard.
The game is mostly won or lost with your sword and shield, and that’s a problem, because the swordplay is clunky and frustrating. Enemies seem to have an unfair advantage when they fight you, since their weapons can miss you by five feet and still register a hit. Your own melee weapons, on the other hand, have terrible accuracy, even at point blank range against a stunned opponent. Your sword doesn’t always land where your targeting reticule is, and if you miss your enemy by a centimeter, you won’t register a hit. It’s impossible to execute any kind of power strike or special move with any kind of consistency. I can’t tell you how many times I went up to a helpless enemy, pointed right at him, took a big slash with my sword and totally whiffed. Movement keys generally control what kind of power strike you will use. For example, holding down the attack key and the right movement key will cause your arm to make a powerful slash from right to left. Unfortunately, while you’re holding down the movement key, you also may move out of range from your enemy and miss. Meanwhile, he can hit you from five feet away because your shield is down and because of the lousy hit detection. Are you starting to see the problem here? This game really should have had an option for third person melee combat with some kind of smart targeting or lock-on feature. Dark Messiah is, at its heart, a melee combat game, and since the melee is not fun, it dooms the game.
Since it’s hard to dispatch any more than about one or two enemies with conventional weapons, you will have to rely on the other techniques that the game provides for you. To its credit, this area is where it really shines. The levels in the game provide you with boundless opportunities for using objects in the environments to set traps or kill bad guys with. No game has ever accomplished this feat to the same extent as Dark Messiah. It is because of this feature that the game is worth playing, even through its rough spots. Enemies tend to attack you in groups of four or more, so relying on the environment to defeat them is necessary for completing the game. You have a powerful kick that can blow enemies backwards into various hazards, such as spikes, water, or the edges of cliffs. It is far easier to dispatch with enemies by kicking them than it is to stab them to death. It is also immensely satisfying. Equally satisfying is the feeling that you get when you pick up a barrel and crack it over somebody’s head, another attack that is far more reliable and powerful than any of your regular weapons. Generally, anything that isn’t tied down can be picked up and thrown as a weapon. Last, but not least, there are all sorts of areas where slashing or kicking wooden supports will cause a structure to come crashing down, and along with it, a few barrels, a big statue, or a gigantic piece of a wall. Anyone unfortunate enough to be caught under the debris is mauled by it. Luring enemies under a bunch of barrels and then collapsing a structure on top of them is something that never gets old.
I followed this game since its announcement, and I was never really impressed by how it looked in the screenshots. When I started up the game though, I was mildly surprised by how attractive it is. The game has a wide variety of indoor and outdoor environments, all of which have gorgeous texture work and excellent lighting. Even up close, the textures look intricately detailed and realistic (albeit rather flat). The game makes great use of a full color palette and has some very nice art direction. The animation is very impressive in some areas, especially on the huge boss monsters like a vicious dragon and a gigantic Cyclops. The visuals are not perfect though. When you get up close to objects and enemies, you can see that they have pretty low polygon counts, and the game doesn’t make much use of DirectX9 besides pretty water. Graphics are not the major selling point for the game, but if you have a moderate to high end system, you should be pleased with what you see.
The audio for the game is also of decent quality, and generally does a good job of facilitating the game’s action. The voiceover cast is pretty good, given that they don’t have much great material to work with. The generic enemies in the game are well-voiced and provide some entertaining moments, although their sound bites do get rather repetitive. Weapon sounds are rather ordinary, and so is the generic fantasy soundtrack that kicks in during combat.
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic has some bright moments, and it has enough unique moments to separate it from just about any other game out there. However, the game is ultimately a disappointment, given Arkane’s previous work and the promise of using the Source engine. It’s a shallow RPG that is focused primarily on combat, and since the bread-and-butter of combat isn’t very good, the game is merely above average. Given the shortage of great single player RPG’s on the market, the decision to make this game a first person swordfighter is a disappointment. The painfully generic fantasy setting and mundane level design don’t add much to a game whose core gameplay is moderately fun but flawed. Should you play Dark Messiah of Might and Magic? If you’re looking for a great RPG (or even a good one), then you should probably pass. If you want to try a unique first person action game and you can find it in the bargain bin, it might be worth a try.