Buggy and a little ugly at times, but certainly worth more than 3.5 score.
I was aware of the terrible scores the game got, decided to get it on xbox 360 anyway since it was very cheap.
Graphically the game uses 'source' engine and I think it generally looks ok, envrionments tend to look good, the scenery is quite varied chapter to chapter, individual character models are decent enough - but animations look stiff and the main character- what little you see of him anyway (usually his feet ) looks pretty poor it must be said, a note though, the special adrenaline kills do look very brutal.
My main problem with the graphics however, is that everything seems really quite dull , even messing around with the contrast/brightness settings wouldnt fix things up everything seemed to have a washed out look making some out door areas seem far to bright or have a white sheen to them.
Sound wise, a definite mixed bag, all the characters are voiced well, except for one big exception, your main character, good grief does he sound boring and lacking in enthusiasm throughout, that specific main character is voiced worse than the original cast for resident evil 1.
The other cast of characters I thought were voiced extremely well, with Xana and Leanne being the most obvious examples.
As for the music its ok , nothing in it was memorable but then again neither was anything terrible to point out, its just distinctly..average.
Now onto gameplay, theres a few different character classes to pick from which will, well pretty much effect how you'll dispatch the enemies you encounter in the game and lttle else, but this does allow a good excuse to talk about, the actual combat, its the bulk of the game no getting around that, and I think the game gets it right, it can be quite fun to cut down an enemy before moving onto the next, and you will encounter a few different enemy types - swords men, weird small flying things, stronger warriors, orc warriors, archers , undead zombies,annoying spiders, goblins, necromancers and dragon like wyrms and Ogres.
Later on you even get to turn into a demon form which is pretty nifty you can cut down most enemies quickly but at a cost to your health in the form of a gradual draining of it.
Most of the fights are against humanoid opponents and can require some skill to kill, if you just start waving a sword around like a feather duster (ho ho ho) you'll quickly run out of stamina and your attacks wil lbe weaker and slower until the stamina bar recovers, you can hold dwon the attack button to charge up for a power attack , and can even do a special move if you press the corresponding buttons and have reached a certain level to use it (eg power attack and jump will perform a viscious overhead attack), you can also mix in shields and try aprrying attacks to quickly counter when they fail to hit you and stagger slightly, oh and if you're an archer you'll want to hang back and shoot enemies, thief stealthly taken someone out with daggers and a mage, well you can just light people up with spells.
Now thats the standard fair with combat in the game, but often in the game you can be rewarded for utilising the envrionment to your advantage usually by kicking people into spikes,into fires and off ledges, smashing out support beams so barrels and boxes fall on enemies, throwing items at enemies to stagger them or activating a trap and maybe making a chain with a concrete slab smash into the path of enemies, it is very stafisying to kill enemies in those ways - especially just kicking them of ledges.
Eventually after gaining experience from story progression and killing enemies you'll level up (or akwardly as the game puts it "win a level") resulting in more stamina health and every now and again a new skill or attack power.
During the game you'll eventually get the rope arrow to use, shooting at wooden ledges to drop a rope and climb around to solve puzzles and progress further in the game, it serves to mix things up stop things becoming to monotomous during the game as you can explore a level try find more secrets.
Theres also a few set pieces were you can choose to fight (or run away if your handy with the rope arrow) ogres which can be quite tough depending on your character class, or fighting the Wyrm/dragon like creatures, these can be quite fun encounters, perhaps not as memorable as in other games however as typical with the game, if it gets one thing right it also screws them up at some point, theres one piss poor set piece in the game when you are required to defend a boat, the music starts up im there thinking 'ok big fight coming up gonna be intense' a minute passes...no ones there oh wait a enemy has appeared its an archer and firing arrows well shouldnt go out and kill him because ive been told to guard the boarding plank...then i notice a single lone fighter running up to me, dispatch him, and another one spawns right next to the archer at the far end and approaches...it continues like that for a good 10 minutes, absolutely ridiculously boring and lame.
Now while the combat is fun throughout the game, I felt some levels were just too long and the repetitive nature of the enemies (really only a handful of types per level) could make things just seem a little too boring after extended playtimes and factor in the 'sameness' of a level eg a crypt which drags on you can find the game quite dull at times.
The game also uses a check point system for certain points throughout a chapter but you can save whenever you want but with the check point system whenever you die its not a quick reload like in say Left 4 dead 2 or the Halo games, oh no you get a lengthy 20 second loading screen, this could be quite infuriating especially if you kept falling of a ledge during a rope jump you have tendure the wait again.
As for the bugs, the games got a few to say the least! lets start with chapter 2, start in a town picked something up and got stopped by a guard which meant a 'you fail reload' screen , so gotta wait again clicked o nretry and immediately im spawned only a split second before the guard got me resulting in another reload screen, thankfully I had saved earlier in the level but that was frustrating.
Then on chapter 3 I believe it was when you arrive on a beach in a small boat, i thought i would quickly check to see if there were any relics at the bottom of the sea and for some reason, half the map disappeared from my view and i was o nthe other side of this small harbour , tried swimming back swum underneath hte ground...then the water disappeared and i fell and somehow landed losing most of my health...very interesting.
Also i missed out on a encounter with a ogre monster because it got bugged and was trying to smash a goblin repeatedly and the goblin actually killed it...
And later on I missed out on a achievement for killing the 'Pao Kai' (the wyrm/dragon like monster).
I didnt even try multiplayer but I would be very surpirsed if it didnt have some bugs too.
Story wise the game was pretty poor, I stopped caring by chapter 2, basically your an apprentice to a wizard whos after a relic told to deliver it to another wizard, get a rather awesome ladies soul added to your own and told to meet wizards friend, meet another do goody lady , tragedy strikes, gotta stop evil necromancers from ressurecting the Dark Messiah!
There's a few different endings depending on what you do in the latter part of the game, but the ending sequence is quite short and unfuffilling.
Ill conclude the review by mentioning that theres some replay value to the game, as Ive mentioned theres multiple endings, different character classes you can go if you feel like playing through the game a few times, and throughout the adventure theres secret areas and 'relics' to find .
Now I didnt play the multiplayer - you'll be lucky to find a game so I havent factored that into the review.
As for the bugs, I found the game to be as buggy as 'Saints Row 2' (dark messiah crashed once for me and had other bugs but at least it had a stable frame rate wereas saints row 2 certainly did not and crashed multiple times on me)
If you have had an eye on this game but were put off by the review scores, Id say rent it if you can or buy it very cheaply like I did, the game has some big problems but then again, its certainly worth more than a 3.5 score, ive given it a 5.5 but if you can find online games and are more interested in replaying it through multiple times you may wanna bump that up to a 6 or 6.5.
Pros:
.Can look quite good at times
.Combat can be fun and satisfying
.Some voice overs (mainly xana's) are good
.The set pieces are generally good.
.Reply value is quite good for- if you enjoy it enough to wanna keep on playing through it that is
.satisfying campaign length
Cons:
.Colour seems a little off making things look dull
.Environments can be too samey
.Repetitive use of enemies- theres not enough types or variations
.Very weak story
.one TERRIBLE set piece battle.
.Annoying loading times
.BUGGY
.cant change control scheme