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lacked in longetivity

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: July 14, 2008
Author: Amazon User

For an action rpg, this game is extremely linear and short, it is a blast while you are playing it but ends like the 2nd day! I would recommend elder scrolls oblivion over this game, although very very fun, it seems like it leaves you wanting so much more, there is a huge empty feeling this game leaves you with, thats the only way I can explain it.

Great fun I just wish it lasted longer!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 30, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is an awesome game. The graphics are fantastic and the game play is great too. I only have two complaints. 1) I wish the game was longer or you could add expansion packs to continue game play. 2) I wish that the game could store multiple gamer profiles like Halo. As it is, 1 player has to complete the game before an other player can start. Other than that, I can't say enough good stuff about this game. I plan to buy more Might & Magic titles in the future.

Why Linear?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 26, 2008
Author: Amazon User

To begin with Dark Messiah is linear. Does it really have to be linear? The atmosphere is also way to gloomy in the single player. This is an outlook of all the atmospheres in each level

Level 1 - City
Level 2 - City by Night
Level 3 - Underground
Level 4 - Ship
Level 5 - Caverns with some vistas at the end
Level 6 - Caverns
Level 7 - Caverns
Level 8 - Burning City
Level 9 - Caverns

There are no forest environments in this game. The majority is spent underground. It is also a little too short

Graphics are very good, character models are excelent, environments are very detailed, and HDR Lightning can be run with anti-aliasing. The best thing is that the graphics take almost no toll on my PC. There is hardly any lag during the single player mode (same is not true for multiplayer). I run Dark Messiah on a 1280 x 1024 resolution with hightest detail settings and 8x AA and 16x anisotropic texture filtering and I have never experienced any lag during single player.

Gameplay is also great, the combat system is so realistic you will constantly have to remind yourself that this is a game. The artifical intelligence in this game is great, enemies will constantly engage in conversations, when they have not seen you. They also use strategies such as trying to surround you or pin you against a wall or cliff.

Sound is mediocre, no more to be said.

The story itself is not really that intrieging. Your basic fantasy with dragons, swords, orcs, and gouls

Multiplayer is probably the part of the game you will spend most time on, in multiplayer, you chose from five classes, in seven maps, with four modes. The unique feature of this game is the mode Crussade. In crussade, the teams (Undead and Human) battle it out to take control of a series of maps, until they are at the other army's stronghold. One complaint here is that there are only seven maps. Yet, those seven maps are well designed and very fun to play on.

One more thing, this game has very long load times. Longer than any other game I have ever played.

Graphics 9/10
Gameplay 10/10
Sound 6/10
Story 7/10
Length 7/10
Multiplay 9/10
Stability - Impressive Performance, Minor Glitches

Score 8/10 - Good

One of my most favorite games ever

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 20, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is my first Might & Magic game I have ever played, and I have to say I was not dissapointed. I loved the graphics, settings, and broad range of characters. The weapons array was exceptional and the magic skills were extremely complimentary. I would be happy to try another version of M&M when I get a chance and finish the games I am currently working on. I also want to add that the cheats and walkthrough were extremely helpful and a fun bonus whenever you get bored with the game after playing through once. The only problem I have found is that the graphics were significantly slowed down and jerky after using the cheat codes for a little while.

A lot of fun, easy to get into, but fairly linear

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 15, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I approached this game with hesitation, I have fond memories of the Might & Magic name that I didn't want to tarnish, from the old games of the 1990s. I shouldn't have worried!

This is the one of the few First-Person games I've played where I relished being ambushed randomly or running into that surprise group of enemies. The mutable environment and the ability to have some real world effects makes game-play very enjoyable. You can knock your opponents down, they will be stunned if you land a blow. Sneak up on them or surprise them by rushing in. Use a very powerful blow or a flurry of small attacks. Better still -- shove them off a cliff, kick them down, push them onto impaling spikes, set them on fire... it's fun!!

So say you're on a bridge and a horde of goblins comes rushing across at you. You pull out your trusty staff (moves realistically like a long-staff in martial-arts) and whack them around, keeping them off-balance and knocked down. You could keep on and kill them this way but it's taking a while since the staff doesn't do much damage. So you start kicking and shoving them off the bridge! It's disturbingly fun.

You won't want to kill the baddies the old-fashioned way considering all the options.

I was most concerned I would hate the sections with jumping puzzles -- I still get irritated thinking about the idiotic puzzles inspired by the early Tomb Raider games. They were hard to solve, you'd get half-way, then you fall. Start the jumping over or reload... Ugh.

Turns out that these folks must not like that experience either. Jumping / climbing is a big part of the game, but not difficult and not super-ultra-precise like Tomb Raider. yay!

Some of the combat scenes are hard, but nothing that requires many retrys, though you may end up reloading just to see if you can kill the baddies in different ways. There's some autosaving also.

The game isn't perfect. It's a little too linear, with only a few plot branches, and only a modest number of areas for unstructured exploration. Cut-scenes and loads disrupt game-flow. Like most games of this genre, you occasionally get stuck on an in-game corner, or see minor clipping (can see through a wall or other "solid" object). There are times when you know you can go through that passage but have to spend a few moments lining up JUST right, as if your character couldn't figure out he just needs to pull in his knees or whatever. And it's pretty, but not gorgeous like Oblivion.

The biggest problem is in the first areas of the game (practice and the area after that), where I noticed what others complained about: the game dropping out to Windows occasionally, especially during combat. You could resume by selecting the suspended game from the taskbar, but you'd lose a couple of often-fatal seconds in the meantime. I'm not sure if this was somehow related to other Windows software (such as for my Logitech keyboard/mouse), but the problem stopped on its own with no changes on my part, after the end of those first areas.

I will disagree with other reviewers who state this needs a high-end system to play. I played this on a current entry level PC (mid 2007, lowest-end dual core Intel) but with a moderate, recent video card (Nvidia 8600GT, this model: XFX PVT84JUDD3 GeForce 8600GT XXX 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Ready Video Card (Dual DVI/S-Video)). Unfortunately, the on-board graphics of PCs are inadequate for most modern Windows games so plan to have an add-in card; that's just the way it is. With that 8600GT, I was able to run at a reasonable resolution with most effects turned up to high or maximum, no problems other than the clipping I mention above.

For the current bargain price, and this level of entertainment, highly recommended!

Best combat system ever

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 31, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Number one combat system in a game, too bad game is only playable in storyline mode without having to go online. Well worth playing over and over though.

Great game, though slightly linear didn't deserve all the bashings

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Dark Messiah is a great immerse game with gorgeous visuals plenty of interactive environments, virtually limitless ways to defeat opponents and progress in skills, powers and general abilities. Though the game is a little linear at times it's a small concern as long you enjoy brutal archaic hand-to-hand, ranged and mystic combat, including use of the "friendly environment"(pits, wall spikes, collapsing structures, ect..). The game also includes challenging and well conceived puzzles in between battles. It's sad that the game got bashed so much just because some people thought it was to confusing and/or just because it didn't have the most incredibly dramatic of plots.

One other thing to add most technical issues people have with the game is because of hard-ware and driver issues not necessarily the game and the ones that were have been resolved.

Very good, with a few complaints

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: December 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I must say this game is very good, and makes me want to play again each time I finish. Also, very few crashes or bugs.
I agree with what was said by Mark Butler in his last paragraph. The story line was intriguing, but not well developed. There were times when I was given a new objective and would've had no idea that's my next step without being told. For example, after chasing a ghoul across rooftops, suddenly the ghoul vanished. I was informed my next objective was infiltrating a warehouse. Come to find out, the ghoul had taken the crystal into the warehouse and it was being used in the tunnels below it. I deduced that when I got down there and saw what they were doing. They spend the game spoon feeding objectives and clues, but don't give the player enough opportunity to feel part of a story by tying things together. Especially the ending! I defeated the villain and got the skull of shadows back, then wondered what to do with it. It turned out that the good ending was achieved by putting it right back down where it was before I picked it up! What compelling drama...not...and I found that out by trial and error and guessing.
I very much hope they do a sequel because it's very immersive and fun action. And I hope they improve the narrative exposition. If they do that, I'll say it's almost a perfect game.

Great First person medieval action game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: October 18, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Even thu it will never compare with Oblivion, which personally I think it's the main source of inspiration for this game, it gives a lot of fun, great graphics, excellent story and what I liked the most (not only having a sexy companion), it's the fact that you have more than one ending on this game.
The game system allows you to create a good character with certain limitations but that in the end can be really powerful.
I would love that the game would be a little longer, giving a little more time to explode the potential of your character.
There are many things that I love from this game that I would gladly add to Oblivion, like the kick as a secondary attack, the Stamina Bar and OF COURSE the special kills.
The fact that every spell haves it's own animation it's great (not that it haves a bunch of spells, but it's fair enough), as well as every type of weapon haves different power attacks and different animations for the special kills feature. Also it's cool that you can create a weapon or two on the game.
Anyway, I really liked this game, it was really fun, a couple sleepless nights, and I would recommend it for the people that enjoy medieval-magic type of games.
As I said before, it's not comparable with Oblivion, but it's a great game any how.
Ok ok, I LOVE OBLIVION i admit it.

Great Idea that was Poorly Implemented

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: August 16, 2007
Author: Amazon User

First, the good. This game uses the enviroment and gives a number of options to complete most goals using magic, stealth, or brute force. It is rather amazing to be able to utilize so much of the world as opposed to the usual eye-candy other games give you but no interaction.

The bad. This game is short, very short. I bought it recently and would have been seriously angry to have paid the original retail price for this game. There are serious technical issues going on with this game which include audio stuttering, slowdowns, and hard crashes and some hotkeys just stop working. Much of this is related to the source engine and is found in other games using that source engine, but that's no exuse. The game also has a bit of challenge issue, in that it moves from incredibly easy to moments of frustratingly hard. It wouldn't be so bad if it was consistent. Also, in this date and age, games should not be this linear (there is no deviating from the main game except a few minute quests) and there is only one single male character (what no female story line?). Also the do it this one way or reload approach is not a next generation game methodology... especially when the loading times are pathetic.

Lastly, the multiplayer game doesn't play anything like a the singe player. If they could have create a game that was thoughtful and challenging like the single player as opposed to the quick brawling fests of the multiplayer... then i would have given it more stars. At the price the game sells for now, sure its worth it.

Hopefully, in the future the company will put more effort and technical expertise into their products... this could have been incredible.

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