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Dark Messiah of Might & Magic

Published: Sun 28 Jan, 2007 | On:

Dark Messiah is set in the fantasy world of Might and Magic, where young man named Sareth must use sword and magic skills to find the Skull of Shadows. He can then use its powers to stop an unknown Dark Messiah from unlocking the gates to a demon prison. Accompanying Sareth on his adventure is a guardian entity called Xana, who is like an annoying version on Halo’s Cortana, and a young wizard called Leanna.

Sareth has a large range of melee and projectile weapons to help accomplish his quest. As you progress through the game you earn skill points which you can use to acquire a new skill, like learning a new magic spell or use a more powerful weapon.

Along the journey you will encounter many different monsters such as orcs and goblins. When battling your enemies you can chose the type of melee attack you want by pushing a directional key at the same time as the attack button, this will unleash a power strike delivering a powerful blow. As well as using hack and slack techniques to defeat enemies, objects from the environment such as rocks, tables and pots can be used as a deadly weapon. Cutting ropes or breaking support posts and create havoc with large objects falling from above. There are also a number of spells to perform; my favourite is telekinesis which allows you to lift up an object from a distance (including enemies) and toss the object across a room. This is especially fun if there is a group of orcs charging at you.

The graphics are very nice even when the game is running on lower specifications. The lighting and texture of the environment and characters are highly detailed. The levels are creatively designed from a sailing ship to dark catacombs infested with the living dead. The sound and music help set the mood and give the feeling that you are in really in the game.

Dark Messiah is full of bugs which can be very annoying and take fun out of the game, especially if it’s during an intense fight and the frame rate drops, or the game crashes. Most of these bugs can be fixed with a patch that you can download off the might and magic website. After the patch is used the game should work fine with most computers.

Once you have finished the single player story, there is fun to be had in the different multiplayer modes. There are the normal death match and capture the flag modes, or you can go on a crusade where you fight in teams trying to gain territory.

Overall Dark Messiah is a fun game, and will take you on an exciting adventure once the bugs and glitches are fixed. If you are into first person shooters and want something a bit different you should give it a go, and with four alternate endings based on the choices you make in the game it has good replay value too.