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Dark Messiah of Might and Magic - over hyped?
Mace1370
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Summary:
Dark Messiah Might and Magic is a computer game developed by Arkane Studios and Floodgage Entertainment for Ubisoft. It uses a modified version of the Source engine from Valve Software, which was originally used to make Half-Life 2. While Arkane and Floodgate created the single player portion of the game, Kuju Entertainment developed the multiplayer mode.
Dark Messiah seemingly bears no obvious connections to the Might and Magic fantasy world; the latter is not Xeen but Ashan. The game is a first person combat game that features a wide variety of ways to customize the player's character, including stealth, melee combat, archery, as well as violent and non-violent magic. The player takes on the role of a young man named Sareth who wishes to find adventure and riches in the world. He is the pupil to the wizard Phenrig; Sareth's adventures lead him the city of Stonehelm to aid in the recovery of a mystic object known as "The Skull of Shadows".
Screen Shots:
As many of you probably remember, a lot of people got excited about this game when the demo came out. It seemed to run very well for everyone and the graphical presentation was impressive for its relatively low technical requirements. However, I never saw any substantial reaction to the game once it was released.
Did it crash and burn? The reviews seemed to be pretty mediocre. Were there a lot of bugs, and if there were are they now fixed? I got this game for free with my video card so I'm curious if it is worth an install and play through.
Mace1370 on
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If you can get it on the cheap, it's worth 10-15 dollars.
I don't recall any bugs.
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
Therefore the gameplay is very simple (even tho combat is a lot of fun), no replay value, and graphicaly it is very bland. I enjoyed it quite a bit understanding what it was, but if you are looking for a game with depth and excitement, look elswere.'
Unfortunately, event after the patch, the game is a fucking turd when it comes to stability and resource management. A lot of people didnt expirience many problems, but me personally had a fuckload.
So yeah, the game was overhyped, but it is pretty fun if you can get it to run.
Also, it has at least three relatively different playthroughs in terms of replayability. One for melee, magic, and stealth. And then you can mix and match skills as well. Which is much more, and much deeper than most other action games will give you.
And by backstabs I mean "RIPPING THROATS OUT WITH DAGGERS".
It was the most rewarding stealth pay off EVER.
Apart from that,an OK game.
Amazing Multiplayer? I heard mixed things about that. I thought it sounded really cool, but some ppl bitched that it was too imbalanced.
And that hasn't happened for every other multiplayer game ever? :P
One time Orcs cased me down the stairs. I threw a fireball, but missed. The fireball hit the stack of barrels on above the stairs. Said barrels catched fire and came tumbling down the stairs, collided with the group of Orcs and enflamed the puddle of oil I placed in front of me. I kicked the remaining unharmed Orc into the flaming mayhem, he burned alive and fell down the cliff, screaming.
The game really feels like the successor of Hexen 2 or Heretic (without the hub-levels of course)
The bad side:
The melee action often desyncs if you hit a certain fps limit (I believe its around 22 - 25 fps). He hit me before he actually did his sword swing animation? Fuck this. I mean its not running as a slide show on my system, but often becomes unplayable because of this issue.
The game will look pretty ugly as soon if you disable the HDR and turn down the details. I have to play it without AA and it really shows - even on a resolution of 1680x1050. Often the fps will go down the drain if you engage into a fight. It seems the "combat engine + interaction with enemies" eats a lot of CPU cycles.
I definitely count it as the best PC FPS since F.E.A.R. Definitely worth it for the single player combat alone.
Having the available patches out already probably helped a lot for my playthrough, the only annoying thing was the sound skipping bug which was admittedly truly horrendous. My first fix was turning everything to low but that's always annoying. Then I found out about cl_forcepreload 1 and snd_mixahead 0.5 which meant load times took like a second longer but I could run in a mix of med/high settings, hdr with 30-40fps no problems @ 1650x1050 on what is a fairly old machine 3200xp/6800gt.
The game feels awesome to play. The first person combat was great, and had a great dynamic feel to it, each new opponent feels like a great opportunity rather than a tired grind . And the backstab in that game never got old. I even quite liked the story, especially the chick that taunts and teases you. Never bothered much with magic or bows, but once you really powerful sword, you really do just feel like Death Incarnate.
I have high hopes for arcanes next game, The Crossing. They've definitely showed they can run with the Source engine and the body movements they've added in help to really drag you into the gameplay.
As for comparisons, it's really in a genre of it's own, First Person Melee. But it's a very solid entry and really should be played.
I really suck.
I checked not enough RPG elements.
My only frustration is that I feel the skill point allocation is too slow, particularly if you want to play a stealthy type. This is one of those rare games that I enjoy more with the cheats than without.