Dark Messiah of Might and Magic

Gameplay [9]
Graphics [8]
Sound [7]
Usability [8]
Score [8]

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: M&M Goes to the Source.

No good story can be made without a prophecy. Starting with the beginning of it all – the all-time legendary ‘Lord of the Rings’ and finishing with the still new and all shiny Oblivion, no stories ever were not dominated by prophecies ancient and obscure (exclusions, if any, are only to prove the rule). And no prophecy (a good one, that is) ever promised good and prosperous times to come –otherwise what story is it with no evil to fight?

The latest creation of Arcane Studios (known as the makers of Arx Fatalis RPG), Dark Messiah of Might and Magic follows the rule: its opening sequence is a mix of rather Tolkienish verse (above) and a video depicting some Sauron-looking guy in the process of summoning ritual. The verse, as one could guess, prophesizes the coming of that very Dark Messiah.

It turns out that a thousand years ago, a mage under the name of Sar-Elam aka ‘the Seventh Dragon’ for some reason locked the demons in a magical dungeon. The only key to the keep was a powerful Skull of Shadows artifact (no need to say that for centuries running it well-hidden or simply got lost). Decades later, some Sar-Shazzar prophesized that one day, a child to be known as the Dark Messiah, would come into the world – and, make no mistake, this doesn’t mean any good for Ashan (didn’t we tell to forget about Xeen? No? So, here we go).

The story begins with the tutorial: Sareth, – the protagonist – a young apprentice of a wizard named Phenrig, is holding some kind of a final test before starting the life of a fully-grown mage. His task is to get into some long-abandoned citadel and to retrieve an artifact called a Shantiri Crystal. Taking into consideration the role of this very magical stuff in further events, the mission appears surprisingly easy. Phenrig, happy with Sareth showing his best, gives him another task – the Crystal is to be taken to the Grand Wizard of the city of Stonehelm – Lord Menelag. But he will not be alone in his travel – Phenrig gives him a very… unusual companion – Xana. The rather sarcastic and cruel thing takes hide in Sareth’s head, periodically commenting on her hosts’ actions and causing him rather bad dreams.

Giving no more spoilers, we shall only mention that Sareth arrives to Stonehelm just to find the city besieged by the army of necromancers lead by a guy called Arantir, and to meet another companion – Lord Menelag’s niece Leanna. The further conflict of two characters – Leanna and unseen Xana – turns out to be one of the crucial lines of the plot; the ending of the story depends on whose side Sareth chooses to take.

What can one expect from a Source-powered game? Outstanding physics, realistic lighting and textures, excellent facial animation, purely first-person narrative with no cutscenes and … a numb protagonist. All of this (but for the last) is true: the DM runs Valve’s Source in its HL2: Episode One. The game shows full strength of HDR and physics at best of Havok plays a critical role in the gameplay. Hopefully, Arcane Studios decided not to copy Gordon Freeman’s pattern of behavior, so it’s not once or twice that we’ll be able to hear Sareth’s voice – either reasoning aloud or communicating with his companions. Moreover, the artists added a good deal of realism to the game, as just like in Thief 3 we’re able to see the rest of our hero’s body. That’s a good point really. And, at last, when grabbing a crate, Sareth is using his own hands instead of telekinesis – a treat indeed.

However, it can’t all be that good. It looks like giving Sareth body and voice took away all developers’ strengths and creative potential: we had some impression, that the two mages the player meets at the beginning of the game – that is Phenrig and Menelag – are very much alike. We didn’t run an expertise to compare these two characters, but they really look like that. Well, maybe it’s a side-effect of magic?

Another point – and this one is much more vivid – are guards. The artists obviously decided there’s no use wasting time doing face-gen for the characters the player sees passing-by or kills anyway – that’s guards and enemy soldiers – so they just came to a ‘wise’ solution: the lower part of the guards’ faces – up to their eyes – is hidden behind chain mail neckguards. Probably because of this their voices also seem strangely similar. At least, it is obvious, that the Dark Guards (guys in dark armor the player fights at Menelag’s) were obviously given voice of one and the same person. May shame fall upon developers’ heads.

The gameplay is vigorous and vicious. Though Sareth is a wizard, the topmost role is played by the melee combat, and this, hopefully, appears to be worked out at its best. To put it simple, every combat takes place on some sort of ‘arena’ – a room with either piles of empty crates and barrels, or some metal spikes, or an open fire or some large and deep opening in the floor or anything of the kind. Sareth is quite able to fight with the weapons, but it would not be wise to use those vast opportunities Havok has to offer, so, using his ‘mighty foot’ (just like Duke Nukem did some ten or so years ago), our protégé can, literally, kick the enemies into their death. This is absolutely effective, if done stealthy. In many cases it is also possible to cut a rope, thus sending some heavy and big thing (spoiler alert! – like a huge chandelier in Menelag’s mansion) hurling right into the crowd of enemy soldiers. That hurts. And that’s why it is much more effective than magic. So, whenever you get into a fight, look around with a careful eye – there surely are weak spots in the scenery. However, acrobatics of this kind quickly drains Sareth’s stamina, so after kicking the enemies right and left he should take a break to restore his breath during a calm, quiet and meditative sword-fight.

It is not always necessary to kill the enemy in such a complicated way; in many cases a sword (bow, daggers or staff) will be quite enough. Especially if enemy has lost his balance. If you are quick enough, a single killing blow will send the knocked off villain right to his ancestors. However, the weaponry seems to be doing quite a realistic damage, so a fight with no ‘special techniques’ may take quite a long time. Mind, that whenever the ‘adrenaline bar’ – a bar next to health indicator – gets filled (the vision of the hero becomes slightly blurred on the periphery), Sareth will perform a killing blow beheading the opponent in one swoosh. Spectacular.

The choice of weaponry is rather rich: you can choose between daggers (for Garrett fans preferring stealth to rude action), sword, and two-handed staff – slow and powerful. Leveling up opens lots of advanced combat skills – parries, disarms, stuns, and shield breaking, to name a few; advanced bow skill allows zooming on a target; Sareth can pick up and use shields, arrows can be put on fire thus becoming ultimately deadly... All of these can be dragged from inventory into the quick-access panel and interchanged with the numeric keys.

The character development system is quite simple: each level up gives a player experience points, which can be used to develop either combat, magic and stealth abilities or skills. There are no classes, so everyone is free to choose whatever skills he considers useful and necessary with no penalties. However, the experience points are given not for eliminating enemies, but for completing tasks and objectives. This doesn’t change gameplay – you can’t complete the game in pure stealth mode (less killing, more crawling), as certain tasks require the player to kill all the enemies thus clearing the way for the rest of the ‘group’ (that’s mostly Leanna) – but still makes it somehow more balanced. To put it simple, if the task is ‘to get into the temple’ and you think you can do it without much noise, just tiptoeing by the group of bad-looking guys, you will get as much experience as if you rushed into the room shouting ‘Geronimo!’ and made those pals feel sorry for being that bad. However, the gameplay is quite linear and doesn’t leave much space for maneuvering, so don’t expect too much.

We were pleasantly impressed with the AI. The enemies appear to understand that it’s easier to defeat a surrounded opponent, so be ready they sometimes will try to gain your rear; if player gains the height, they would try to climb the ladder to get to Sareth holding the high point instead of being easy targets (and let’s leave the fact that the moment they climb up they get a kick in the face and go tumbling down, behind). Impressive, I mean it.

And, as usual, there are flaws. If your PC runs HL2: Episode 1 at full strength, it doesn’t mean Dark Messiah would be quite as quick. This is some sort of a mystery: while Source’s native graphical options menu defines optimal settings as high, the actual gameplay shows that’s far from being true. The loading time is slow, and the game lags in heavy slaughtering episodes. That seems to have only one possible explanation: poor engine optimization. This is not the first time that a good game gets ruined with this deadly diagnosis. But, hopefully, this is almost the only bad thing about Dark Messiah. It may also be mentioned, that Leanna is far from being Alyx Vance, so you should always keep an eye on her, as she gets killed… occasionally. Which means end of story. The best tactics to prevent this catastrophe seems to keep her fireballing the enemies from the background, while Sareth is doing his best not letting them get close. Anyway, this is rather an annoying drawback than an obvious fault.

To sum it up, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic is quite a nice first-person action with RPG elements, which is sure to give the player some hours of vicious and entertaining gameplay. The latter is rather innovative due to the excellent physical model offered by Havok engine. It’s not devoid of some drawbacks, the nastiest of which is poorly optimized engine, but nevertheless it’s a must-play for action-lovers.