Metareview - Dark Messiah of Might and Magic

Games that barely work shouldn't be released and have people defend them with "its really a 8 out of 10, honest, just wait for the patch!"

The multiplayer character classes are a little unbalanced. Hopefully, this will be addressed when Ubisoft issues a patch.

Well, I for one loved the demo, so Ill be picking it up as soon as my next check comes in...

i haven't had ANY crashes or noticed any bugs. i was a really, really fun and great game. i don't know about other people, but i loved the story.

I had absolutely no bugs. Just know going in this game is very light on RPG. I would say 80% FPS, 20% RPG. It's great not having to choose a class, you can start shooting arrows at enemies, then as they charge you switch to your magic fireball, then when they reach whip out your fat broadsword. Find creative ways to dispatch baddies becomes a game itself. Plus, that workhorse Source engine can pump this game out at 1920x1200 on a decent rig. A solid 8/10.

I really wanted to like this game. I was very ready for a good rpg but I could not get the demo to run on my superclean uber updated box that runs every damn thing under the sun without a flaw.

The 5 minutes of playing before it locks up were great but I am not jumping thru hoops installing, and uninstalling different versions of drivers just in the hopes that it may run.

Companies need to stop putting out products figuring they can just patch the bugs later.

Send a message to them peoples!

I love how the in the different reviews, one will like something while the other hates it.

i.e.
"exploring Dark Messiah's fantastic world"
vs.
"meandering and unintuitive level designs"

"enjoying the plotline [that does not] get in the way of the core gameplay"
vs.
"the story never ropes you in"

"you're never short of something to hurl or a clever way of inflicting pain"
vs.
"you never get the feeling that Sareth is growing more powerful as you play"

All of these quotes are generally describing the same thing! Just one set of reviewers demand lots of plot and character levelling, while the others are content to explore the world as it is given to them.

Split_Milk -- Just because you have had a bad experience doesn't mean the companies are out to get you. I have had no bad experiences, so it's all good.

I didn't say the company was out to get me of my friends have had the same problem and none of us are slouches with our equipment or our software.

If you will check Ubi's message board you find that it is filled with the same complaint. On some machines it does work perfectly. But I am by no means alone and if my machine doesn't run it then there is a serious problem and it's not with me. Just by casually browsing a few forums it is apparent that something is pretty screwed up.

It is painfully obvious that they did not have a chance to test this properly and it was rushed out the door with the idea that it could be patched later.

Being a corporate appologist only hurts the gaming community.

"Being a corporate apologist only hurts the gaming community."

I couldn't agree more with that statement. However, I'm not getting any glitches with the game. It's actually pretty bad-ass.

I found this game absolutely enjoyable, I don't really understand where this "unintuitive level design" is coming from. While the plot was a little thinner than I expected, it wasn't awful either.

I feel sorry for the people who are having major crashing problems with the game, and hope ubi or arkane addresses it officially soon... I managed to fix all my crashing problems with a few fixes on the steam forums though.

I seriously hope they fix it for people having problems, because it is a brilliant game, and while multiplayer appears unbalanced, each class really has it's own overpowered quality and specific weakness.

I've just finished the game and found it to be great fun. The level design is great, AI deadly and atmosphere fantastic. Admittadely it is damn hard and the story does kind of run out of steam towards the end, especially with the rather disapointing endings but overall its a good bit of fun. I have discovered crashing issues but I found that simply turning the texture shader to low seems to sort that out, its an issue with Geforce cards apparantly and they say they're working on a patch which should be out soon. I do strongly recommend this game.

IGN gave it a 7.0 btw.

I got tired of it at about the half way point.

The single player demo is not indicative of most of the game.

Also, a lot of sections seem like they're geared towards one character type or another. They don't give a lot of options if you come on a section and the character type that you wanted to play wasn't what the designer had in mind for that part of the game.

Most of the puzzles are trial and (deadly) error, so you find yourself reloading a lot more than is at all interesting.

There are a lot of great ideas present, but I found them to be generally mediocre in execution and poor in too many areas.

Also, the level design flat out blows monkey chunks. Everything feels claustrophobic even when you're in a large open area because of the player collision and movement speed.

If Valve had done this game, and applied their level of pollish, it would be worth getting.

Funny how when I told my programming lecturer that my C# assignment would be a sure 8/10 but he shouldn't run it yet but wait for another 3 weeks for the patch didn't seem to impress him much...what a coincidence I wasn't impressed with ubisoft or PCPowerplay for giving me the Glitchy Software and then telling me how great it was

The demo is not representative of the quality of the game at all.

The combat is fantastic, but everything else from the level design to the loading times to the storyline are all completely flawed and obviously rushed and untested.

Dark Messiah is unstable and unfinished. The review sites, most notably PC Gamer, have done an incredible disjustice to the gaming community by not mentioning how obviously unfinished this game is.

My advice to discerning gamers is not to buy this game.

...and if Valve had produced this game it would have been an absolute masterpiece.

unfortunatly i am one of those getting crahes etc on this game, runs smooth as anything on really really low settings, but didnt buy it to play it with 2 bit colour and 4x4 pixel view, so i haev to wait for the patch =/. but i have played up to abotu chapter 5, with alot of crahes inbvetween and already i find it repetitive in some areas, combat and execution being some.

firstly whats with all the walls with wooden spiked things!? i find so far is that they found something they like and just spam it in, i feel stealth doesnt work unless you have complete skill and or fidn a decent outfit (which i havnt yet) you just cant sneak unless in total shade, and rouge options are pretty boring, its just liek beign a warrior.

AI is a little clumsy, one point i just stood roudn a corner when there was 5 of them and each tiem 1 pops his head round i kicked him down the tunnel, a blind man coudl also avoid some of the pendulem type traps that seem to inhabit DM, i set one off ran other side and the AI runs right in the path of it and dies.

non humanoid mobs are jsut plain borign to fight so far, spiders just take alot of damage and its hard to get a sense/ feel of a intense battle. i found that enemies hit you when fairly far away, and combat is still linear, block.. swing swing, block, kick. with no real physical damage, like if you slice there leg they should hobble, get a decent hit on arm should wound, somethign mayeba little more realistic, wherea well placed sword stroke is just as good as a load of power attacks (i know there is a disarm skill but it feels a bit tacky, they so far havnt tried to find a weapon after this happens)

havnt tried magic tree properly yet, but i admit love the rope bow, i spendt ages on climbing around places that you shouldnt, under buildings etc jumping rope to roep like a monkey, that was great fun.

multi impression so far is just plain crap, FPS aspect is bad, mages just spam spells liek a mchien gun, ranger gets munched quick if in close combat and have poor damage, rouge is easy too see and is spam, but then i didnt play it much so my opinion here isnt for much, but it feels like i was playing a multiplayer of a game at least 10 years old =/ quake 1 was more fun that has no real balancing or flow to it.

dont get me wrong though i find DM fun, just not for long periods. To me this is a failed hybrid, no realy RPG elements that matter, no sense of lvling or class paths (roles) or as some othet guy said, some parts seem to be made for one option, which is a linear style of play. and it lacks the true accuracy, intense speed, control and heatbeating battles of a FPS, so id say the 60/100 is a fair score.

Can anyone tell me whether letting steam update for what has been 3 hours will fix my crashing problems? Game kept hanging and stuttering, so i let steam update it. I've got a 7900gt and an opteron 165, thought this was fairly standard kit. wish it would run

On my system the game crashes regularly. It was unplayable before I installed the newest nvidia drivers, now it's down to crashing once an hour or so. This is a system that ran Half Life 2 and EP1 flawlessly.

I think Valve needs to be more careful who they let their name get attached to. One of the reasons I bought DM is because of Valve's high quality (never had any major issues with ANY of the games I purchased from them). However, they've hurt their brand image by being attached to this... patchware.

Well I wasnt expecting it to run on the highest settings but even on low across the board (I have a 7300GT) it ran HORRIBLY on Single Player. Im not even going to try multiplayer... The only good part was the load time (