[sounds of hectic combat] ORC: "Attack!"
[sounds of hectic combat] [sounds of hectic combat, orcs coordinating] [sounds of hectic combat, orcish cries of pain] ORC: "Orcs crush you!"
[sounds of hectic combat, orcish cries of pain] [sounds of hectic combat, orcish cries of pain] "Dark Messiah" is a Source Engine Action-RPG. That makes this the second time I've done a video on something in that category. But where "E.Y.E." felt like it was a mod of "Half-Life 2", this is a game in its own right, with a decent level of polish to it. It was developed by Arkane Studios, who are probably better known today for doing the "Dishonored" series. Story-wise, the game takes place in the rebooted "Might and Magic" series. But don't let that put you off. This game is basically a standalone. I don't remember what happened in those other games, but I can follow this one easily. And that's because the game gives you all the context you need. Now, it doesn't start that way. It's a fairly standard "Chosen One/Doomsday Prophecy" that a lot of video games have. But to be fair, the cutscene is awesome. You have an armored warrior summoning a demon (or maybe a discontinued Games Workshop figure...). A vague prophecy didn't get my attention. This did. "The last daughter of a forlorn line" "shall guide him into history!" [epic choir accompanies the scene] The player's story begins right after this. You're a wizard's apprentice, and your master is setting on an expedition to retrieve a crystal. And that's it! The opening area gives a good first impression for the visuals. Looks really good for a decade-old Source game. There's a lot of great texture work and pretty sharp lighting. The word "crisp" describes it best. The environments are especially a step up from what you'd expect. Whether it's a dungeon or a town or anywhere else outdoors, there's something good to see. While some objects and character models do appear dated, it's nice that so much else has held up. I think the setting is more on the generic side of fantasy, but when the art style does have unique flavor, I generally enjoy it. There's not a ton that stands out and nothing to really rave about. It never looks bad. If it's fun and presented well, I don't really mind if a sci-fi or fantasy game has a kind of bland art style. It just can't have something awful. Like this! We're not going to talk about that... So the presentation starts off on the right foot, but there's something a little bit... off about it. It's the movement. It's not just the headbob either. When you turn, you turn your head first. It's a bit unusual to see your limbs kind of catching up with your head whenever you pivot around. It doesn't happen as dramatically when you're moving around, but it's something to get used to. I don't talk about these often, but the tutorial in "Dark Messiah" is something I really want to take a look at. It's a little odd. Sure, it goes through your standard "how to play the game" controls, but look at what it emphasizes. PHENRIG: "Slice through the rope. That should help." [*crash*] PHENRIG: "Think. Adapt." PHENRIG: "Kick that creature back and watch it fall." [*thud*] That's the first enemy in the game. It teaches you about using your weapon AFTER that. The tutorial focuses on manipulating and navigating the environment. Even all the combat lessons tie into this. PHENRIG: "Kick him over the edge." PHENRIG: "Be efficient, Sareth." [*thud*] BLACK GUARD: "Ugh..." [dying moan] There's no sword fighting lesson here... I didn't have a regular shield, but I did have the corpse of the guy's friend! That worked out okay! So then I throw it at him... now I have the upper hand. This is the key to "Dark Messiah": do NOT think like a fantasy hero. You're Brendan Fraiser in "The Mummy" or Kevin McCallister. TRICK people! [comically cheery music playing] BLACK GUARD: "Waah!"
[comically cheery music playing] [comically cheery music playing] ORC: "A-a-a-ah!"
[comically cheery music playing] [comically cheery music playing] [*bash*] "Ripped my fucking pants!"
[comically cheery music playing] [comically cheery music playing] KEVIN MCCALLISTER: "D'ya guys give up? Or ya thirsty for more?" GOBLIN: "WAAAAAAAAAGH!" [goblin panting and moaning] I might have gotten a little ahead of myself, so let me take it from the top. The real story kicks off when you return to your master. He wants you to take the crystal you found to a wizard in the city. He doesn't send you alone. He summons a spirit named Xana and implants her inside of your head to accompany you. As far as story progression goes, the game is very linear. No matter what, you'll go through all the levels in a certain sequence. The story itself is kind of hard to talk about without getting into spoilers, but I'll get into it a little bit for now. The main character's name is Sareth, and he's remarkably bland. I'm not entirely sure why, but he reminds me of Keanu Reeves in the "Dracula" movie. JONATHAN HARKER: "An ancestor?" JONATHAN HARKER: "I see your resemblance." SARETH: "I have a letter of introduction." GUARD: "Let me see it, then." The overall plot of "find an artifact before the bad man does" isn't exactly new. I also think some elements are poorly paced, and this makes some reveals really underwhelming. There are some pretty unique elements here, but nothing I can touch on yet, so let's get into the gameplay. When you complete objectives, you earn skill points. And you have a lot of options. Your skills are divided up into three main categories of: Combat, Magic and Miscellaneous. Each of these has sub-branches and some skills have ranks to them. If you like using bows, this game might not be for you. Look at all these melee combat skills you can get. Pretty impressive. What about archery? I'm not really feeling this. To start off with, the magic in this game is really fun. It's hard to compare having an arrow to having a fireball. [fiery blast] The game also has a lot of fighting in cramped hallways. It's not constant, but if you made a range to build, you might be in trouble. I was playing the second hardest difficulty, which gives the enemies more health and damage, and a bow is terrible for that. Even on Normal, enemies can close the gap fast, like this guy. Not a good time to have a bow. I don't recommend it. You could also try investing in a Stealth tree. How sneaky you're being is indicated by the circle being filled up with white, but I don't really understand it. I didn't move any faster here, and no one turned around, but... now I'm spotted. You can still play as a fun Stealth character, just be aware that the system is a little bit glitchy. Some of the people who made the "Thief" games worked on "Dark Messiah", but don't go in EXPECTING "Thief". When it comes to melee weapons you have a pretty good variety: swords, staves, axes, hammers – it's all there. You start unlocking Special Attacks the more points you put in your melee tree. You can combine these with other attacks, like stunning an enemy and then disarming them. No matter what weapon you're using, the melee combat feels excellent. You can't easily spam clicks at enemies, because they'll just parry you. You have to time power attacks to break through them. The enemies also have pretty high health and damage output, so fighting them feels meaningful. It can only take a few hits to kill you. Unfortunately, like the Stealth, it's also kind of glitchy. Though, I kind of wonder if it's just a poor implementation of their combat system. Power attacks are supposed to break parries and do damage. So like here: I hold my shield up to block his attack... but it does damage anyways. So, did he just glitch through, or is that working as intended, but there's no stumbling animation or something like that? I don't know, but either way, it looks like it's broken. So even though I love the melee combat, it's not reliable. At least when playing defensively. But remember the tutorial... PHENRIG: "Think. Adapt." You COULD have an honorable sword fight. But that's dangerous. The enemies are tough, and there's a better way. Compare this... to this. BLACK GUARD: "Agh!" BLACK GUARD: "Ugh... H... Ugh.. Oh.... ARGH!" That was easy. The environment is full of things you could use to your advantage. "Dark Messiah" is a giant bar fight across the realm. Viewing it any other way will get you killed pretty quickly. You can use melee to position your enemies into a trap. BLACK GUARD: "What was that? Stop right there!" BLACK GUARD: "G'oh..." BLACK GUARD: "Don't try to run!" BLACK GUARD: "G'ah..." BLACK GUARD: "You won't make it!"
BLACK GUARD: "Don't move, buddy..." What makes the level interactivity so good is that the combat complements it, rather than replacing it. Getting new weapons and spells just increases your options. Yeah, you could use the freeze spell normally and just stun an enemy, OR you could do something more interesting with the environment. He almost made it. There we go. For example, the telekinesis spell entirely revolves around you using the environment. You can always throw normal objects, but what if your weight limit was increased, and you could pick up things from farther away? So even if you never use the environment, the combat is fun on its own. You're just rewarded for thinking more creatively. [Marv scream] Let's look at that fight I showed in the beginning. The enemies are also kicking barrels at me, but one... isn't a very good shot... But if we go back a bit you'll notice there's an oil jar in the ledge. That'll come in handy later. I'm only using zippedy zaps as the bad man chases me up the stairs, but now I throw a barrel down. I could have ignored it and just kept using magic, but it was something I could use to my advantage. When I start pushing the enemies back down the stairs, I'm using a combat staff, but it's also a bit of a flaming tiki torch. So I kick the orc toward the oil jar that got broken in the fighting. There are also reinforcements coming up the stairs. And now this man is laying in the oil pile, so he'll make a nice barricade. If you use indirect methods or stick to nothing but direct combat, either way you build up an adrenaline meter. When that fills up, you can insta-kill with melee weapons. The effect also makes spells more powerful. With telekinesis, you can just grab people and toss them around. This is magic done right. Looking around for advantages isn't just limited to combat, either. Health potions, Mana potions and food all need to be found. There's no store inventories, or shops, or anything like that. Same goes for new armor and weapons. If you're someone who likes finding secrets in games, this is for you. "Dark Messiah" is chock-full of secret areas. I'm not even sure if someone's made a complete record of all of them. There's just so many. They're really good secrets, too. You can find pretty powerful items in these areas. I might not like ranged builds, but an endless quiver of arrows is pretty useful. Sometimes, you straight up get extra skill points for finding an area. No matter what your build, that's kind of an incentive to poke around a little. There's even a dedicated skill that will highlight some secret switches when you're standing still. (Oh my god, I nailed that line...) Some secrets you can only get depending on your build. I don't know any other way to get that armor. There are a lot of doors and chests you can't break without a lock-picking skill. This does encourage multiple playthroughs. Whenever I replay it, I always find something new. This wasn't even marked as a secret area. I was stocking up barrels to throw at people and... Yeah. There's just a ring in here. Neat. You even get a rope bow that lets you climb up to other areas. That's pretty cool. [menacing roaring] Eugh... You can tackle different sections in your own way. If you're playing a stealth character, you can try pickpocketing keys to get by. Yeah, you got to grab the physical key. XANA: "That's an odd cargo they have in these cages." XANA: "I wonder what would happen if they got loose..." Or you could start a Goblin revolution instead! It's all up to you. Now, this all sounds great, but this game has some problems. As far as gameplay goes, I think the health system has the most issues. You can carry 20 health and mana potions, but there's also a dedicated healing skill you can unlock, or just use a health regen skill. Your health doesn't regenerate naturally, but your magic does. And there's the problem: With the exception of full health potions, health potions and food barely restore your health. And like I said before, you die fast. You can barely get your health bar back on its feet before watching it drop again. Most spells need to be equipped like a weapon to use them, but not the heal skill. You just stand there and press a hotkey... Up it goes. You run out of healing items fast, because enemies can chunk you so hard with each hit. So I ended up using the skill a lot in fights. It didn't cost a lot and it didn't heal a lot either, so it was just kind of this constant need. Even if I had only used potions, the same thing would happen with me constantly needing to heal. This might sound like an odd complaint, but there are some brutal levels. And as I showed before, you can't block reliably. I do prefer a health kit system over regenerating health, but I think they needed to make them a little bit stronger. It might have been better if you could equip the heal spell like the other spells, have it cost more but also restore more, have potions restore 25 points instead of 10. This might not be a problem for stealth characters (or maybe I sound bad at games)... It might be easier to understand when you've played it. I just found it kind of tedious. Without spoilers, the endings are disappointing, but there's some neat stuff in this story. There's also a gameplay stuff to talk about, but that would give some stuff away, too. If you don't want any spoilers, go to here: Let's talk about women. It's revealed that Xana, the spirit put inside your head earlier, is actually a succubus. Xana spends the entire game flirting with Sareth. XANA: "This is a nice quiet place..." XANA: "Oh, too bad we have other things to do!" I get that some of you are already opening up the store page, but stay with me. There's also a wizard girl named Leanna who's infatuated with the player. She's more of your... FCA mission trips to Africa type. Deciding on who you end up with is one of the biggest decisions in the game. It's also one of the only decisions, and as I said before, the story's pretty generic overall. The villain is a necromancer named Arantir. He's rumored to be the Dark Messiah who will unleash the demons into the real world. Like a lot of villains, he really enjoys tormenting you through nightmare visions. But it's revealed around the midway point of the game that YOU'RE the Demon Messiah. That's because the Demon Sovereign is your father. Ultimate evil being your father isn't new, but they did it in a really sloppy way. There's not even a mention of your dad until about an hour before! SARETH: "My father..." SARETH: "I've never met him." SARETH: "Why is he so important?" This isn't a very compelling setup for a twist. But after learning this you can transform into a demon. You constantly lose health, but can regain it by killing enemies, and you move like Satan the Hedgehog. The demon form gets written off, but the extra movement and the charge attack are really useful. But besides that, there's not much else. There's no demon skill tree or anything extra like that, so it seems like wasted potential. But you don't HAVE to keep your demon power. At a later point in the story, Leanna gets kidnapped and sacrificed to Pennywise. Saving her is completely optional. If you go through with it and save her, she tells you how to get rid of your succubus problem. You can be cleansed of Xana in a church. However, you won't be able use your demon form anymore. But then you get to use Holy Weapons, which are the most powerful in the game. These weapons make the end game really easy. It is kind of clever that the weapons were cursed to you, and you couldn't use them until now. SARETH: "AHH, it burns...!" XANA: "It's accursed, I tell you!" XANA: "It's woven with spells for the death of our kind!" You could always not save Leanna. Or save her and not get cleansed, but then she'll want to fight you. You don't get holy weapons, but you do get the better girl. XANA: "Oh, yes, my Prince!" XANA: "We will be together..." XANA: "Forever!" (I'm not seeing any red flags here...) You only have two options at the very end, and each one only has a slight variation depending on which girl you pick. So your demon father betrays you, right? KHA BELETH: "Come to me, my Son and Saviour!" Well, no. You get to rebuild a relationship with your dad. That's nice to see. There's also some pretty fun multiplayer besides the single player, but it's completely dead. There are some Russian servers you can direct join, but those are all empty whenever I looked. Even with mages being overpowered, it was fun. It's kind of a shame, really. It has a fairly deep class system with in-match unlocks. I like those kinds of games. Despite its jankiness and issues, the single-player alone is well worth your time. It's one of my favorite sword-fighting games. It could be yours too. SARETH: "I seem to be surrounded by women who want things from me." Thanks for watching! We're gonna have a stompin' good time in October! GOBLIN: A-A-A-A-AH!
ORC: Orcs strong! Orcs only strong!
The physics stuff and destructability is something that is sorely missing from arkane's newer games. Prey has a little of it, but not nearly to the extend of this game. It's a shame really, both dishonored and prey are excellent playgrounds that would benefit from the extra possibilities
AFAIK the most powerful weapon in this game was your foot. You kicked the living daylights out of anything and everything.
I remember playing a stealth-type dagger-wielding build and had those rad lightning daggers. Apparently, holding two loudly crackling bright blue glowsticks right before your dumb face doesn't prevent you from hiding in the shadows.
There was one moment in the necromancers' citadel when a dude was passing near me crouched in the corner with my glowsticks, while crooking his neck to look directly at me all the time and detecting nothing.
I just want to say, if you never played the game and want to play it, give yourself a favor: play on medium difficulty. On hard games becomes very tedious in places, enemies are very fat and mostly killed with cheesy tactics. Also don't rush thief tree of skills, stealth is broken on the level of Skyrim.
For those that care about it, the ubisoft might and magic games continuity is very intertwined and a lot of plot points in dark messiah are given more depth through other games in the series, the Heroes of Might and Magic V games in particular. Dark Messiah is basically a conclusion to those games.
One part that really interested me when I played the game and I still remember it fondly was the Blacksmithing section where you run around and manually control a forge/anvil, only one step further. I always wanted crafting like that in an MMO, where the outcome of your item was determined by your actual skills not stats. Instead of clicking craft and that's all, depending on how good you are personally at all the different stations would change the outcome.
That and the sword that you made at the blacksmithing portion of the game (if you found the mats and plans) was OP as hell.
Remember, the boot is the strongest weapon in the game.
Excellent little title, the multiplayer was fun too.
Just tried out this game today. Love it. It's a fantasy rpg with a focus on first person melee combat. No races or branching decisions of a deep story to see. It's all about the combat.
A shame the game is so "old school" I wish there was a game like this available on today's market.
The only game I've seen that does FPM (first person melee) awesomely is Far Cry Primal.
i might be out of the loop here... i remember playing the demo for this on 360 when it first came out. did it just get rereleased or is this just a review that popped up recently?