It's painful to play, this old, polygonal pc clunker -- if you're not already so [i]steeped[/i] in it that the rose-tinted goggles do all the heavy lifting. Released at a time when physics were a new and wondrous thing in games, you'll spend most of your Battle Time kicking guys off cliffs and throwing omnipresent barrels and crates (and not very well at that) . . . because what, after all, is the most powerful weapon in Ashan? Is it the [b]Sword of the Dragonclaw[/b]? Try again! Is it the [b]Skull of Shadows[/b] perhaps? No, no, no! It's a heavy chunk of wood, lobbed by a maniac with apparent [i]gorilla strength[/i]! Watch 'em rag-doll, Sareth, then it's your time to strike, because you sure can't hit them very well with your sword if they're moving at all! Sure, it's fun to play around with the kicking and the Crates of Death in the first level or so, but that only goes so far in the face of all that's wrong. And the game (if you can even get it to run in the current year) is held together by bubble gum and Dollar General duct tape, so it [i]will[/i] fly apart under the pressure of a strong look. Ah, dammit! The door won't open again! Guess I've got to load . . . again. (I've heard a lot of folks actually have to uninstall and reinstall the thing to get past these points, and it's [i]certainly[/i] not worth that kind of trouble.)
I suppose if you want to relive some of your past gaming glories, it might be okay. I never played it back in 2006, but freely admit that I might have gone through it several times for the sheer novelty, if I had. In 2026, however, I just can't get over the long, tangled dungeon levels where you keep getting stuck on the geometry (or the ropes), or what's even [i]worse[/i]: the [b]darkness[/b] of absolutely everything. Yes, if you're not standing in the bright sunlight, things are just too dark to see . . . [i]unless[/i] you turn on your Paris Hilton nightvision, which means you [i]have[/i] to use it. A lot. So I hope you like your games in really ugly, washed-out monochrome, because that's how you'll see so very much of this one.
I [i]do[/i] understand what they were trying to accomplish here, and wIth limited processing power, but it's just not much fun to play now, if it even works. Autistically awkward swordplay (let's see you make a thrust connect with [i]anything[/i]!), nastily necessary night vision, glitchy landscapes, various door-locking bugs, and a sub-generic fantasy story vastly outweigh the fun you'll have from making guys go [i]floppy-flop[/i] with the power of Donkey Kong.
Do I like anything about it? I certainly like the [b]idea[/b] of [i]Dark Messiah[/i]; there should be games made every month that do what this one [I]set out[/I] to, but there aren't, admittedly. I also like Sareth's voice! He reminds me of David Naughton, star of the short-lived 1970s sitcom [i]Makin' It[/i], a Doctor Pepper commercial or two, and my [b]favorite[/b] B-horror film, [i]The Sleeping Car[/i]!
