Dark Messiah of Might and Magic is a first-person action game with both magic and melee combat that was programmed in the source engine. So needless to say it was extremely messy and unpolished. But in spite of that, I had a fun time and the game had enough unique elements that I kinda wish there was more stuff like it that just had a bit more refinement. It’s not something I would outright recommend to people, but I would say it's worth giving a shot for the novelty if nothing else.
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A lot of the gameplay foundations seem like what you would expect for a fantasy RPG. You have a few melee weapons to fight enemies close up, a bow for ranged, and magic spells with a variety of effects. None of these options are great in retrospect with each weapon doing relatively little damage and enemies who can tank a lot of hits and stuns while dealing a lot of damage to you in the meantime. And the fact that everything is in first person can make combat quite chaotic as enemies will maneuver around you in groups while the reach of your weapons is deceptively short. If you play this like a conventional first person action game then you're not gonna have a great time.
And yet despite that, the gameplay ends up being the best part thanks to the focus on physics. As a source engine game, Dark Messiah uses the physics effects as essentially the main method of combat. Rocks, boxes, and other inanimate objects scattered around the map can be picked up and thrown at enemies, kicked into their chest, knocked down stairs, and so much more. You’ll quickly learn that a sword might be necessary in a pinch, but if you can surprise your enemy by lobbing a rock at their face then they’ll be stunned far more than a few sword swings can ever hope for. These items have an immediate effect in terms of damage and stuns, but they really excel when used in conjunction with environmental hazards. Knocking an enemy off a ledge so they fall to death, shoving them into a spiked wall or fireplace, luring them into a staircase or alleyway where you have a trap prepared, and plenty of other possibilities are all a fun time.
While fun on its own, you won't always have what you want to pull off the kinds of tricks and traps you want. And that's where magic comes into play. You have some generic spells that are more damage focused, but the best are those with additional physics effects. Fire will ignite oil, electricity will shock anything in water, and the best of all is ice which will cause enemies running along its surface to slip and fall. The former two are useful when the situation allows it and you can make some fun combos (like lighting an enemy on fire, then kicking them into a group of their comrades to burn them as well), but the ice is going to be your best friend in any physics related shenanigans. I can't tell you how many times I lured an enemy through a doorway, spread some ice around the corner, and watched them slip off a cliff or into a fire. Rather than a typical fantasy hero, Dark Messiah makes you feel more like Kevin McCallister has gone on the offensive.
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The effect would be much better if the physics were actually consistent though. As to be expected given the game’s age and engine, objects can be very unwieldy at times. The physics of each object can just feel wrong at times with the arcs they go through the sky or how quickly they reach their target, rendering precise setups a non-starter without a huge amount of trial and error. Collisions can feel weird with objects often clipping through each other, the ground, or the characters in a way that can have unpredictable effects (including a few deaths thanks to weird collision physics, both enemies and myself). And finally there’s just a great deal of inconsistency with a lot of the environmental effects. Sometimes fire just won’t light oil and enemies will run over ice without missing a step. It all leaves a system that feels very chaotic, sometimes in a good way when the chaos of the battlefield is a result of your own hijinks and enemy ai and other times in a frustrating way when a plan falls apart because the engine decided not to cooperate with your plans.
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Beyond the gameplay itself, a large part of the experience is driven by the level design. They’re all littered with objects, traps, and plenty of opportunities for your chaotic plans to take effect, though their success at doing so varies quite significantly. The early portions of the game were the most fun with open maps and dumb enemies that offered lots of opportunities for messing around. But as the game progresses, levels start feeling more restrictive either with very clearly telegraphed opportunities for you to mess around or with few enough options that some amount of normal combat becomes necessary. Levels become more enclosed as you move on and enemies start having ranged attacks that they can use instead of chasing you. I dont know whether its their ai being smarter or just everything else being unconducive to the tricks that used to be staples of my playstyle, but the last few levels felt like a real bore that required far more fighting and far fewer tricks than the great levels of the early and mid-game.
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And there isn’t much else worth mentioning besides that. The story is fine, not particularly engaging but enough to provide context for what you’re doing in each level. The visuals are pretty good, especially at highlighting what items you can interact with and what's just for show, and just being a solid dark-ish fantasy setting all around. And the sound, music, voices and other elements are just fine. There’s nothing bad enough to take you out of the experience but I don't think anything besides the gameplay will stick around in my mind for very long.
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Dark Messiah was a pretty fun game overall. It's one of those experiences that's deeply flawed and undoubtedly suffers from some age-related issues but still has plenty going for it. I can safely say that I’ve never played anything else like it, but really wish that I could. A lot of the core ideas are good and a game that is fully committed to them would probably be a blast if some of the rough edges of the system here could be patched up. But as it stands right now, I have to admit that for all the fun I had while playing this game the flaws are way too hard to ignore and really bring the experience down. This is really a case of a game which does one thing particularly well and everything else is serviceable enough not to cause an issue most of the time. And that may be fine in much of the moment-to-moment experience but isn’t a great foundation when judging the game as a whole. Overall though, I would give Dark Messiah a soft recommendation for anybody interested in chaotic and physics-based gameplay and can tolerate a lot of rough edges from the engine and age.
