First off the bat is that Dark Messiah of Might & Magic takes quite a different approach to previous installments. Rather than being a game based off combat alone, Dark Messiah requires gamers to focus a little bit more on the strategy and puzzles in defeating each bad guy. So rather than being a typical RPG where you acquire experience points for killing more and more enemies, Dark Messiah only awards gamers experience points once clearing objectives. Now this is far from a bad thing, as we’ve seen from Dark Messiah, since the developers have focused on making each battle a little more rewarding, since with the game each battle seems like a battle of wits and knowing your enemy rather than hacking witlessly like in games such as Diablo. And this was probably the most intriguing area of the entire game.
In Dark Messiah of Might & Magic, the game is pretty much one huge interactive world that can be used to attack enemies. Ropes can be cut to drop barrels or burning objects onto enemies, or even pushing rocks off cliffs onto by standing enemies below. In order to defeat many of the enemies in the game, gamers must observe their surroundings to exploit enemy weaknesses. For instance, the developers took us through one boss battle with a massive monster. Despite trying various attempts such as shooting arrows, hitting it with their sword and even firing a few bolts of magic at it, nothing worked. It was only when the character cut a nearby rope that set loose a pile of logs, which in return, knocked back the monster and revealing it’s weak point.
Pretty much everything in your surroundings are interactive, even barrels.
This wasn’t something that was witnessed in only boss battles either. In the battles before the boss the character couldn’t penetrate any of the Orc’s armour. So in order to defeat the enemies the character had to once again exploit their enemy’s weaknesses by using their environment, whether it be by pushing them into nearby campfires or pushing pillars onto them. That’s not to say your weapons are useless, but in order to use them a lot of time gamers must first reveal the enemy’s weak point.
Combat is a great focus and it seems the developers have taken a lot of care into making it the most captivating area of the entire game. Each time you successfully hit an enemy a power bar will fill, and when it’s full, gamers can unleash an array of special moves and powerful spell effects – for example telekinesis to throw enemies around and a lateral slash that can behead enemies. The combat is also context base, which means depending on how you attack (lunge, hack or slash) it’ll change the enemy’s position and stage.
And what would be a good combat system without a good AI system? And Dark Messiah seems to have an excellent one. The AI behaves to how you approach each battle. Different monster will react differently, with some parrying attacks, dodging, using special abilities or even using the environment to their own advantage. There are even some creatures in the game that have incredible smelling senses and can smell you out if you’re nearby. There was also one boss battle that we saw where the player ran underneath a rock to avoid it, but it wasn’t soon after that the boss actually lifted the rock away to attack the player.
Ice to see you - sorry we couldn't resist.
Rather than there being a selection of different classes to choose from, gamers instead can delegate their experience points into several areas to customise your character: such as magic, stealth and combat. These can then be used to improve certain skills and unlock new abilities such as magic attacks that shrink enemies.
The game is powered by the Half-Life 2 Source engine enabling the developers to create an immersing world that looks every bit like Oblivion. The graphics are really up there and add to the atmosphere and the experience completely.
At this stage, Dark Messiah is looking like a decent entry into the genre. The combat seems very deep; a lot of intriguing environment interaction and the use of the Source engine really brings the game alive. The game is currently set for a September release in PAL regions and looks like a decent entry into the Might and Magic series.
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