Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Another Fenixgoon Review

[Fenixgoon]

For all of the cheesy dialogue, the game wasn't half bad. it's linear in the half-life sense (albeit worse), but i never really found it to be that painful. the worst offender by far, IMO, was the difficulty.

Melee is decent, but i found i died less when being sneaky.
stealth is harder and requires more patience, but fun (backstab FTMFW)
magic - ok i guess. i just used heal and the occasional telekinesis

leveling system - not bad, although it is possible to make the game much harder for yourself. only at the end game, when i had good gear and lots of skills, did i feel like it was a fair challenge.

level design - not bad. there's a solid amount of variation, some really good environments, and places where i'd say "oh shit" because i'm sneaking my way through hordes of enemies.

AI - hit or miss, especially when using stealth. sometimes the AI will keep decent track of you, and other times they're completely dumb. of course, abusing that flaw made things a lot easier.

difficulty - this is the only thing i don't get. my guy consistently died in a few hits (even after HP upgrades). enemies wielding swords weren't even the most deadly. no, it was ghouls, who headbutt and claw at you, and can kill you in just a few hits. did i mention they tend to come in mobs?

sure, there are plenty of spikes around to kill ghouls by kicking them (by far the easiest method), but i can't begin to relay my frustration from getting killed by a mob of ghouls. arguably the single most

the story is half-decent. it's not a baldur's gate or anything epic, but someone at least put a little effort into it.

Xana is hot.

 

[ibex333]

Thanks for the review. you might want to make your reviews a little deeper, telling people what game it is and waht it is about. It's a good thing I know it's a M&M RPG, and what such games are all about, but there are people who don't. I realize that anyone with half a brain can go to a site like gamespot and look it up, but this is YOUR review, not gamespot's review, no? 😉 I am not asking you to write a book here, but a few extra lines about what type game this is would be nice. My 2c.

 

[you2]

I thought this game was a good first attempt (though it was a bit short). I sort of hoped that there would be more by the same group because I found a lot of their ideas creative; even if they didn't all work out well (arx fatalis is also a decent game). However, my understanding is that this game was not a commercial hit so I suspect there will not be another... but it was fun - and imho more interseting than half life 2 (I played it for the first time about 4 months ago).

 

[4537256]

I always thought the game was a very quick attempt to ride the wings of Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. it was released not long after Oblivion, like Gothic 3 and Two Worlds. You can kinda tell they threw in alot of elements of Oblivion at the last moments for all 3 of those. if they spent more time on them, they probably would've been as good.

 

[Koudelka]

I thought it was odd, nobody seemed to like this game as much as i did.

The ragdoll physics were just beautiful.. best moment i've ever had in a game so far has been kicking orcs down a set of 70 stairs on a cliffside and watching them bounce into each other. Nothing will ever beat that 🙂

The multiplayer was also extremely extremely fun. Although not enough people played it.. and could have used more players and larger maps.

Yeah so what, the storyline wasnt that great, but the gameplay and physics were fabulous.

 

[you2]

I would not equate this game with oblivion; further I would say that I enjoyed this game quite a bit more than oblivion and thought it was a more creative effort. Just a lot shorter and less open ended (which are negatives). About the only good thing I could say about oblivion is that it was pretty and open ended (I know I'm in a minority here so not lets turn this into an oblivion debate).