Background: I picked this game up in 2016. Why? I was and remain a fan of 3 things in video games:
1st person sword and shield action games.
Source Engine games
Games which are cheap

First of all, this game is cheap and accessible. I got this on sale for like a single euro, A single euro!! It runs on the source engine, which means that if you own a machine that can process word documents over 10 pages long, you will be able to play this on medium settings.

Story - I heard once that there are people who care about this game's story. If you do care about this story, do not hesitate to contact me, I would like to bully you directly.

Graphics - Pretty world, character models are ugly as sin, but it's okay, I do not care.

What really matters - The game is by far the best first person sword and shield game available on the market. I've been desperately looking for a better one for 4 years. Nothing plays as good as this.

I say this knowing full well that this game plays like garbage. Archer builds heavily drop off by the end of the game when enemies start doing speed before chasing you down. Wizard builds are weak at the start before the magic roid rage at the end of the game, sword and shield is the most balanced all through the game, but only because the enemies will be ready to beat you up at all times.

The game is brutally flawed, and sometimes I wonder about how much better this game could be if it was made on anything more than a shoestring budget in a small studio somewhere in the Mistake of France (or Lyon, as it's better known).

Yet, the more shortcomings the game this game threw at me the more tools it gave me to overcome them. It is a game that begs you to exploit it, and the most fun you will get is when you finally learn its rules and most importantly, to break them.

Although this game tries pretty hard to be a tight RPG with an interesting skill based system it fails at establishing a punishment for those who abuse certain mechanics, which probably everyone had fun with. And while there's nothing wrong with a broken game it kinda defines Dark Messiah in the "kicking" game that it kind of is, there's more to it but kicking is just way too strong. The story is also somewhat unbearable at times, the two women who fall for you are completely obsessed in many non subtle ways and it kind of builds up something that doesn't exist. Overall though it's pretty tongue in cheek and cheesy so I guess it gets a pass. It's still very fun so I'd recommend it but don't expect anything too deep

The first 1/3rd of the game before you enter the dungeon area is pretty fun. After you enter that place, its all downhill. This one is a maybe pick up later but probably not

Pros:
Fun early combat that completely breaks when against not humanoid enemies and slowly later on in the game
Goofy kicking and barrel throwing that works super well early on
the 2 goofy love interests, complete with evil or good choice, Arkane couldn't write a good story even back then

Cons:
The pit of pain that the dungeon is, the main area of the game, endless spiders and undead and poison status effect
the combat slowly becomes less fun as you get stronger
Constant crashing by default on windows 10 if you don't install a 4gb patch of some kind. The game was not built with 1080p in mind and as such only supports 1.5-2gb of ram max by default depending on your definition of ram. If it hits using more than that, say during a loading area or a lot of enemies, it crashes immediately. Install a generic 4gb max ram for 32 bit applications patch, ntcore, to generally fix this. Might still crash but way less.

4/10 overall, 8/10 just the first 1/3rd to the dungeon area. Really just play that.

Before I start here Dark Messiah suffered bad reviews because of all the terrible bugs that launched with the game. now that 2 1/2 years have passed Dark Messiah’s bugs have been pretty much been ironed out and you now have a pretty fun action RPG. Before I start explaining the game DM uses the Half-Life 2 engine so you can expect some wonderful graphics and effects. DM uses the HL2 engine very well, but the engine is a bit supped up so you’ll need a fairly beefy rig to run this game. If your computer was being pushed with HL2 then your computer will have a hard time running this game. I also have to mention that DM felt a lot like Oblivion Lite in the sense that it is set in Medieval times, melee combat is the first person, and the art style is a little like Oblivion (not as unique of course).


You play as a young protagonist named Sareth and you must stop the evil Arantir from using the Skull Crystal and bringing the Dark Messiah back to life. You have a choice to either stop him yourself or let the Dark Messiah live on. The story is actually fairly interesting and will keep you on the edge throughout this 15-20 hour adventure. Now DM is a linear RPG (it’s not free roaming like Oblivion) but makes up for it with an intricate combat system. You have about 30-40 different item slots and you can carry things from health, mana, weapons, magic etc. As you progress through the game you will earn skill points for completing objectives and you can upgrade a variety of things from endurance, health, stealth, archery skill, learn new skills such as heal, fire arrow, freeze, sanctuary etc. There’s a lot to learn and you won’t upgrade 100% in a play through. You can either concentrate on being a Knight, Mage, or Archer or just go down the middle.

There are a variety of unique weapons you can pick up throughout the adventure such as the awesome rope bow (shoot an arrow at any wood overhanging and a rope will come down), ice staffs, flame swords, poison daggers, and even a cool electricity shield that stuns enemies when they attack you. Now there are no shops where you can buy things so everything has to be picked up throughout the world. This keeps the action constantly going, but will disappoint people who are used to having stores in their RPGs.


Combat consists of left clicking for your basic attack, but if you hold it down you do a Power Strike and whether or not you strafe, move forward, or backward will determine whether it’s a sideswipe, impale, or overhead strike. This can let you easily dodge an attack and quickly strike back. You can use the right mouse button to block (and when you get the ability) left clicking to knock enemies back. Hit enough bad guys and you’ll get your adrenaline bar up and this results in a gory slow-mo instant kill. This applies to all weapons and each of them has their own unique advantages to them. You have a kick button and this is great when you are on a ledge so you can just kick them off. Every so often you’ll find spike beds on walls you can impale enemies on, also you’ll find traps that can be kicked down to crush enemies.

While the combat is really fun and you can do a lot with it; it will get repetitive after about halfway through unless you use different weapons and toss things up. Every so often you’ll find a blacksmith room where you can add bars of metal and forge your own weapons. Now when it comes to enemies there aren’t too many of them (knights, undead, spiders, necromancers, evil demons) and that’s about it. They are mixed up a lot, but you still can get bored of them after awhile.


Every so often, though, you will get a great boss fight and these are huge creatures that require key items in the environment to kill them. These are pretty awesome and are very satisfying to take down. My biggest complaint must be the level design. A lot of times you won’t find most of the hidden secret areas since they aren’t even in places you’d remotely think they’d be in. There will be times you’ll wander around for over 30 minutes in the same place wondering where to go and this has to do with poor level design. The levels are very linear, most of the time dark, and really hard to navigate. Other than this Dark Messiah is a pretty good game, and you can even get it off Steam for $10! I highly recommend Dark Messiah to any action RPG fan.