The graphics are, in a word, amazing! They took the Half-Life2 engine and used it to great effect, making very true to life environments. What particularly impressed me was the lighting. Each light source cast its own shadows, and gives off a very realistic lighting radius. This really added to the overall game experience, although I wouldn’t expect anything less from the people who brought us the Thief series. Every environment has useable objects as well, which figures heavily into much of the combat in the game. The only major complaint is the environments themselves, which are very linear. This is the only thing I really missed from the original Might and Magic games, each of which is an entire world, with hundreds of quests to complete. This might not be a fair comparison though, since Dark Messiah plays more like a first person shooter then a role playing game.

Character development is accomplished by the use of a tree based skill system. You have three skill trees: Combat, which (obviously) gives you bonuses to you melee and archery ability. Spells, which (again obviously) allows you to learn new spells and increase the effectiveness of the ones you already have. And Miscellaneous, which pretty much covers anything that didn’t fit into the first two trees (additional hit points and spell points for example). The trees are not overly complex, but they do offer a decent amount of variety for most players. Many of the weapons and equipment you find during the course of the game have skill requirements, so make your choices carefully.

Now, on to combat. This is where this game both shines, and shows what I consider to be one of the major flaws in the system. You have four different options for combat. First you can go completely melee, use a weapon and shield, and bash your way through the game. I personally found this to be the easiest way to play through the game. Second is to go the magic route, and make your enemies dead that way. Honestly, magic was a pain. There is a mana bar, and I never seemed to have enough to kill more then one or two things before I needed a mana potion (which are not plentiful), Third was archery (kind of a sub class of melee) but as with the mana potions, there seems to be a major shortage of arrows in the game. The archery was very effective for stealth kills, but only when I had the ammo for it. Fourth and last would be the stealth approach. Grab your dagger, hide and stab out from the shadows! Well, if you can manage to stay hidden that is, and manage not to make any noise, and get your positioning correct. Needless to say, I didn’t have much luck with stealth.

But guess what, none of this matters! You don’t need swords, arrows, magic, or stealth! You have a foot! Just kick your way through life! You see an enemy, kick it! It's amazing how well this works, it actually works a little too well. There are spikes and fires, and other traps scattered throughout the maps, along with a lot of very long falls, and no guardrails. So, no matter what path you choose, all you really have to do is kick everything as much as possible. This started out as a great idea that went horribly wrong, I think because they designed the environments with the kick move in mind. The sheer amount of traps borders on the ludicrous. I mean, who’s going to leave a bunch of pointy spikes leaning against every wall in a room? Also, the spikes on require the enemy to brush against them, and they are dead. This took a lot of the challenge out of the game for me. Don’t get me wrong, the combat system works well, and is very enjoyable. But the kicking is so overwhelming that it overshadows everything else.

Multiplayer is a blast! This is probably my favorite part of the game. You pick a character class (fighter, mage, healer, rogue), and as you get kills, you are able to unlock new abilities through the multiplayer class skill trees. This adds a whole new element to the game, since you have players with vastly different powers and abilities at their command. I think that this might be one of the best multiplayer ideas I have seen since counterstrike came out, it actually adds a new level of challenge to the game.

I feel I need to add this in at the end of the review as a caution for anyone who is considering buying the game. I was apparently one of the lucky few that actually had the game run perfectly right out of the box. A very large percentage of people who have purchased the game have had serious game play issues. Apparently it is still not running well even after the patch. If I was basing this review entirely on my own experience, I would recommend this game to anyone. But since there are so many issues with the game as it stands, I can not recommend it to you until the patching is complete, and the game is in a more playable condition. Keep the game in mind though; it’s worth owning, just not right now.