Dark Messiah: Elements (Xbox 360) > Reviews > Dated Messiah???

Author's product rating:   

Playability & Enjoyment	OK -
Addictiveness	Not exactly addictive but certainly playable
Graphics	Weak - I am not impressed
Difficulty & Complexity	Quite a simple game not too complicated
Value for money	Limited value

Advantages:	Fun while it lasts, Makes a change from all the shooters out at the moment
Disadvantages:	Technically Buggy, Bad Combat .  Barely any RPG Elements .

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements
Developer: Arkane Stuios
Publisher: Ubisoft
Rated 15

I was a fan of oblivion and was told that this game
was very much like it but it had a better combat system, and
after seeing my friend playing it on his pc a while ago I decided to rent
it on the Xbox 360.

The single player campaign sees you playing as a young man named Sareth and lets you choose from warrior, archer, mage, and assassin character classes where you must play through the nine story chapters. It sounds like a fair amount to play but they are mostly brief and the game took me about 8 hours to complete, although I died quite alot which if I hadn't the game would have been alot shorter.
The fact that the game calls its self a action game and a RPG isn't really true, because even though you level up and gain better weapons, you dont actually get to choose your stats, the game automatically does it for you and most of these are health or strength upgrades, instead of things that would improve your chosen character class which takes any of the RPG depth away from the game.
Whereas the PC version let you spend skill points in the areas you thought to be most valuable to your playing style.

Combat isn't very good at all, which see you simply having to press the right trigger until the bad guys die in spouts of blood and sometimes gore.
The number of enemies you fight at once doesn't reach true action proportions with you basically just killing a group of 3 or less zombies, vampires, mages or guards, which shows a major lack of
lack of variety. You occassionaly fight large spiders and mini-bosses such as Cyclops which are killed by attacking their eye.
Throughout the game you fight four of these which after the second becomes very repetitive and you seem to hope there will be no more throughout the game. And you also fight 3 flying beasts in different parts of the game which you have to kill in different ways which at least adds a little variety.

The Controls are extremely awkward at times, making you fall to your death quite alot. The game seems to not understand distances, with you being able to use a 4 foot blade to kill a enemy 8 foot away. And its the same with jumping too with some distances looking close but the character not being able to reach them.

This is a direct port of the First-Person Action RPG which was
Released on the PC in late 2006. And it hasn't aged very well. The graphics were dated and flat, and the game itself is very buggy. A few times I found myself falling through floors, and in the middle of a fight I was stood on a dead enemys shield and I was unable to move or use weapons at all. Also the game has traps which you can use which are mostly barrels and boxes on a high up ledge where you can chop the support beams with your sword and have them all fall and crush the enemy, but a few times the boxes just floated in mid air when trying to do this.

Despite all of this I still kind of enjoyed playing the game while it lasted because it made a change from all of the first person shooters that the gaming market seems to be flooded with these days.
I'd give it 3 out of 5 due to the terrible technical bugs and the RPG System. I'd reccomend that you rent it instead of buying due to the short lifespan.

(Also posted on Dooyoo)