There are not many games I can think of out there with a strange, O.C.-like love triangle between a warrior, a wizard’s apprentice and the disembodied voice of a demon girl. When not purring not-so-subtle double entredres such as, “You know what they say about a man’s front gate…” she’s jealously commenting on Sareth’s growing romantic involvement with Leanna, the young niece and well-bosomed pupil of Menelag. The curveball thrown into the mix is that the consciousness of a slutty demon woman named Xana is inserted in Sareth’s mind.
Lots of other plot developmenty-type things occur, but as a whole, the story is chock full of instantly forgettable fantasy clichés involving orcs, evil cities, questionable parentages and such. Sareth thus must get his hands on the Skull for reasons that are only marginally clear. Menelag and Phenrig (the names in Dark Messiah might as well be plucked from some sort of random Fantasy Name Generator) are both hankering for a second artifact called the Skull of Shadows. After finding the crystal, Sareth is tasked to bring it to an associate of Phenrig’s, the Wizard Menelag. Phenrig dispatches you to the city of Stonehelm to accompany an expedition trying to retrieve some sort of mystical crystal. The story is centered around Sareth, an apprentice for a mage named Phenrig with a strangely modern day West Coast accent.
The plot of Dark Messiah also plays like the PC version of the game. To its credit, Ubisoft also tries to change up the mayhem by occasionally letting you kick enemies off cliffs, push them into spikes, send them into deadly booby traps. It adds a little excitement to the regular fighting, which mostly consists of mashing the right trigger a lot. The assassin is a personal favorite because about a third of the way through the game, your stealth power gets to the point where you can sneak behind enemies and kill them silently in one bloody blow. The sword swinging, melee-happy warrior is standard stuff, the mage has a few interesting tricks up his sleeves, but the most amusing classes to play as are the archer and assassin. You are given a pre-set power for leveling depending on which of four basic classes you’ve chosen to play as at the beginning of the game: warrior, archer, mage or assassin.Įach of the classes plays slightly differently from the others, giving the game some replay value, but not all classes are created equal. In Elements, however, the level-up process is almost completely automated. Killing enemies and getting through objectives earned skill points that you could use however you liked. Of course, in the PC version, the player had more control over the hero’s growth. It’s a fantasy-themed first person shooter with the vaguest hints of a role-playing game. Unfortunately, there’s no Andre the Giant or Wilt Chamberlain in Dark Messiah, but that’s nitpicking.ĭark Messiah really hasn’t changed much from its original appearance on the PC in late 2006. In fact, there are a lot of similarities between Dark Messiah and camp classic Conan the Destroyer: namely, the swords and sorcery setting, wooden acting, and ridiculous plot. This scenario sums up the experience of playing Ubisoft’s Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements on Xbox 360, a terrible game that ends up being addictive, trashy fun anyway. Well, at least, you love it when you’re half delirious/drunk in the middle of the night. It’s got a dumb, illogical story, cringe-inducing dialogue, and community theater-level acting, but you love it anyway. The really cheesy ’80s flick (some call them ‘guilty pleasures’) that manages to be wildly entertaining despite its flaws. reruns, and celebrity infotainment news shows, you find that movie. Inevitably, after passing by infomercials, old M.A.S.H.
on a Saturday night and you raid the fridge for a snack and casually flip on some cable TV for some channel surfing action before bed.