God damn it, who did this?
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic wasn’t game of the year by any means when it came out in 2006, but it was pretty damn good anyway if you could look past the flaws or somewhat repetitive nature of the game. Of course, to look past those, you had to see something at all, and the game tended to drop to 15 FPS for no reason at all, but that’s another issue, now isn’t it?
Well, imagine all the good elements of the gameplay got cut in favor of a process so streamlined you don’t get to make any choices except “What class will you pick?” at the start. Oh, I’m sorry, did you enjoy how the PC version had three skill trees, letting you use big fucking weapons, staves, arrows, nasty stabby daggers, or flaming death from your fingertips? Too bad now. Not only are you shoehorned into the class of “warrior”, “archer”, “assassin”, or “mage” at the start, you don’t even get to choose how to level up within them. You get experience for killing things, and at a certain point you level up, getting the next skill in the line, whether you want it or not.
And to keep up with that theme of extreme linearity, levels have been shortened or simplified quite a bit. The opening level is, in fact, entirely different(save for some recycled voices and keys). The second level, which was previously an intense rush to figure out where to go while being attacked by an undead cyclops, is now a 2 minute affair that never fails to hold your hand. I can’t define everything that’s been changed, sadly, but I can say far too much in terms of design. This is the essence of dumbed down. You can’t even pick up another type of weapon now. Hey, did you happen to somehow find frost daggers? A bow which launches exploding arrows? Oh, I’m sorry. You’re a warrior. You only get to use the occasional sword you find.
Even for non-warriors, too much of the game comes down to smashing the attack button. The previous careful tactics allowed by the flexibility of the game are gone. No more warriors getting out a bow and arrow to hit a weak spot or trigger a trap to avoid combat. Now they just have to walk on into the fight. And archers who get caught off guard? Well, that’s too bad, they won’t be pulling out a nice dagger or staff for protection. Not that arrows matter. It’s apparent immediately that the hero weilds a 10 foot sword, at least when of the warrior class. It’s far too easy to strike targets that are clearly on the other end of the great hall you happen to be pillaging.
Of course, there are other things than gameplay. Graphics, for example, and sound. Both are terrible. Muddy textures, poor animation, unstable framerates. The sound? Also muddy and skipping heavily. I’m not sure if swords have collided or someone dropped the fine china half the time. Even the FMV cutscenes, which are ripped straight from the prior version, look worse off. Poorly compressed with bad framerates.
This is an absolute failure of a port. A game that was previously quite good, if flawed has been considerably downgraded over the last 17 months. All good elements of the original have been stripped entirely, leaving lackluster combat with poor collision detection, little strategy, and no variety. Far too often sections have been stripped from levels, and the new ones are simply awful. From the very beginning of the game, with the near total redesign to the end where the flexibility that made things so good has been removed, the whole thing is simply awful.
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic:Elements gets 1 star, because even if you never get a chance, it’s fun to kill enemies with the environment, and certain moments still work well, and the story is still fine. Everything else, ugh. Ruined.
