Dark Messiah

[Sir Taffsalot]

So I'm stuck at home with a sprained ankle with sod all to do but sit in front of the computer all day. So I'm looking through my CD/DVD/computer game collection for something to do and I find this little beauty. I bought it a year ago and I couldn't get it to work on my modern system. I said I'd sort it out later and put it on a shelf and forgot all about it. After a bit of tweaking I got it working this morning and have been playing it all day.

 

Wow! The guys who made this really love Thief. You have glowing mushrooms, rope arrows, a thiefs highway (seriously!) and the protagonist coming out with Garrett quoutes "inside at last". I managed to get to level 4 using a combination of stealth and hack n slash but when I got to level 5 I had enough points to max out on stealth so it's finally turned in to my cup of tea. This is really quite fun. I've avoided using any spells in case I want to play this again so I can be a mage isntead of an assassin.

 

Is there any other Dark Messiah fans around here?

[GameDevGoro]

Yes.

 

It's one of my favorite games of all time.

Played through it probably 4-5 times to date.

 

Edit: And not surprising at all, I played it like a Thief at least half the times.

Edited December 6, 2011 by GameDevGoro

[nbohr1more]

AFAIK, Dark Messiah has some Looking Glass credentials including Thief Fan Mission author Purah.

 

I have yet to try it, but I am intrigued.

[Flanders]

Yes this game is also one of my favourites. At some point in the game I found a 'master thieves outfit' in which it said 'a scarlet 'G' was embroided in the collar'.

[Glyph Seeker]

Man I am terrible at this game. I really want to like it... I'm chasing a ghoul across some roof tops now - but all the action feels weird and swimmy and I feel like I'm missing loads of secrets or things I'm meant to have by now...

[GameDevGoro]

Man I am terrible at this game. I really want to like it... I'm chasing a ghoul across some roof tops now - but all the action feels weird and swimmy and I feel like I'm missing loads of secrets or things I'm meant to have by now...

 

Yeah the game feels a bit stiff now and again... And as for missing secrets. I doubt it. Don't secrets in this game make that weird tinkling noise when you're near them?

 

Edit: And there are times when I all but ran past that freaking ghoul because the player is so much faster and better at climbing than the scripted ghoul is...

Edited December 7, 2011 by GameDevGoro

[Sir Taffsalot]

AFAIK, Dark Messiah has some Looking Glass credentials including Thief Fan Mission author Purah.

 

Really? That's amazing! I think calendra's legacy was the 1st Thief FM I Played. It totally blew me away.

 

Man I am terrible at this game. I really want to like it... I'm chasing a ghoul across some roof tops now - but all the action feels weird and swimmy and I feel like I'm missing loads of secrets or things I'm meant to have by now...

 

That was one of my favourite bits. It felt a bit like the thieves highway. I also found this level quite difficult. When I got to the warehouse I had no health poitions and hardly any energy left so I restarted the level. The second time through I had a better grasp on how to battle and use the stealth system.

Edited December 7, 2011 by Sir Taffsalot

[jdude]

I played this game a while ago, it's pretty fun in terms of mechanics and gameplay but the story and voice acting are really bad.

[Midnight]

I really like this game as well, though I kind of gave up on it at the later levels. Need to get back into it. It does often feel a bit too scripted at times, but for the most part the combat is excellent and it does have it's thief like moments which is always a plus in my book. I still prefer Arx Fatalis from the same developer, but they're very different games.

[Shadowhide]

its a bad game

not bad at the start,but it turns worse each level

second half of the game is just awful

PS

Purah was working on CoD:Waw which is even worse game

[MoroseTroll]

I like Dark Messiah. Maybe this game in not an ideal one, but it's perfect to me.

[Glyph Seeker]

Man I've tried replaying Arx Fatalis twice but I just can't stand it. It's just so blood obtuse and picky about what you do. I really want to play it as a pure mage and find all the secrets and things but basic stuff like the inventory system hassle - the roundabout level design - and the ridiculously tough enemies mean I'd rather just watch a Long Play of it instead.

 

The first time i played it I somehow mislaid one of those damn red "keys" to opening the final boss door and so despite searching the entire game head to toe it had obviously deleted one I'd dropped to make room for something and so it was uncompleteable.

[Jesps]

The first time i played it I somehow mislaid one of those damn red "keys" to opening the final boss door and so despite searching the entire game head to toe it had obviously deleted one I'd dropped to make room for something and so it was uncompleteable.

 

I never completed if for that very reason. Other than that it was a very good game imo. Maybe I should replay it some day.

[Sir Taffsalot]

Just found the Garrett outfit. This game is awesome! In the final level now. The Necropolis. If this isn't the best looking krypt in a computer game it's definately one of the best I've seen.

[Sir Taffsalot]

How on earth do you win the last battle with the boss? He keeps summoning dragons which are almost impossible to hit as they never stop moving and can kill you with one breath of lightning (not fire it seems) and after every 15 minutes when you happen to kill one, by the time you run over to him to attack him, his force field is back up with a new dragon to slay. This seems impossible.

 

Meh. Great game up til this point. As this is the final boss fight I've got better things to do. Apart from the seemingly impossible ending I think this game is awesome.

[MoroseTroll]

Hm... I've killed Arantir for 5..7 minutes. How? Firstly, I'm sneaking upon him and cutting his throat. When he is starting to claim that I have a helper, I'm running back upstairs, to the second floor, and choose my bow. Than I'm fighting the dragon until it disappear, and after this, I'm trying to hit Arantir. Of course, the distance between him and me is far enough, but his is almost immovable during the fight.

 

PS. Have you updated your copy of DMoM&M to the v1.02?

[Sir Taffsalot]

I'll have another go later this week. It's such a great game. I'd love to see it through until the end.

 

Yeah I've got the 1.02 patch thanks.

[chakkman]

Reviving this old topic, because I found a solution to my issue trying to play this game on Windows 11. It always crashed after the first tutorial mission, so I took a look on the net for a solution, and found one on PCGamingWiki: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Dark_Messiah_of_Might_and_Magic#Crash_when_changing_level

Basically, you need to patch the exe to make the game utilize more than 2 GB of Ram. Like with quite a few other older games. Works nicely now, and, happy to play this gem of a game again.  It really is one of the best fantasy/RPG style games ever.

[Zerg Rush]

In W10 it works flaeles without patch. Its somewhat strange, it was a game only for WinXP and never works well in W7, even with a patch. But in W10 I never had problems. And now you say it needs again a Patch in W11?

Very strange. Anyway, yes, it's a real Gem which I like a lot. Amazing image quality and playability for so few resources it need.

[chakkman]

I played it through a few years on Windows 10, and didn't need a patch there (even though I also had occasional crashes when changing the levels/chapters, especially chapter 4), but, on Win 11, the game crashed every time after the tutorial level. I'm pretty sure the patch also helps against the crashing on Windows 10. 

[Zerg Rush]

22 hours ago, chakkman said:

I played it through a few years on Windows 10, and didn't need a patch there (even though I also had occasional crashes when changing the levels/chapters, especially chapter 4), but, on Win 11, the game crashed every time after the tutorial level. I'm pretty sure the patch also helps against the crashing on Windows 10. 

No problem with crashes, maybe GPU related, but anyway nice to know about the patch.

 

Some parts of the game remember to TDM, related to stealth, rope-arrows, among others, some environments could have been perfectly from some TDM missions. Maybe someone can "steal" some ideas for a future TDM mission

Edited September 9, 2023 by Zerg Rush

[chakkman]

4 minutes ago, Zerg Rush said:

No problem with crashes, maybe GPU related, but anyway nice to know about the patch.

I think it's the game not allocating enough Ram. Maybe it isn't an issue for you depending on your game settings. The game obviously consumes more Ram when you crank up the graphics settings.

[Zerg Rush]

1 minute ago, chakkman said:

I think it's the game not allocating enough Ram. Maybe it isn't an issue for you depending on your game settings. The game obviously consumes more Ram when you crank up the graphics settings.

Yes, naturally it demands more resources at higher settings, but due to its minimal requirements there should be no problem on current equipment even at the highest settings, at least not on my laptop, which isn't exactly a NASA PC either.
The same thing happens with the Tomb Raider 2013 that I have, which runs smoothly on maximum settings, without my laptop exploding into spontaneous combustion.
They are exquisitely optimized games with graphics that you would not expect with such low system requirements.
I have tried games with much more rudimentary graphics that I was not able to put above 15 FPS, due to how poorly they were optimized.

[datiswous]

I stopped playing because it lowers performance to a slideshow over time. I'm using proton (Linux), so maybe that's the reason.

Here somebody explains it:

Quote

It's widely known that this game has MAJOR memory leaks. I tried playing through and got slowdown every few minutes. only way to help is to change just one of the video settings and have it re-load the game engine. then it'll be fine for another few minutes, but it'll go right back to chugging along. Not worth it.

https://hardforum.com/threads/dark-messiah-framerate-drops-after-in-game-loads.1429977/

Edited September 29, 2023 by datiswous

[Zerg Rush]

At least in Windows i never note a slow performance in the game, maybe, due that it's originally a Windows only game, the adaptation for Linux isn't so good optimized relative to the Memory handling.