Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements Reviews
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Once, back in the dimly remembered golden days of PC gaming, there was a company known as New World Computing. This company, one of the giants of RPG development, was responsible for one of the best loved series of role playing games to be found on a cathode ray tube: Might and Magic. The series was famous not just for the quality of the gameplay, but for a sense of quirky irreverence that was made manifest in almost all aspects of the game. They were serious RPGs that didn't take themselves too seriously. Fast forward to today, and New World Computing is long gone, but the Might and Magic name remains.Video Game Talk gives it a 2.5/5.
Unfortunately for fans, the current caretaker of the series, Ubisoft, has treated it like a dying mule, working it as hard as possible before sweet, merciful death finally comes. Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements is the latest humiliation for this once proud series. The game is a port of the middling PC original, and the first Might and Magic game on the 360. Somehow, in the process of bringing the game to the 360, Ubisoft Annecy managed to turn a mediocre game into an execrable one.
I was a little dismayed with the opening of the game, which launches you into the story...in an average looking mountain area. After dispatching a few random guys and finding a key to open an even more randomly placed door. This is one of those games where you have to sift around and maybe turn a few things over to try and find keys, but thankfully the keys aren't so hidden that it's frustrating. The locked doors, however, are randomly placed - they generally don't lead to anything special, they are just locked because the designers thought it would be a good time to make the player search for a key.
The fighting is another story, as the game's melee fighting is some very average swordplay against enemies - largely either undead or generic soldiers that all largely stand around until you smack them and even then seem a little dim - that isn't particularly intense or interesting. Eventually, it even starts to get a little repetitive. Layered on top of the fighting is frequent narration that becomes irritating (not only is the dialogue corny (some of the text notes that play between levels are terribly written), but overly expository), such as one rather laughable moment where the player is told that they can't be helped beyond this point and then reminded that they can't be helped - before a boss battle against a rather slow-moving spider creature. Speaking of reminders, there's some dialogue from NPCs that keeps repeating on a loop (kicking them to get them to stop talking unfortunately doesn't work.)
