By Brandon Salcedo on June 13th, 2008

The story loosely references the Might and Magic universe through its familiar monsters and a tale about a sleeping ancient’s awakening. You know the setup by now in some form or another: Thousands of years of war and strife are met with a heroic end, as an evil force is trapped inside a magical prison. But a flaw in the sealing ritual allows this force to seep out during an eclipse, and the dark arm of humanity aims to complete the resurrection by finding its fabled lost skull.

As, Sareth, a young apprentice of a powerful wizard, you’re sent on your first expedition to recover the fabled Shantiri Crystal. Without knowing why and without the direct supervision of your master, things start turning suspicious towards the motives behind your upbringing. When you’re sent to deliver the crystal to another wizard with nothing more than the telepathic aid of a sexy witch (who’s never shy to admit she’d rather get into your pants than serve your mission in any useful way), the city is raided by monsters with a gigantic abomination of a Cyclops at the fore, and things just get confusing. To solve these mysteries, your destiny awaits across the sea, but not before you have to raid the ship and rid it of its denizens first. It’s like, with every step he takes, Sareth’s enemies are always one step further.

It’s a good thing Sareth is talented at killing them. Dark Messiah exists almost solely to give the player gratuitous thrills with its many different forms of murder. Don’t worry; these are indeed bad guys you’re slaying – it’s all good. Whether from bashing their skulls in with a barrel, or setting off a trap that buries them under some; tossing an oil jar and setting it ablaze with a well placed flame arrow or plain kicking them off a cliff and hearing them fall to their doom, Messiah delivers the satisfaction of besting the baddies like no other game out there. It’s this sort of mischievous fun with the physics that pervades the otherwise stale fantasy universe. But in many ways it’s a one-trick pony because of it.

There’s only so many times you can fake surprise when so many traps feel set up, so after the novelty of assassinating wears a little thinner the flaws are made apparent. Looking past the thrill-kills shows that Messiah: Elements doesn’t know what it wants to be. Its level design often features darkly lit linear corridors with very little chance for deviation. Along with enemies announcing your presence before they give chase, it’s like this game wants to be a stealth title but doesn’t have the literal guts to see it through. Without its former RPG elements, Messiah’s left wading in a strange concoction of first-person action and trial-and-error platforming; not unlike Call of Juarez but it’s at least a little more focused and careful about its execution.

Depending on which of the four classes you choose to be, you’re sent up a different skill tree. The Warrior, for instance, will acquire a pirouette to knock surrounding foes down, and the Mage will similarly acquire more powerful spells. Each class thankfully plays different, but the choice to strip the game of its customization was a bad one. Since you have no control over how your character develops, and the base Messiah engine was designed around the fact that you originally could, there are many times where your progress just doesn’t agree with your current skill set.

For instance, if you choose the "Assassin" class, stealth is broken until you at least achieve level three. Until then, you can’t so much as raise your head before an enemy spots you from the other side of the stage. There’s never a more frustrating stealth game then when you can’t grasp how well you’re hidden. Messiah gives you but a little icon that brightens to dictate whether you’re in the clear, but it’s never obvious enough. Sometimes Sareth would be in pitch darkness and yet somehow spotted; other times he could crouch in plain daylight, just inches from his enemy’s face, and they were none the wiser. It makes no sense and what compounds the problem is the often poor AI.

No joke: I witnessed nine goblins kill themselves as I lay hidden in the shadows above. All I did was kick one into the fire and jump away once its brethren shouted and gave search. Their method of scrutiny impressed nothing on me but their utter stupidity as they all ran up to their charred comrade and every one of them, in succession, caught fire themselves! I reveled in the hilariousness of it all until I realized how cheap it felt. Unfortunately this was not a rare occurrence or a glitch as there were several times I gained experience from a kill that had nothing to do with my actions whatsoever.

There’s little thrill to be had in killing your enemies once you realize there’s little threat from them in the first place. While the stealth aspects of the Assassin and Archer classes will prove tactical at first (due again to broken stealth), the Mage and Warrior classes focus on a faster, more direct approach to victory, and they are the more enjoyable choice as a result. But with health potions strewn about, the difficulty never feels rewarding. What seems to kill you more are the forced platforming segments that intermittently rear their heads to yank the story from its sometimes predictable pacing. Most have come to realize that first-person is not the best view to feature jump mechanics, and Messiah does nothing to change their perception.

To its credit, the game tries to keep the level progression fresh with many different locales like towns, ships and catacombs, but a given stage never really adds anything new to the table. You still sort of sneak around and try to get the jump on a small band of enemies – you know – if they don’t kill themselves in a campfire first. There are portals throughout the game that take you to a necromancer’s hideout, but rather than serve to freshen the pace in any way, it’s like they impose just long enough on the current stage to make it feel like you’re backtracking when you return to it. Read: unnecessary.

Where the title does shine a little more is in its visual presentation. Anxious real-time cut scenes, like the town being ravaged by an army of evil, are exhilarating and the camera shoots the action suspensefully. Unfortunately, these moments are rare and they clash with the otherwise stealthy, brooding gameplay. While not pushing the hardware, Messiah does manage excellent depth-of-field, dynamic contrast and some well placed bump-mapping. But the framerate can suffer, especially around water areas. And aside from the weirdness that necromancers appear as fully armored black knights, that particular enemy model is relied far too heavily on.

A clunky menu interface, weird glitches and useless item collecting only compound the confusion that is Dark Messiah: Elements. In all honesty, the incredibly over-top-ways in which you can slay your foes can be so much fun to execute and plan. But when the game drags on for a few more hours and this core mechanic sees little change along the way, you realize you’re just fighting the same unintelligent enemies over and over again. It’s not necessarily a wasted effort, as I can see this being a pick-up game you just revisit every once and awhile to mess around with, but as an RPG, it’s hard to take it seriously. The four classes offer some replay value, but if you start with the broken "Assassin" class like I did, you’re less likely to care about the other ones. Rent it first; if you still get a buzz from kicking another black knight into another spiked wall after that, be my guest.