In a nutshell:
Role-playing games and first person action don???t always gel, but Dark Messiah aims to bring them together with state of the art graphics and a lot of dead orcs.

The lowdown:
Although popular in certain circles, the traditional Might & Magic games were pretty hardcore fantasy based strategy and role-playing games. This game though uses the original settings of those games to create a brand new first person action game that while it still retains some role-playing elements is primarily all about chopping up monsters into BBQ meat. As such, the melee combat is more complex than normal with an array of different attacks for different situations, including a handy kick for knocking bad guys into dungeon traps. It might rankle long time fans that all the emphasis is on violence but this is the best chance yet for drawing in new fans to the franchise.

Most exciting moment:
The game features a very unusual levelling system where instead of getting experience points for killing monsters you get it for completing specific objectives. This cleverly ensures that you can upgrade your character just as effectively without the need for constant combat ??? perfect if you prefer to play a more stealthy style of game.

Since you ask:
The game???s highly impressive graphics use the same Source engine that was created for the classic Half-Life 2. It???s not the only outside help the game has got, with developer Kuju (who also did the multi-player in Call of Duty: Finest Hour), brought in to create the multi-player modes as an essentially separate element.

The bottom line:
An interesting new step into the action genre for the heroes of Might & Magic.-HARRISON DENT

I don't have much to say that others haven't already, but a few things:

I am a big fan of RPGs, especially FPS ones, and I really wanted to like the combat in Oblivion. Unfortunately it was so lousy that I thought that I'd never see good melee combat in an FPS, that is until I played this game. The fighting is so detailed and interesting that the unfortunately very limited RPG factor can be pardoned.

Actually this is really an action game first and foremost, and that is what I've given it 5 stars for. There is just about everything in this game that a fantasy buff could want.

I'm surprised by most of the reviews on the net and on amazon criticising the storyline -- I thought it was very good, with a dose of religion, mysticism, and psychology, and there's no compulsive Christian or pseudo-Christian morality inserted by the writers (Thank God!).

It is very very gory, though, if you don't like that sort of thing.

The product descrption pretty much sums up the details. I read a short review about htis game in my Sub mag, and I have to agree totaly with what they said. This is a totaly UNDERATED game.

Played on Windows Vista64bit(Run as admin)

It's like a poor mans Oblivion, yes the graphics arent as nice, but it has some really good ideas in it that were really fun. The main elements that set this aside from say Oblivion. Is that in DMM&M you can kick & impail enemies on spikes, kick them off ledges and watch them fly(very enjoyable on cliffs), and pick up and throw most objects at enemies.I really enjoyed this, well worth passing the time with.

Dark Messiah is a game which I really wanted to excel in all areas. The multiplayer looked promising and the psychics and combat promised to be terrific. Sadly the game falls short on a variety of levels, especially the story. Avoid this failed title, as it's just not worth your time.

The Good:
- Nice graphics and level design

The Bad:
- Laughable Storyline
- Terrible Mplayer
- Poor Optimization, choppy in places

Right. Firstly, all you people who are going on about it crashing, chances are your PC is rubbish. And at worse turn the graphics down! Seen as they are pretty astounding, it is not surprising that low-spec pc's cant cope with it!

Secodnly, all you people who are comparing it with Oblivion, there isn't anything to compare. They are COMPLETELY different. Both are RPG's yes, but one has story that you HAVE to follow (Dark Messiah) and one is more a free romer (Oblivion), so pic the game that suites best.

Thirdly, whoever it was that was saying the combat system is awfull, thats a load of rubbish. The use of the Valve Engine used in Half-Life makes the system AMAZING, with incredibly life-like gravity and a intense combat system that really gets you stuck in.

And lastly, whoever said that it takes ages to install... well, so does every other next-gen graphics PC game. So get used to it, the graphics and the gameplay make it worth the wait.

It seems the main reason for the low ratings on this game is the difficulties people have getting the game to run, Those who can`t obviously hate it and those who can love it I couldn`t run it to start with but after turning down the resolution to 800/600 it seems to run fine. Visually good environment very interactive gameplay very varied with plenty of good combat variations. Only fault I find is that it is a bit of a full on start with lots of soldiers to deal with