Dark Messiah - Reviews @ Game Over & GamePyre

60% is the score for Dark Messiah in Game Over's review, which is rendered fairly useless in the first couple of lines:

If you go into Dark Messiah of Might and Magic like I did, looking for an RPG, you’re going to be shocked if not disappointed. It took me a considerable grinding of mental gears to get myself out of the Oblivion mindset and start to understand DM for what it is, because it’s not an RPG in the vein of Oblivion. It’s not even as much of an RPG as Titan Quest. It’s more like a first person Tomb Raider with some light RPG elements thrown in to try and accommodate different playing styles. In that could perhaps have succeeded, but instead it fails because of a lack of enemy variation, a stupid story, and a truly novel combat system that is overused to such an extreme that it becomes almost a gimmick. It also claims the rather dubious prize of being the first game in my memory that gives away the big plot twist during the opening movie“ did they show the movies out of order or something? Oh, and it has absurdly long load times.

...on the other hand, Gamepyre has a 13 page extravaganza complete with a history of Might & Magic, an award and a score of 84:

Dark Messiah Might and Magic is not for everyone, but I had a lot of fun playing the game. The combination of the action adventure game ala Tomb Raider with RPG elements ala Might and Magic works for me. The game has a few “wow” moments like when you first fight the Cyclops one on one and figure out you aren’t doing any damage with spells or weapons. Replay ability in the game is pretty good. You can play the game as a fighter, a mage an archer as your primary focus, and then replay the game using different skills. The game also has a couple of places where a choice can affect the outcome.