Junior Adventurer's Guild: June - Dark Messiah of Might and Magic

[rusty_shackleford]

Disco Elysium is the flipside of an action game with RPG elements. It's a visual novel with RPG elements.

[Acrux]

Disco Elysium is the flipside of an action game with RPG elements. It's a visual novel with RPG elements.

Cough....Planescape Torment...

[Kolgrim]

Finished. Fun fact you can kick the credits by pressing the F key!

This was an interesting one to revisit. I only ever beat it once before about three years ago. Back then I went full magic but this time I went full warrior sword and shield with archery also maxed. I think the bow is actually fairly strong overall.

► Show Spoiler

I used it to kill the giant spider easily and the Dragon summoned by Arantir went down with just a few shots.

As for which ending I chose I went with taking power for myself and keeping Xana because /x/ has conditioned me into believing that a hot succubus is the ultimate waifu.

The game has a strong foundation but it's very jank. Half the time when I started the executable the game wouldn't even launch which is a similar experience to cranking up a jalopy. My main issue is I never really felt I was getting stronger when I dumped points into the combat tree. The later game enemies like ghouls were damage sponges that didn't feel very fun to fight. You guys already said everything I would about how the darkness is also a problem which causes you to miss levers and the like very easily. The **** bow seemed like an idea the devs relied on way too much and while finding gear in secret locations is cool there's no other way to really obtain it which meant in my case I never even found armor for my build until mid game. All that said though I do think Dark Messiah is a must play for the experience alone and it's nice to see what inspired Dishonored.

@Oyster Sauce Badge me please?

[Kolgrim]

Oh yeah I forgot to mention I nominate Parasite Eve.

[stormvermin]

Done.

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Played a battlemage. Not a particularly good playstyle but one I've never done before. Very tanky though. I don't recommend it.
Don't have a lot to say. It's not my favorite Arkane game and nowhere near their worst.
@Oyster Sauce give badge pls

[Tadeusz]

Here's my ending. It's still a pretty fun game

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[Oyster Sauce]

► I did it

Used the skull with Xana, of course. You're kind of pigeonholed into finding instant death spots for enemies in combat due to how tanky they get. It's never worth it to fight properly. I rushed the health regeneration skill and wore the regen ring the entire game which was pretty nice since it stacks to around 0.25hp/s, letting me ignore damage most of the time. Really annoyed me how abrupt the ending is.

Will probably play the 2 recent clones, Fatekeeper and whatever.

[logincrash]

There are no merchants in this game, right? So I don't have to hoard old weapons and **** when I find new ones?
I haven't played this game in years.

[Oyster Sauce]

There are no merchants in this game, right? So I don't have to hoard old weapons and **** when I find new ones?
I haven't played this game in years.

toss whatever you don't need

[Oyster Sauce]

Why is the boxart some ******* orc?

[logincrash]

Why is the boxart some ******* orc?

Because it's fun to kick them off of cliffs.

[Manny V]

Why is the boxart some ******* orc?

unga

[wndrbr]

Why is the boxart some ******* orc?

you can see Sareth's arm on the right.

[Oyster Sauce]

Zero loot from the lich, huh?...

Game has almost no loot overall

It could use some whale bone charms

[Fitz]

There are no merchants in this game, right? So I don't have to hoard old weapons and **** when I find new ones?
I haven't played this game in years.

No merchants. Shields break tho.

[Finarfin]

There are no merchants in this game, right? So I don't have to hoard old weapons and **** when I find new ones?
I haven't played this game in years.

No Merchants, but whatever you toss away can at times be found again later in the game. I literally found another Souldrinker (or whats its name)

[logincrash]

There are no merchants in this game, right? So I don't have to hoard old weapons and **** when I find new ones?
I haven't played this game in years.

No Merchants, but whatever you toss away can at times be found again later in the game. I literally found another Souldrinker (or whats its name)

That might've been a failsafe in case you lose any of your weapons back after (huge spoiler) getting killed the first time and and then getting rezzed by Xana.

[J1M]

There are no merchants in this game, right? So I don't have to hoard old weapons and **** when I find new ones?
I haven't played this game in years.

No Merchants, but whatever you toss away can at times be found again later in the game. I literally found another Souldrinker (or whats its name)

The Nike of staves.

[Tangerine]

There are no merchants in this game, right? So I don't have to hoard old weapons and **** when I find new ones?
I haven't played this game in years.

No merchants. Shields break tho.

Only low tier ones do. The enchanted ones are indestructible.

[J1M]

How hard would people whine that "it's not an RPG" if I nominated Overlord?

[Tangerine]

How hard would people whine that "it's not an RPG" if I nominated Overlord?

I've read Art of the Deal. I know what you're doing.

[Killagain665]

OK @Oyster Sauce I have completed this 2006 game.

First off the graphics aren't bad really. The lighting was the biggest flop, suddenly tombs would appear out of nowhere and enemies would be constantly in shadowed state, but I have heard some mods/reshades can fix it. So don't be to hard on 2006 for it's models and textures, this is good, over all for the age of the game 7/10.

Highlights are:

► Show Spoiler

Facing downs to hit shorter enemies feels like it shrinks the hit box considerably and makes you constantly have to listen to the ground strike sound effect so goblin and spiders get annoying real quick. Climbing up/vault up sucks cause it seems the weapon flourish animation gets in the way so much that even walking across uneven floors trips this and gets in the way of combat sometimes and exploration all the time. I HATE THE CONSTANT SWORD FLOURISHING. Shield are stupid and block to much in my opinion while trying to look around. They should pop out when you block with them and otherwise be invisible so you can look down. Most spells are useless or difficult to time since this game has a fairly fast past (not rapid pace but more than a languid stroll some games have, TES) The constant use of **** bow and platforming style mechanics makes is lean towards a "Zelda" wanna be? Don't know how you will take that but, yeah. Open/Closing chests should happen once not 4^10^-183717 times per trying to open them. Since the game allows for you to close chests if the target priority hasn't shifted then you will just close the **** thing instead of get the loot. Going for secrets is stupid. I don't need more potions and the only thing I got useful is the endless quiver 1 chapter earlier from what I can tell. I also kind of hate fights they force you to run from. The Pao Kai that you have to trap in the portcullis is dumb. I was asked to get its attention and lead it to the portcullis and shut it on it's head and really all I had to do was run through a doorway and pull a lever, the game auto put the head there when it closes. Whatever. The giant worm was dumb to. If you want to do something like this. Make it just a precarious situation that leads to a platforming sequence of various precarious situations due to the environmental hazards or failed architecture or whatever. I see big worm, I want to kill big worm and use it for bate. Spells range from great and useful to way to slow to even be viable except in certain situations. The bow is the same as a mid speed spell so except for sniping or getting into position to fight a cyclops, it really isn't useful since there is always a quick kick and dead everywhere, except for those type of scenarios. The plethora of weapons and armors............. aren't here. There are some, but it is only really what elemental damage type you want to do or if you chose to save Leandra and go to the temple and get the dragon weapons which make the end game a ******* joke almost. Armor is just 2 of each from what I can tell and nothing really adds to defense enough for it to be amazing. I liked getting a few extra health or mana, but that is it.

Ch 8. You are walking around ye ole Necropolis and realize they need to do better for their plumbing.

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I chose to go my own way, just like Xana wanted me to and daddy killed her for it.

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[stormvermin]

Armor is just 2 of each from what I can tell and nothing really adds to defense enough for it to be amazing.

Endurance specced armor actually has a third tier that gives +10 health but the mage armor is probably better because more mana=more casting sanctuary.

[Killagain665]

more casting sanctuary

Which is better than any armor imho

[Fitz]

Neat! I found another secret area, can't wait to see what's my reward for this. . . . Alright, I found a single hp potion where's the rest of the loot?
...oh, so that's all i get, huh

[Oyster Sauce]

Neat! I found another secret area, can't wait to see what my reward for this. . . . Alright, I found a single hp potion where's the rest of the loot?
...oh, so that's all i get, huh

All of the best gear is given to you for free outside of secret areas

[Fitz]

Yeaah,... kinda lame isn't it?

[Killagain665]

Hey I got the quiver of infinite arrows a level before you could get it because I spent 20 minutes **** jumping and dying over and over again in a vertical shaft getting to that secret.

[Fitz]

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm so happy all four of the lich kings were next to each other.

[Fitz]

Done and dusted!

► Show Spoiler

Badge me up, Scotty!

Thoughts on this - I really wish the game was more like the first few chapters instead of going into a temple and ruins adventure. I played this on Hardcore and since this is my first time playing this I didn't really have any idea how vital it would be to get my build going as quickly as possible. That made some parts of the game very unbearable as I was struggling with surviving, but luckily my trusty kick was there to bail me out. The game looked pretty and I enjoyed the locations I was exploring and there was a cool sense of adventure all the way through. That's one side of the coin.

And the other side of the coin is that this game is a junky piece of ***. Zombies spawning inside of you not allowing you to move, enemies not doing their hit animations and hitting you, tons of crashing, how combat is and not being able to see **** most of the time are some of the things that quickly come to mind, and there's plenty more. If this game was a person I'd understand completely if people punched it in the face on an hourly basis.

It was fun to play the predecessor of so many games I've played, but the jank is too much and the non-janky parts of the game also need more polishing.
I liked the vibe Dark Messiah has, but it's also a miracle you can finish the game too.