Jeff was too hard on Dark Messiah (and perhaps a bit unlucky with his time spent on the game.)
However, I disagree with his review of Dark Messiah. It isn't the best game to ever hit the ever shrinking PC games shelf at EB, but it isn't a bad game either. I find the game to be quite enjoyable and a lot of the single player story gave me memories of the original Half Life with the way it makes you feel like you are in a movie or something along those lines. Don't confuse that statement to mean the story itself is as good as Half Life's story was, just that presentation of it is reminiscient of Half Life.
The single player story isn't going to knock your socks off with its twists and turns. This is no Knights of the Old Republic. The game gives you too many hints entirely too early about the eventual twist and ruins what could have been a good unforseen bend in the road. The voice acting is mediocre for most of the game, but a few of the game's characters are actually acted pretty well; most notably Leanna and a certain necromancer lord that I cannot recall the name of off hand. Xana is decently voice acted as well, which is good since you will being hearing from her... a lot. Phenrig, while not horribly voice acted in an acting sort of way, came off as very cheesy to me. he reminds me of one of your bonehead D&D buddies trying to pull off a deep and powerful sounding voice during one of your dice rolling expeditions. I didn't not find Xana to be annoying as Jeff did in his review, although I do think she is often too quick to tell you how to proceed in certain rooms that would only require a bit of looking around and maybe a tad bit of using the old noggin. We're not talking about brain benders here. The ending also leaves a lot to be desired.
The combat, as Jeff said, is a bit repetitive, but not in a bad way. The game doesn't make fighting difficult by making the AI really intelligent; Rather, it throws lots enemies at you in varying environments that will often have reinforcements come in from odd directions as you kill off your targets. The result is that you tend to spend a lot of time jabbing and running, lining your targets up for a kick into a bonfire or spikewall only to get hit in the back of the head by a new enemy that you had not seen arrive on the scene. On normal, this isn't too bad and you won't die all that much more than likely. However, on hard the game pulls no punches and you will probably be taking many dirt naps in just the first few chapters of the game. Playing this game on hard is very rewarding as every fight can be a challenge and you could die in almost any engagement. It gives the game a much better mood as you'll spend a lot more time sneaking around, assessing the situation, and sometimes just avoiding fights all together. Hard mode will make you appreciate the power of things like stealth and the charm spell, to be sure. All that being said, hard mode will not be for everyone as it can be very difficult. I wish there was a mode in between the rather easy normal mode and the very difficult hard mode.
The sword is a powerful weapon in Dark Messiah, to be sure. I, however, do not agree with the "using any other weapon is a waste of your time" feeling that I got from Jeff's review. Especially on the hard difficulty setting, I find any enemy you can take out from a distance is a good thing. He was also critical of the flame arrow spell that is the first spell you'll acquire on the damage side of the tree. I went through the game the first time as an entirely mage based character and found this spell to be useful right up into the final chapters. It does more damage per second than fireball, which is much further down the tree, by far. It is your weapon of choice against spiders and humans most of the time. Fireball isn't so much about the damage as it is the knocking people around effect of it. Even against fire resistant enemies and groups of enemies, rapid firing flame arrow will not only add a decent bit of damage to your target, but is the fastest way to build adrenaline in the whole game with the possible exception of inferno. I found myself spraying it into a group of ghouls while backpedalling quite often just to get an adrenaline bar, then switching to lightning to kill them all with an adrenaline powered chain lightning effect. In the very final chapters many of the guards will still go down to only three to five flame arrows (on normal skill), which you can easily fire off in mere seconds due to its rapid rate of fire.
On the techincal aspect, the game looks good and sounds good. The physics of the game is great and leads to many of the same battles turning out in different and entertaining ways. Just trying to be creative in your use of the environment can be hillarious as you send enemies tumbling down stairs, tripping over eachother, being set on fire as flaming boxes are kicked into their head, or careening off edges as they slip on an ice slick you placed near an edge.
As far as technical difficulties go, I had absolutely none. The game ran perfect for me from start to finish and has yet to crash or give me any problems whatsoever. Perhaps I was a lucky one, or perhaps Jeff just had a string of bad luck. I can't say for sure as I have only tried it on this one machine. The only very minor downside being that if you need to alt-tab back to windows or the game gets minimized due to an incoming IM or something, it takes a few minutes for the game to maximize again.
The multiplayer is fun and fast paced. Like all games of this type, it is much more enjoyable if you find a group of guys you enjoy playing with or just happen to end up on a team that uses teamwork and supports eachother. The crusade mode plays a lot like a game of Battlefront or whatever version of Battlefield you prefer, except minus vehicles. I find it more enjoyable and I like the fantasy setting. There is something more exciting about having to stalk your prey as an assassin or figure out how to get close without being killed as a warrior. To balance things out, if a warrior does manage to get close to someone he'll pretty much instantly shred anything other than another warrior. To counteract the effects of lag and random strafing the game furnishes the warrior and assassin with a lockon button to keep your target in your crosshairs, which pretty much means if you catch them they have about a two and a half second life expectancy. This can be pretty frustrating at first if you choose to play one of the distance fighters, especially the wizard and archer, as you'll find yourself constantly getting smacked down by warriors who just charge you. After a while though, you'll figure out how to better stay out of melee range, which is much easier if you stand back and support your team from a distance. This is not always an option when joining public games as you never know what kind of idiots you'll have on your team, but you can still hold your own with a wizard in one on one with some practice.
All in all I find Dark Messiah of Might and Magic to be a solid game definitely worth your hard earned dollar if you have any interest in the genre, which is a melee heavy FPS. This game is very light on the role playing and very heavy on the slashing and kicking. The multiplayer is also likely to keep you entertained well after you've played through the single player game if you are into that sort of thing.