Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (2006)

CW: Arachnophobia: worst spiders ever in a video game, maybe. (At least compared to other enemies) I can kick every other enemy to death but not the spiders, lol

yeah, these guys are bad! Fighting them makes my body tense up. They skitter, hiss, leap with a whoosh and spit poison, always travel in packs, fake death, and are really hard to kill. Oh and that's just ONE TYPE of spider in this game... hahaha It's the stuff of nightmares for arachnophobes!

This honestly looks like its got a better dynamic combat system than Skyrim you can poke slash, kick, chop, throw, the whole bit. I watched a demo/review and now am eager to play this because it looks like Thief got a full blown RPG bolted onto it. damn!

Unlike Skyrim this is supposed to be quite hard and has a shit health system... (Guess this i'm researching ways to cheat before even playing now) Gonna be fun :) holds out hands under the archive.org sauce-dispenser machine

Dark Messiah - First Impressions

Managed to get through the first few chapters in a single hour. Seems nice so far. It could be good but I feel like it sets itself up in terms of limits. You utilize the environment in interesting ways but your skills are capped and not too interesting to use as much as reacting to enemies and adapting to the scenario are. That could be fine in of its own but the game is really really easy and I set the difficulty on Hard. The main problems stem from your options being too strong, kick is practically too good and can stunlock an enemy provided you alternate between it and a slash or other weapon. Fire trap practically nukes the area and if that isn't strong enough for you you can throw a barrel and watch it do collateral damage. It's really easy to snowball yourself to victory, and even if you fuck up Heal does a lot of replenish hp.

I had a lot of fun though! Very enjoyable game so far mostly cuz of the speed and intensity. The options while limited are still fun to pull off because of the quick thinking the game pushes you in. And really i kind of rushed through the first hour with great fervor since I felt like the game somewhat encouraged me moving and acting fast. It might be fun to speedrun honestly, you have some avenues to sequence break and end fights quickly.