Most people still think that this game has one of the best melee combat system. And it's true, a bit clunky here and there, but it's really fun and there are plenty of mechanics to play around.
Though you most likely need to install some patches, yet I recommend using mod launcher from ModDB for now, it should make the game playable. And since it's a source engine, it's quite easy to make some mods and the modding potential is huge once the mod launcher will be updated to v1.0.

This game is a rare gem - you can play it without any mods, oob and have a blast. Personally i think its better than skyrim, although its not as big and is very straightforward.

Originally posted by withered:

This game is a rare gem - you can play it without any mods, oob and have a blast.

Yes, vanilla is fine, though it has a few bugs and balancing problems, but it doesn't matter that much, especially for the people who are not psychos enough to replay this game for 1000 hours straight. Anyway, most people will probably stumble upon crashes and other issues, so doing some patching is advisable.

Personally i think its better than skyrim, although its not as big and is very straightforward.

Also completely different genres!

I enjoyed my very recent playthrough. The melee combat system is some of the best, even a little better than the Dishonored series made by the same team (Dishonored is more stealth focused and does not have the environmental destruction this game has).

What game released in the past 10 years comes even close to replicating the kind of game this is? It's only really dated in that modern devs don't care about taking risks and pushing the envelope anymore

Originally posted by solidap:

What game released in the past 10 years comes even close to replicating the kind of game this is? It's only really dated in that modern devs don't care about taking risks and pushing the envelope anymore

Fallen Aces.

Nobody here is being honest, I see.

This game is not really playable, and a lot of us are not happy about that. You need to download mods to make it work, which is terrible. As for the gameplay, it's very dated. The combat system is very clunky and unintuitive compared to games like Vermintide 2. It's an artifact of the past.

This game is a piece of history, and that's why a lot of people love it, but it is completely out of date. If anyone is saying this is amazing, they don't get around much.

List of oldness:
1. No dodging. It came before Dark Souls' innovations.
2. Backward movement is super slow, so you can't slink away from a swing.
3. Doing power attacks forces camera movement and character movement, which is very jarring and unnatural.
4. Not 100% about this one, but I think weapons don't have swing hitboxes and range hitboxes? What I mean is that you have to put the crosshair on something to hit it, even if the swing should naturally hit it by virtue of the shape of the swing.

Do not buy, unless you are ready to mod it to make it work. Then be prepared for a hack and slash from the early 2000's.

Originally posted by Ghoul Hunter:

This game is not really playable, and a lot of us are not happy about that. You need to download mods to make it work, which is terrible.

New to PC gaming?

As for the gameplay, it's very dated. The combat system is very clunky and unintuitive compared to games like Vermintide 2. It's an artifact of the past.

Can you use some kind of an ice spell (or anything slippery, banana peel even) to make enemies slip of a cliff and fall to their demise in Vermintide 2? Better yet, can you skip a hard 1v1 boss fight by using a combo of an oil jar and a little spark of fire? Can you bhop around with a burning haystack that you can toss around using telekinesis, thus making a flamethrower of sorts? Not saying that game can't be fun, but there aren't many games with the mechanics Dark Messiah has, really.

This game is a piece of history, and that's why a lot of people love it, but it is completely out of date. If anyone is saying this is amazing, they don't get around much.

Sure, the game is old and has it's jank, but does it stop being fun because of a few inconveniences? Does any game becomes unplayable because something new came out and the old game needs a 1 minute patch to work?

Nobody here is being honest, I see.

Yes, opinions are just lies, everyone wants to fool the OP, Arkane studios is bad at creating games, this game does not have any fixes and so on!

There are few other things you added;

List of oldness:
1. No dodging. It came before Dark Souls' innovations.

Okay? You can dodge by using shields, blocks, props and even corpses. Your movement allows you to bhop around the enemies at uncapped speed, so it's up to you. The game doesn't really need any cheap rolls, trust me.

2. Backward movement is super slow, so you can't slink away from a swing.

Can be fixed with one console command. It might be intentional too.

3. Doing power attacks forces camera movement and character movement, which is very jarring and unnatural.

Can be fixed with 1 or 2 console commands. Source engine is awesome, I know.

4. Not 100% about this one, but I think weapons don't have swing hitboxes and range hitboxes? What I mean is that you have to put the crosshair on something to hit it, even if the swing should naturally hit it by virtue of the shape of the swing

Not exactly, but partly true. You can't really place your crosshair on the other side of the screen and expect a hit, but staves and daggers have rather big slash attacks, so you can usually hit something, even if you are not aiming directly at the enemy.

Originally posted by Ghoul Hunter:

Nobody here is being honest, I see.

This game is not really playable, and a lot of us are not happy about that. You need to download mods to make it work, which is terrible. As for the gameplay, it's very dated. The combat system is very clunky and unintuitive compared to games like Vermintide 2. It's an artifact of the past.

This game is a piece of history, and that's why a lot of people love it, but it is completely out of date. If anyone is saying this is amazing, they don't get around much.

List of oldness:
1. No dodging. It came before Dark Souls' innovations.
2. Backward movement is super slow, so you can't slink away from a swing.
3. Doing power attacks forces camera movement and character movement, which is very jarring and unnatural.
4. Not 100% about this one, but I think weapons don't have swing hitboxes and range hitboxes? What I mean is that you have to put the crosshair on something to hit it, even if the swing should naturally hit it by virtue of the shape of the swing.

Do not buy, unless you are ready to mod it to make it work. Then be prepared for a hack and slash from the early 2000's.

did u just come from console gaming? were u perhaps born in the 2000s as well?

opinions are actually just lies that make us happy. Facts tho, this game crashed quicksmart. But the 15 minutes i actually played were good, i beheaded a dude then picked up his corpse and wobbled it around and then kicked it, i kicked another dude into an env trap, the swordplay was pretty good for a million years ago, the graphic fidelity was impressive for the dark ages, managed to play in 3840x2560 before it fell in a heap after the first section.

I kicked a barrel into a fire accidentally and it caught fire, call that super basic if you want but man that stuff rarely happens in games now, i know why, but its this sort of thing we looked for 20 years ago, games these days feel mostly like opinion generators, they've stripped out ll the interesting bits that were fun for genX, i guess partly because it was fresh and everyone had open eyes and eager brains wanting to see where it went. Now its just flatlined porridge simulators, which is fine, let the narrative drive the dev, that's more fun ultimately anyway. Factorio exists though, so does Rimworld, KCD is fun, though they took the mechanics too far imo, i ain't making any sort of potion thanks.

If this game didn't crash i'd still be in it for the rest of the night i reckon.

IMO dated are the games of today, they have no soul, no love put into them, is all graphics and zero substance, I get tired of them after the first play-through.
In the other end, I have played and replayed this game more times than I can count, I will not claim it looks better than modern games, it does not, but I have stopped caring about graphics in 2009, is also not a perfect game (no game is...), it has its issues, is a very bare bones, basic RPG for example, all the focus was obviously on the combat, but to me is fun, I like the combat and the game presentation, I also don't know why but I really like how Source Engine renders things.
Of course this depends on any individual preference and this is why IMO such questions are useless, because what you like, may be different from what others like, so the best way to know if a game is good or not, for you, is to play it yourself.

Originally posted by argoon:

IMO dated are the games of today, they have no soul, no love put into them, is all graphics and zero substance, I get tired of them after the first play-through.
In the other end, I have played and replayed this game more times than I can count, I will not claim it looks better than modern games, it does not, but I have stopped caring about graphics in 2009, is also not a perfect game (no game is...), it has its issues, is a very bare bones, basic RPG for example, all the focus was obviously on the combat, but to me is fun, I like the combat and the game presentation, I also don't know why but I really like how Source Engine renders things.
Of course this depends on any individual preference and this is why IMO such questions are useless, because what you like, may be different from what others like, so the best way to know if a game is good or not, for you, is to play it yourself.

facts... dark messiah was top tier for fps games. no1 followed

I wonder if OP even reads any of these. Probably read first 2 posts and forgot about this thread.

I have played and play games much older than this.
it's a boring game, it's like tomb raiders but with insipid enemies and forgettable story.
the RPG aspect is irrelevant. they tell me that each monster requires a specific quality to be killed, but this also applies to Call of Duty right? do you destroy the tanks with the Sten?

Originally posted by (†) Rev. Jim Jones:

I have played and play games much older than this.
it's a boring game, it's like tomb raiders but with insipid enemies and forgettable story.
the RPG aspect is irrelevant. they tell me that each monster requires a specific quality to be killed, but this also applies to Call of Duty right? do you destroy the tanks with the Sten?

Nobody plays Dark Messiah (or any Arkane game at this point) for the plot. People play them because they are fun and have a lot of mechanics gameplay-wise. And DM is not really an RPG either.
Though it's a fair point if the OP wanted to experience an interesting fantasy story, since it's quite generic at best.
But the second part of your comment is nonsense. It's not really a Tomb Raider or Call of Duty and there are no enemies that are scripted to be killed with X abilty or something.