All arrows should be rope arrows

And now, part 3 of my Dark Messiah of Might and Magic playthrough:

I want to take a break from my playthrough to talk about some of the things DM does well.

First off: rope arrows. The game has rope arrows. The game doesn't really need rope arrows. In all honesty, rope arrows add very little to the actual game play. That being said, there is something really fun about them. The basic idea is that you are shooting an arrow with a rope attached to it. If it sticks in something wood, it will drop a rope straight down from where it hit. You can then climb the rope to get to new and more interesting places. Most of the time it's pretty obvious; you get to the end of a corridor, look up and see a beam you can shoot a rope arrow into. Other times, it's merely a way to get above your enemies and easily go around them.

There are some great things you can do with them though. For example: back in Chapter 5, there's a section where you're out along some cliffs where the researchers there have built these house hanging out over the water. In one place, you drop down through the roof of one, and as you do, it starts to crumble and then the bottom breaks and you fall with it. I could clearly see that there was something in the room that I wanted... I was pretty sure it was some kind of armor. I made half a dozen attempts to run out there and then grab the armor, then jump onto a rope, but the floor just fell way too fast. I then proceeded to spend the next 10 minutes or so across another half dozen attempts setting up this system of ropes that lead all around the outside of the building and finally got me right outside the window where the armor was (the ropes don't swing; they function more like a pole). It was ridiculously clever and I couldn't help but pat myself on the back as I made my way back to the ledge.

As soon as I got back, I walked back into the building and instantly realized I could have just used my telekinesis spell to grab the armor. Yup. Clever to idiot in less than 10 seconds.

The other thing I've been quite impressed with in the game is the actual variety of combat. While I found it practically a necessity to throw things at any and all enemies early on in the game, that stopped being quite as important as I progressed in the game (mostly thanks to the Lightning Shield... but that's a topic for my next post). The game tends to give you lots of ways to kill things: melee combat, arrows (these get better later in the game), magic, and all kinds of environmental obstacles. One of the best ways to kill enemies is to lure them close to a ledge or close to some wall spikes (which seem to be everywhere) and send them flying with a well placed kick. It definitely breaks the tedium of regular combat and is quite fulfilling.

Another example: at some point in Chapter 6, I found myself setup to fight 5 or 6 (I can't remember which) ghouls. If you recall from my last post, 2 of them had previously done an exceptionally fine job of handing me my ass. Despite some ledges to kick them off and some spikes to lure them into, I couldn't seem to manage to kill them all. I then remembered seeing in hints in one of the loading screens (remember I was dying a lot) that staves were good against groups of enemies. I decided to pull out my fire staff and then very quickly made short work of them as the staff stunned them and let me stab, impale or otherwise send them flying into oblivion. While I can't say I used the staff much afterwards, it was quite nice to actually see some variety.

Well, that's all for this time. I know I promised some info about the cyclops (it was a long and relatively boring fight) and some screenshots (next time I promise!) but that's all you are getting. I did just finish the game, so expect two more posts: my experiences playing through the last part of the game, and my overall impressions.