Kicking is a poweful weapon that can get you out of the trickiest situations in Dark Messiah. In his article at 1UP, reviewer Tom Chick called the game The Adventures of Sir Kicksalot Deathboot in the Land of the Conspicuously Placed Spike Racks: "Your simple boot regularly upstages magic, stealth, archery, and combat, all of which are represented in the basic skill tree. No matter which "class" you choose, it will behoove you to play a Kicklord." He gave the game a rating of 4 out of 10, by far the lowest score so far. He posted the following explanation on a message board:

"Maybe one of the ZD folks will weigh in here, but they're trying to break out of the whole 7-9 ratings system. The idea is that a 5 is a middling game. By giving Dark Messiah a 4, my point is that it's a notch below middling. If I were rating it for a site that uses 7-9, I'd have given it a 6. Stupid numbers..."¨

Despite the heavy criticism from the major gaming sites, Dark Messiah still has an average review score of 75% at Game Rankings. GamerNode (8.2 out of 10), AtomicGamer (79%) and ComputerGames.ro (80%) are the most recent articles. It's up to you to decide what all those numbers really mean.