his maid help you:
http://www.gog.com/en/forum/messiah/graphic_problems_on_7
http://www.gog.com/en/forum/Messiah/to_anyone_having_slowdown_issues_and_or_want_32bit_support
http://www.gog.com/en/forum/messiah/artifacts_issue_on_vista_with_geforce_8_latest_drivers_game_is_all_messed_up

They all lead to the same solution!

I've sinked in this game like 2-3 hours, and started to actually "get it", like the art, the cyberpunkish tongue-in-cheek city and aggresive music, until it decided to crash every 3-4 doors. Uninstalled it. Sorry Shiny, I love your games to death, but I'm not going through such crap.

I wouldn't call it my worst purchase from GOG, tho. (Blood 2 definitely takes the cake, and there's also extremely dated Redneck Rampage on my virtual shelf).

Oh, and I've got XP, and I remember the game was also very prone to crash back in the day.

This may be a horribly buggy game, but in terms of quality it isn't the worst game ever. The worst game ever is Superman 64 or Drake of the 99 Dragons for the Xbox. I own Drake because it is so awesomely bad and I was able to pick it up for 7 bucks and show it to friends as a way to illustrate how to get everything wrong in a game. Messiah doesn't get everything wrong. It gets a variety of things wrong, but other things quite right. The bugs are a huge pain, however.

I love this game! Not only that, but it works perfectly for me on Windows 7 64-bit so I don't understand the difficulty. Its body swapping and overall futuristic look reminds me of another favorite Omikron The Nomad Soul........which that along with its spiritual successor Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit need to be brought on here.

How do you get it to work on Win7? Im on Win7 Pro 64-bit and theres this wall in the starting area that just glitches and turns most of screen dark and it basicly drops down to 2 fps!
And this is on a quadcore intel i7, 8 gb ram, Nvidia GTX 560Ti CU..and the win7 pro-64 bit as above.

I run Messiah on Windows 7 Pro 64bit with a Geforce GTX 560Ti and latest drivers. I'm using CoffeeJones solution to the graphics problem:

I found a thing on the forums that HELPED ME GET THE GAME TO WORK!

"Run the game with the -x flag
That is: C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG.com\Messiah\MessiahD3D.exe -x
... and you'll see a dialog box with a choice of resolutions.
Then you'll see a screen like what's attached below.
Switch device to Direct 3D HAL not Direct 3D T&L HAL.
You should be OK to play the game.

Another solution is the use of a Glide Wrapper.
Use Zeckensacks Glide Wrapper (http://www.zeckensack.de/glide/) and install it (a restart is maybe neccessary).
Get the 1.2 patch from here: http://dlh.net/cgi-bin/patdl.cgi?lang=ger&sys=pc&file=mess1_2.zip&ref= (or from elsewhere)
Unzip it and copy the Messiahglide3x.exe into your Messiah directory
Create a shortcut and set compatibility to Windows 98, disable "visual themes", "desktop composition" and "display scaling..."; enable "Run this program as an administrator"
After starting the game with the shortcut you're asked for CD2 of the game.
DON'T PANIC! Click it away three times and the game starts nonetheless. "

Hope it helped, it did for me!

The -x flag did it for me. Thanks.
Now on to tweak the controls... Ah well.

My word I've got to start reading these forums before downloading the games

It's a lot of fun and it's got tons of atmosphere to offer if you're capable of looking past the bugs. I personally have a love/hate relationship with Messiah, it being a game I played as a kid over ten years ago. Back in the day I didn't notice that many bugs as I see when playing on Vista. My only real complaint about is is the length of the story. The music is badass and the weapons are too (harpoon gun anyone?). I recommend it to anyone who is capable of looking past bugs and wants to play a truly original game.

I don't think it's the worst game ever, but it certainly is one of the most disappointing. I can't help but think that if this game was designed by the team that created Project Eden it would be one of the best in its genre.

The bugs were annoying, but the help and tutorials on this forum made the game work fine on my win7. Don't let the hype put you off, it's an awesome game.

My feelings are somewhat the same. I was really looking forward to playing it. I bought it on holiday sale, but I have to admit that it is disappointing :( Controls are terrible. They say it is a shooter, but come on: shooting is just horrible! Not fun at all! I can stand crappy graphics and strange story-telling but the gameplay itself is so shitty...