When getting a copy of Sacred 2, I had no clue what to expect as far as gameplay type. I had missed out on the original in this series since I am not a PC gamer, so all I had to go on was comparisons to Diablo (which I also never played) and Too Human (which the demo I thought was ‘meh’). I remember seeing characater designs years ago (literally), but knew nothing except the setting seemed to be that mythical magical lord of the rings type time. I was pretty much right. The game has a feel that is like a mature version of Overlord, and somewhat like Overlord, this game has a good amount of humor.
You start out with you choosing from six characters, each having some strong point as far as powers and combat skills (as well as choosing a deity to worship that grants you a special ability). A draw back of the game is the depth, from the beginning of just choosing a character, you really need to find the strengths and weaknesses of each class so you know how you want to play the game (ie more Magic, more of a physical character, or even a mix), because the further you get in the game, the harder it is to switch up your classes.
Whatever character you start as, you still choose what abilities and combat arts you want to study (there is 15 for each character). XP is earned through killing and quests, from there you can learn more spells and even special physical attacks.
A neat feature is in various villages, there are chests where you can set armor, weapons, etc inside for any other characters you create (you can make up to 8 in the game). So say for example I start off as a Seraphim, if I were to pick up some armor that was meant for a Dryad, I could set that in the chest and come to that location with my Dryad to use.
Fighting is quite easy, you can for the most part just hold your finger on a button and your character will just slash away. Magic ends up being a more enjoyable way to kill through the game (especially with one of my favorite dark arts with the Shadow Warrior character, where if I kill a character, I can reanimate him to fight along my side).
The world is quite huge (note: larger than Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion), spread out between villages, caves, woods, roadways, and that is just about it. Some lands look similar to others, but soon enough you will really get a feel for the land. Unfortunately you will still found yourself constantly pulling up the main map just to see where you are, as the compass does not provide much help. Having to pull up the map so often does take a little bit away from the game, as it is very beautiful to look at, whether outside in forests, deserts, houses, everything is really detailed.
Villages are full of people and each has something to say. Even graves have writings on them, every single one (and they are worth reading having little quotes and quips). Each house, all very detailed and unique, usually have items to pillage and take, thus really appealing to you lootwhore type gamers, You have a main quest to complete, but where the game comes fun is taking the many many side quests offered by regular villages. For example, I put in 6+ hours in my first game and I hadn’t even touched the main quest. Which I should mention, has two paths you can take, light or dark (so yet even more depth to this game).
Quests themselves tend to be amusing, such as the Blind Guardian quest, where you help get the mic, guitar, bass, and drum stick for the band, only for them to…. well, I don’t want to spoil this, but it is a must see part of the game, so if you come upon the quest, take it. Some quests involve just escorting one character to another town, and every town seems to have at least one quest involving you having to go in a cave. As long as your character is pumped up enough, quests become quite easy and are a good way to earn XP.
If I haven’t emphasized the depth of this game, let me add that on top of the combat arts, there are weapons and armor…plenty of them. You can forge items (rings/runes) on weapons to customize them even further. Same with armor. The long and the short of the game is you kill all bad guys, build/grind your character, and then kick ass everything in your path. Basic concept, but fun. Knowing the game is so basic, there is a great humor from quests, signs, people, etc. The story in the game becomes nothing you care about, it really ends up being customizing your character to fight just how you want.
Action takes place using the d-pad and the ABXY buttons. You assign what you want the button’s to do and everything is set. Menu’s are a breeze to get around with, with the game even giving you the option to hit the “RB” button to bring up a little “helper” bubble that describes whatever it is you are highlighting in the menus.
If you have noticed, so far in writing this review I haven’t mentioned anything about the story, this is because the game falls short of having some kind of motivation to keep playing. There is enough quests constantly for various villagers, and focusing on the main quest, all at your own speed, seems to makes up for the lack of interest in the characters and story, but I guess I am just used to a little emphasis on story in these type of games. Enemies are varied enough to keep things interesting, and the large size of the map gives the game much replay value (again, on top of choosing different magic and combat arts and armor and etc etc). Basically beefing up your character becomes the motivation to keep going.
I must mention, there is odd glitches in the game, that do not happen often, but might piss you off if they do. Just the character basically getting stuck in a place where you should be able to get out. There has also be instances where I was shooting an arrow at him and he wasn’t off to attack me… so that was a bonus actually, but still a glitch. It is also worth noting, when in villages, loading times can occur, they come and go quickly, but it is annoying unless you install this game to your hard drive.
Graphics are beautiful for being a year or so old game just ported. You can change the camera view to close third person to overhead (which is preferred really). The text suffers a bit for non HD set owners, as text is unreadable on a standard definition TV. Even to the point that you cannot see the stats of your weapons/armor. It is possible to still play through the game without reading the small text, but it would take away highly from the charm.
Overview
This game is good and a huge time waster (you may think you are going to play for a half hour, then a few hours pass by before you even know it). It is a lootwhore type action rpg set in those mythical times that I’ve had no experience with before. I can’t say I would recommend this to everyone, but I really feel it is certainly a rental to see if this type of game would suit you. When it comes down to it, you take a quest, kill a bad guy, take gold/equipment, build up, then repeat this process.
Notes: The version I reviewed this on was an Xbox 360. It is worth noting the port to the PS3 seems to only have one difference, you cannot take multiple players from one console online, other than that, all features seem to be the same..
I was unable to play this game multiplayer. For more on multiplayer, I suggest clicking here
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Thank you. I wasn’t able to find too much out there in the blogsphere about this release but you’ve set my mind a little more at ease.
It seems to be about what I expected, no more no less, a good giggle and something to tide me over until Diablo 3 arrives.
Shame you couldn’t do multiplayer though
From the looks of it, this game clearly should have remained on PC (and then maybe Sacred 2’s dev team could have also spent the time working out the bugs that makes the thing crash randomly on certain PCs including mine). In the PC version, the mini-map is far more useful (and is not placed in such a ridiculous spot so as to obstruct your vision) and you can even adjust its size, scale, or even turn it off altogether. You can also hit tab to expand it into a larger mini-map for even easier navigation without opening up the main map (essential for dungeons).
The inventory system in the console version also makes me cringe. They would have been better off giving you a cursor that you control with the left analog stick and kept the original menu system in tact. It’s MUCH easier to navigate and “learning what all that stuff meant” was not hard at all because you could mouse over and it would explain it to you (as hell as clicking the question marks at the top of each window for even more documentation).
I love and hate this game so much.
Some of my huge problems with this game include
-No experience granted for doing main quest
(like they really dont expect u to do it seriously)
-Stupid crap that you have to walk around i.e. cliffs
trees boulders unsafe grass(play the game you will see what i mean)
pretty much redundant as hell if the whole game took place
in a large desert with zero obstacles it would be a million times better
-side quests give you crappy xp and basically stupid rewards
(almost like they dont expect you to do them hmmmmmm)
-The price of potions armor modding etc goes up as you level
( wtf really?…maybe you had enough money to mod a sword at level
33 but now your level 34 ooops need another 100,000 gold crap…)
- Glitches….tons of them everywhere expect it to happen
(i love how I just found a gold shield and helmet worth 500,000 gold
each and the game crashes and now there missing from my
inventory thats so awesome)
-The big bosses of the game…well there really cool no problem
with those that they have…but really there should be 50x more of them
-Some F’ing directions…thanks for explaining basically nothing
you RTards…no wonder your company went bankrupt you spent to much time
sniffing glue and smoking pot to bother with a plot or some information.
- I could be wrong about this but im pretty sure you cant
dismiss followers from your group once they join until you finish some
random quest you forgot to do.
-Seriously I love to run back and forth to do your stupid main quest as
much as the next guy but why do I have to run or ride for 10 minutes in one
direction hit the goal and have to run all the way back to the original
guy just so he will tell me good job you couldnt have let me complete the
quest at the original guy>? WTF
The good things I liked about this game
-Auto loot with the Key Q or clicking the button
-Space heals you, and health potions are super easy to find.
-The big bosses
-The idea of portals even though theres not nearly enough of them
-Just plain hack and slash looting and grinding its fun i love it
-The stupid things the computer will say to me because really I know
when you made the game you werent taking it seriously so why should I
ill just smoke some pot and sniff some glue so im on your level to.
-Modding…yea its fun to customize
-Being able to the turn the camera and zoom in and out definetly nice
-Grinding…o yea i said that
Well anyways If I ever meet the guys that helped make this
game I will challenge them to a duel in the parking lot of
wherever we are and I will Grind (Fight them) and Loot (steal there
wallet and get my money back for the game) And finally bail.
“Stupid crap that you have to walk around i.e. cliffs
trees boulders unsafe grass(play the game you will see what i mean)
pretty much redundant as hell if the whole game took place”
Wow, I couldn’t agree with you more. If my horse can jump, they should allow me to as well, the forced walk-around stuff is tedious. Not a deal breaker or anything, but annoying.
You sure do accuse the guys of smoking pot and sniffing glue a bit lol
The overall experience of the game I find good despite it’s flaws. And playing the Xbox 360 version, on the consoles, there is few other games that can compete with Sacred 2 in this type of genre, so maybe it is easier for me to look past any shortcomings.
Don’t buy the console version, the MINI-MAP sucks big time. You cannot zoom OMG how can you think to do a large dungeon or check your exploration (dark or light areas) with that little thing. I hate it and regret not to have bought the pc version… With console you only have the world map with its very gross details… A shame…