Posted December 07, 2008
Sacred is a Diablo-esque Action RPG where you pick one of several characters (rather than create them) then go hacking, smashing, and throwing spells around at gazillions of enemies in an attempt to achieve your myriad number of goals.
It's a fun game, quite simply. You can play it with the mouse alone, if you're that way inclined (I recommend a keyboard as well to swap your active skill), heck, I've played it for many hours with a trackpad. The story is basically optional; you can simply follow your compass, flying from point to point and destroying everything in your parth. With a powerful character you could likely get through the entire Ancaria campaign in half a day, excluding sidequests. It doesn't take a whole lot of concentration, and it doesn't really matter if you die (you just respawn at a town), so for some mindless carnage this is a pretty good stop to make.
The developers seemed to aim for a lot of longevity - there's eight characters, and you unlock more difficulty levels as you complete the game, each one offering grander and fancier item drops. There is, however, a certain lack of longevity in the gameplay that will make you want to do this. I've played through it twice, and I'm on to my third run, but it's a game that might suck a few hours a week -- not a day. Because you don't really need to concentrate on the story, consequently it's absolutely irrelevant and that aspect doesn't inspire you to get any further. It's linear, also. You'll not get attached to any NPCs, and the voice acting certainly doesn't do them any favours (though it is frequently amusing).
I also found one character class particularly more interesting than the rest, namely the Battle Mage. Melée is a bit tedious, but the varying spells and skills of the mage at least gives you some tactical variation and makes the "combos" genuinely useful.
The graphics are just fine, even on high zoom, though I always play zoomed out as far possible due to my rapid playstyle -- I like to see when I'm going to run into enemies and when to avoid. It can chug a little bit, which is surprising given a Quadro 2500M and two 2.16GHz processors, but it's not drastically bad. There is a few little graphical glitches, and one particular skill suddenly makes my frame rate drop to 2-4 fps until it has run out, making it rather undesirable.
Which brings us to the subject of bugs. Yes, there are bugs. It's much better than it used to be, but I've had anything from wrong skills listed on the skill bar after loading a game, to my compass pointer getting 'stuck' and having to figure out where my next objective is by myself. I haven't run into any truly game-breaking ones, I think those are now fixed, but I would recommend you save.
Other niggles... it's really not always obvious where to go until you've played it through once. You can spend half an hour traversing the map to your next location only to find out later there was a portal nearby you could open. Or you head towards the next map waypoint but end up trying three different routes only to be blocked by mountains because the designers only made one route possible. Until you get the hang of it, you'll also often click and move rather than what you intended, to attack, and you end up chasing an enemy round in circles in a hilarious but aggrivating manner. It's possibly one of the only RPG type games where gold is basically useless as well. You will get hundreds of thousands of gold pieces, but rarely ever spend any. Drops are plentiful, and often better except in the very early stages (where you'll survive just fine anyway). The game lacks polish around the edges. A lot of the quests make less sense than a philosophy student after a night out drinking.
Okay so that sounds like an awful lot of complaints, but the fact remains that the game is still a heck of a lot of fun, even if it is only for brief periods. RPG enthusiasts who dig a great story or characters should look elsewhere, same for those who want an in-depth strategic experience. This is a game to pick up for an hour or two, perhaps with friends, and simply rampage around causing as much chaos as you dare. It's a good game, just don't come expecting greatness.
It's a fun game, quite simply. You can play it with the mouse alone, if you're that way inclined (I recommend a keyboard as well to swap your active skill), heck, I've played it for many hours with a trackpad. The story is basically optional; you can simply follow your compass, flying from point to point and destroying everything in your parth. With a powerful character you could likely get through the entire Ancaria campaign in half a day, excluding sidequests. It doesn't take a whole lot of concentration, and it doesn't really matter if you die (you just respawn at a town), so for some mindless carnage this is a pretty good stop to make.
The developers seemed to aim for a lot of longevity - there's eight characters, and you unlock more difficulty levels as you complete the game, each one offering grander and fancier item drops. There is, however, a certain lack of longevity in the gameplay that will make you want to do this. I've played through it twice, and I'm on to my third run, but it's a game that might suck a few hours a week -- not a day. Because you don't really need to concentrate on the story, consequently it's absolutely irrelevant and that aspect doesn't inspire you to get any further. It's linear, also. You'll not get attached to any NPCs, and the voice acting certainly doesn't do them any favours (though it is frequently amusing).
I also found one character class particularly more interesting than the rest, namely the Battle Mage. Melée is a bit tedious, but the varying spells and skills of the mage at least gives you some tactical variation and makes the "combos" genuinely useful.
The graphics are just fine, even on high zoom, though I always play zoomed out as far possible due to my rapid playstyle -- I like to see when I'm going to run into enemies and when to avoid. It can chug a little bit, which is surprising given a Quadro 2500M and two 2.16GHz processors, but it's not drastically bad. There is a few little graphical glitches, and one particular skill suddenly makes my frame rate drop to 2-4 fps until it has run out, making it rather undesirable.
Which brings us to the subject of bugs. Yes, there are bugs. It's much better than it used to be, but I've had anything from wrong skills listed on the skill bar after loading a game, to my compass pointer getting 'stuck' and having to figure out where my next objective is by myself. I haven't run into any truly game-breaking ones, I think those are now fixed, but I would recommend you save.
Other niggles... it's really not always obvious where to go until you've played it through once. You can spend half an hour traversing the map to your next location only to find out later there was a portal nearby you could open. Or you head towards the next map waypoint but end up trying three different routes only to be blocked by mountains because the designers only made one route possible. Until you get the hang of it, you'll also often click and move rather than what you intended, to attack, and you end up chasing an enemy round in circles in a hilarious but aggrivating manner. It's possibly one of the only RPG type games where gold is basically useless as well. You will get hundreds of thousands of gold pieces, but rarely ever spend any. Drops are plentiful, and often better except in the very early stages (where you'll survive just fine anyway). The game lacks polish around the edges. A lot of the quests make less sense than a philosophy student after a night out drinking.
Okay so that sounds like an awful lot of complaints, but the fact remains that the game is still a heck of a lot of fun, even if it is only for brief periods. RPG enthusiasts who dig a great story or characters should look elsewhere, same for those who want an in-depth strategic experience. This is a game to pick up for an hour or two, perhaps with friends, and simply rampage around causing as much chaos as you dare. It's a good game, just don't come expecting greatness.
