Run the patch again. I'm reinstalling now the patch didn't help

Gog ruined it. It doesn't work anymore.
I got in touch w/support and boy what a mess. They claimed not to even have the game. Whats happened to GOG. I guess we will have to wait for a community fix.

Because the update changed the executable. Just reapply the CM patch so it reattaches itself.

I tried that a no go for me.

Just reinstalled the game, but no succeed.
The game still hangs when it tries to 'conneting to local server...'

/edit
Installing the cm patch 1.60 does not help and starting the game directly without gog galaxy either,
so lets wait for a patch for the patch :D

Gog keeps doing this. It's a bummer.
I tried doing the enhanced version to see. same thing. They broke the game and as far as I can tell has no idea. I tries support the new chat system totally sucks. They told me they could not find that they have the game....... BS

I finally got through to support we will see what happens. I wish we had access to the older build.

I figured it out. MSI afterburner and rivatuner was the problem. I did install the enhanced edition with the mod mgr on one pc also. So if you have those running or HWinfo try running without those. It never did this before the update. 4/2022

I deactivated MSI Afterburner, but Sacred 2 Gold still hang at ' connecting to lcal server...' :(
And MSI Afterburner works fine for alot of years...keeps my asus gtx 1060 6gb at max. 55° in summer ;)

after turnibg off Afterburner and rivatuner mine starts. I thought maybe it was yours to. See if you Anti virus is stopping it.

Mine just started this after the latest update afterburner never bothered it before.

Mine broke as well. My use case is a bit complicated since my gaming PC is virtualized and I play over Steam remote play.

Initially, I ran into this issue because to get it to run, I had it run it as administrator so that it could access the game server (sacredgs.exe, I think it is ). Steam couldn't launch it ( steam calls the gog game .exe file ) as admin for remote play, so remote play didn't work . Disabling UAC fixed it.


But it stopped working recently, and re-disabling UAC hasn't fixed it. I wonder if a Window update broke as my gaming pc used to automatically log in, and not it doesn't.

No matter the cause, I wonder if a patch to the game so that it doesn't try to connect to the local server would fixed all of our issues.

I narrowed it down to rivatuner. it kills the game for some reason. The gameserver keeps running and I have to kill it in task mgr. If I close rivatuner the game starts fine.

Got a similar issue as well. Game gets stuck at "Connecting to local server".

I noticed Win10 does not allow s2gs.exe to start. It blocks it because of Securtiy Reasons. I got it to start via elevated cmd prompt, but the game would not run either. Still could not get past "Connecting to local server".

But, if I log into the hidden Windows Admins account (net user administator /active: yes), I can launch the game normally via the sacred2.exe and everything just boots up fine.

Don't know why the game server gets blocked in the first place. Anyone dealt with this before?

After many hours of reading forums and trying every fix anyone mentioned,I found one that works consistently for me.

1. Disable UAC via Windows group policy- Option 5 on this page. - https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/an-administrator-has-blocked-you-from-running-this-app-how-to-fix-on-a-windows-10-pc/ . Note that you have to restart for it to take effect.
2. Set the Sacred2.exe file to run as administrator. I did the same for the sacredgs.exe file , but I don't know if it was necessary.
3. Set the sacred2.exe file for WindowsXP SP3 compatibility mode. I don't know if this is the best choice, but the game would not run without a compatibility mode. Another option ( Vista ) might be better.

What was weird that I was able to run run the GS manually as admin at first, and then start the game and it worked. But after a few runs, I started getting the "you have been blocked from running the app.." message. So that lead me to do step 1.

I turned off about every security feature on Windows trying to get the game to run. lol. I'm going to go back and slow start re-enabling the Firewall, virus scanner, etc to secure my computer better now that I can play the game.

My situation and set
Windows 10 Pro ( 2H1 build )
GoG Sacred 2 Gold
Issue was "Timeout Connecting to Server. Exiting" message when trying to start the game.