carlosjuero: Sadly, all of the fun in the Sacred franchise may be at an end. Ascaron Entertainment and Studio II (A subsidiary of Ascaran that continued development on Sacred 2 when Ascaron went into Bankruptcy proceedings) have both closed their doors - their official last day of work was Friday, July 31st 2009.
The scuttlebut is that the planned expansion for S2 will be polished up by a few remaining devs, then the publishers gain full control. No idea as to what that means for the continuance of online play - or even standard play (hopefully they will have someone to release a DRM patch when their DRM Activation license expires with the provider for S2).

predcon: DRM gripes aside, Sacred 2 is one of those games where it's all a matter of "it hits a home run with you or it strikes out", not entirely unlike Deus Ex: Invisible War. A lot of people went through that "the original was so much better because of X and Y".
Sacred 2 basically expands on the "techno-magical" stuff that was touched on in Sacred when you encountered the Ice Elves and the Seraphim Monastery. Some stuff was left undone, some stuff was OVERdone, but on the whole, I found the game quite enjoyable, and was left wanting more. The characters are designed well, there are easter eggs abound (it's a shame that the most recent patch rids the game of the Christmas Island quest, but not Christmas Island itself, even moving the port from which you depart the mainland to get to it), and I like how each character has their own unique sub-quest of "self-discovery". And I know I often tout the virtues of "story before visuals", but the visuals really are fun to look at.
So, yeah, if Deep Silver, or whomever it is that owns the franchise now, releases a DRM patch, this game isn't as mediocre as most mainstream video games magazines would have you believe, so you should really pick up a copy.

predcon: DRM gripes aside, Sacred 2 is one of those games where it's all a matter of "it hits a home run with you or it strikes out", not entirely unlike Deus Ex: Invisible War. A lot of people went through that "the original was so much better because of X and Y".

Sacred 2 basically expands on the "techno-magical" stuff that was touched on in Sacred when you encountered the Ice Elves and the Seraphim Monastery. Some stuff was left undone, some stuff was OVERdone, but on the whole, I found the game quite enjoyable, and was left wanting more. The characters are designed well, there are easter eggs abound (it's a shame that the most recent patch rids the game of the Christmas Island quest, but not Christmas Island itself, even moving the port from which you depart the mainland to get to it), and I like how each character has their own unique sub-quest of "self-discovery". And I know I often tout the virtues of "story before visuals", but the visuals really are fun to look at.


So, yeah, if Deep Silver, or whomever it is that owns the franchise now, releases a DRM patch, this game isn't as mediocre as most mainstream video games magazines would have you believe, so you should really pick up a copy.

predcon: I'm still mildly upset that we in the US never got Ice & Blood. Sure, we could order one from overseas, but we'd also have to order the UK version of the regular game.

bengeddes: Sacred 2 Gold would probably sell like hotcakes on GOG. I hope they're able to get it someday. It really is an excellent game.

DaveO-MM: I used to say no, but I got back into the game again a few months before the online servers were shut down. With the Community Patch, the game offers even more content.