Sacred 2

Sacred 2 is one of the latest of a long line of Diablo clones whose gameplay mostly consists of marching through unending hordes of monsters while you mash your mouse buttons and collect loot enough to equal the GNP of Sweden. The original Sacred was one of the most notable of these clones, particularly in its uniquely large world, all of which was traversable immediately after starting the game. Unlike other Click and Slash RPG games, Sacred had few arbitrary boundaries, and its world felt living and seamless. Sacred was not without faults, its statistics system was byzantine (weapons stats often made little sense), its graphics were dated, and the interface had problems registering mouse clicks, making the player feel like it took more clicks to target, attack, or use combat arts (Sacred’s version of spells and skills) – an almost cardinal sin due to the number of clicks needed to play a game in this genre. Despite these, and other bugs, Sacred was generally well-received and has now spawned an offspring, whose story is more of a prequel to the events in Sacred’s land of Ancaria than a continuation.

The Holy Sacraments:

For the most part, Sacred 2 took the good elements of its predecessor and adopted them wholesale while de-emphasizing Sacred’s more glaring faults. The world is even larger than the original Sacred, and again, completely accessible from the start. Sacred 2 continues the system, like Sacred (and Diablo II) before it, of having pre-set classes with pre-assigned skills/spells. Unlike Diablo II, the Sacred system never required a character to “level up” before getting access to their combat arts. Rather, combat arts are “looted” in the form of talisman that grant the combat art to the player and improve arts already owned. This is separate from the player’s level. Leveling gives the player the chance to choose new skills, assign skill points, and improve attributes. Unlike combat arts, of which each class has about 20, players may only choose 10 skills. Skills provide passive effects, like improving the regeneration time of combat arts, combat art damage, armor, attack speed, or even some more interesting things like improving type and price of items sold at vendors or giving the ability for the player to socket their own weaponry (like a blacksmith). The system is a little confusing at first, but once you learn it, you see that what previously seemed to be a lack of character development (the combat arts are already assigned) becomes an almost limitless combination of skills and attributes. It is key to mention here that combat arts do not use “mana” and instead recharge through time, allowing the player to use their arts any time they are available with no need to constantly guzzle blue potions.

The world of Sacred 2 is, again, a very living and interesting place. Rather than the now cliched high fantasy realm of elves, dwarves and orcs, the realm of Ancaria is a mix of technology and magic that is reminiscent of the old Might and Magic RPGs. At one moment, you may loot a magical fire spear, with life stealing powers, the next, you are looting a laser pistol that shoots bolts of blue flame like a Muton plasma rifle. This can be a bit jarring, and some aspects are done better than others. The future weapons are interesting, and they include suspiciously “lightsaber” looking swords and long plasma-bolt firing staves straight out of Stargate. Other times the transition is too glaring, such as the inclusion of a certain awesome rock band and lutes that sound like electric guitars. Maybe I am picky, but I prefer the arch-fantasy world of the orginal Sacred to the mix of Sacred 2, and I feel the transition between magic and tech should have come more gradually, like in Might and Magic, where laser pistols were cool things found near the end of the game.

The enemies are also pretty compelling, at least for the most part. Early in the game you get your normal fare of bandits and kobolds, but later, the monsters get much more epic (and much much larger). Just like the original Sacred, some of the boss monsters are truly epic in size and power, and you feel a general sense of fear and accomplishment from facing them.

Happily, the previous iterations problems with mouse-clicks and clunky inventory and interface are pretty much gone in Sacred 2. The weapon and armor statistics are still a little confusing (does a “+4.5 chance to burn” opponent mean the weapon burns the opponent, or that the fire spells I cast when wielding it will have a better chance to burn them), but much better than before. Some of the naming conventions of items are random and broken (I have found many Swords of Wealth that had nothing to do with sell price or gold dropped), but this is incidental to a decently working system that has loads of loot falling from dead bodies nearly constantly. You still have the need to collect and hunt, like most of the games in the genre, and the thrill of finding uncommon yellow items, or even rarer ones, is still very present. The addition of a common storage chest between all characters is a godsend, as it allows you to share items only usable by a certain class, combat art talisman, and weapons between your other characters. This certainly takes away some of the difficulty in starting a new character, who begins with a selection of combat arts that may not fit your final strategy.

The profane:

Not everything is better in Ancaria, however, and here is where I step up onto my soapbox. At this moment, I would like to address all of the developers out there, whether new or veteran, to give them a message about my computer game experience. Listening? My monitor is, and always should be, a Fourth-Wall. What do I mean by that? When I am playing a computer game, particularly an RPG (which ostensibly is trying to draw me in and make me feel part of the world I am encountering) I want to be immersed. I certainly do NOT want to be reminded, quite harshly, that I am actually sitting in a relatively uncomfortably chair, staring at moving pictures while waving my mouse like I have some twitching and clicking disease. This leads me to my current point; Sacred 2 has some of the WORST moments of breaking the fourth wall in any game I have ever seen. Numerous times the player character will address the player, some classes more than others, and the fact that this is a “game” is trumpeted in your face nearly constantly by the reaction of NPCs or monsters. The dialogue and voice acting is at best grating and at worst juvenile (I’m convinced the writer stayed up all night the day before his deadline and pounded Apfelkorn while gleefully thinking he was penning a masterpiece). For example, when killing a bandit, I heard him say “I knew that I was an extra!” Similarly a kobold yelled out “I should have listened to my wife!” after being bashed in the head by my Inquisitor’s hammer. These are just small issues, and the dialogue can be even cornier, particularly the gossip between two NPCs, which often starts with one of them saying, “Because we haven’t yet invented newspapers, I rely upon you to get my news…” Now, I understand that this is Ascaron’s attempt to be lighthearted, but every time it happens I am jerked right back into reality, where I am not an awesome Inquisitor enslaving the souls of my dead opponent, but a guy clicking maniacally to try and click his way to the next red dot on my minimap. Could you imagine if your Amazon in Diablo II, after killing Diablo, stopped and said “I’m glad you specced that poison javelin, or else that would have been a hard fight!” It would have ruined the atmosphere, just is Sacred 2’s atmosphere is ruined by the addition of these silly elements. In many ways, with the bright graphics and character models, it feels more like playing a Saturday morning cartoon than a deep adventure game like Morrowind.

Further, some of the quests in Ancaria are just plain silly. Early in the game, you are faced with such wonderful tasks as “kill the rabbits in my garden” and “find my teddy bear.” The very first quest for the temple guardian, which looks like a cross between a Stargate guard and a steam powered robot, is to go back to where you started (no enemies to kill) and pick up the stuffed animal, ball, and toy box that you forgot before you left. Yes… you read that right. To be fair, there are literally HUNDREDS of quests, and you can never (nor should ever) try to accomplish them all or you will never reach the end of the game. I skip the ones that sound less than fun, unless they offer a decent reward.

Another two aspects of Sacred 2’s design have caused quite a stir on the message boards. The first is the “leveling up” of monsters to match the level of the player. This means that, you will always have something worthwhile to kill when you return to places you have been before, however, you get really tired of fighting the same kobolds from level 5-17 as you run your quests in the starting areas. I have been told that this actually works on the basis of having level ranges in certain areas (if you wander to another zone, you will find monsters too challenging to fight right away) but I never got to test this. The second controversial aspect comes from the debate whether or not to upgrade combat arts. Each time a combat art is upgraded, by using the lootable talisman, you get increased damage or effects, but also a sizable increase in regeneration time. Many people, quite logically, argue that it is best to keep your most used arts at low levels – doing lower damage but able to access them nearly twice as often. This seems to be a silly design, to prefer keeping arts low rather than adding to them power as a way to add to DPS, and I wonder if this was not properly balanced or thought through. At any rate, this does lead to some confusion in how or what to upgrade, and I feel it is best to just look at the gain versus the gain in time and decide for yourself. Buffs are easier to make the decision, as they require no regeneration.

Early on, Sacred 2 was plagued with some rather serious bugs, but happily, by the time I write this review, most of these are gone. Ascaron was relatively quick about fixing these. There are still some balance issues (some combat arts are useless, while others are extremely good), but this is natural for this type of RPG.

The Benediction:

All in all, despite these flaws, Sacred 2 is a fast-paced, furious action RPG with a giant and mostly compelling world. One can easily sink 40-80 hours into the game and the character progression is nicely done without being overly complex. Some of the more epic monsters really add to the flavor of the game, although this is marred by some of the repetition in monster types early on. The story is merely passable, but has enough flair to keep the player moving from one goal to the next. It may not have the grim and gothic character of Diablo II (quite the opposite), but Sacred 2 presents a more lighthearted, madcap, and less linear RPG experience.

Nota Bene: Do not play Sacred 2 on Bronze level, as it is does not work as designed. People have noted that the loot generation and the monster spawning is far lower on bronze level than it should be and you will find your play experience uninteresting and boring. Instead, pick the silver level, which is more in line with the regular difficulty level in action RPGs. As dying in Sacred 2 has less of an impact than in other games of the genre, the extra difficulty of silver is nothing insurmountable and you get more normal monster spawning and the proper loot drops.

Score: 7.5/10 – While not a holy enough for a reliquary, it is “sacred” enough to find a spot on the hard-drive of RPG fans.

Blessings: Large world, great quantities of loot, interesting player classes and monsters, attractive graphics, addictive gameplay.

Sins: Breaks the fourth wall too often, silly voice-acting and spoken dialogue, boring quests mixed with some good ones, decently high system requirements for its graphics, jarring mix of technology and magic.