Related Sections: Action Games Lists PC RPGs
10 reasons you should play Sacred 2
Now that I've ironed out my technical problems with Sacred 2, the sequel to the fastidious German RPG from 2004, I can finally get down to the business of saving the world leveling up my character. Although I only fiddled with the original Sacred for an hour or so, I can't imagine it was as good as this. If it was, I wish someone had let me know the way I'm now letting you know that Sacred 2 is as good as it is. When it comes to compulsively addicting fast-paced click-and-slash loot harvesting with fancy graphics, I'd even go so far as to say I prefer this to Titan Quest.
If you're not playing Sacred 2, after the jump are ten reasons you should be.
 |  |
|
10) Not too hard, not too easy
The monsters in Sacred 2 are adjusted to be approximately the same level as your character. A similar gimmick annoyed some folks in Oblivion. But here, it's not absurd and it doesn't destroy the sense of ecology, because Sacred 2 simply isn't that kind of game. But because this is such a dynamic game, this is dynamic enemy scaling that actually works. Here it helps create a sense of freedom to go almost anywhere you want without either running you into a brick wall or boring you to tears. There's still plenty of variety among the monsters, and once you get to advanced difficulty levels and more powerful monsters, it'll take more than just power clicking.
9) Bored player characters
Be sure to leave your character untended for a minute or so. And be sure to do it multiple times. This is where you'll encounter the perfect storm of stilted voice-acting, heavy-handed comedy, and borderline inappropriate pop culture references.
8) The horse you rode in on
It's a big world and to get around, you'll definitely need your trusty horse (or something even more dramatic once you get powerful enough). At first I was annoyed that my horse wouldn't fit into my pocket, like it does in MMOs. But eventually, I came to appreciate how realistic it is to have to remember where you parked the horse.
7) Storyline
Or lack thereof. There is a main quest, but you can power through it before reaching even a fifth of the level cap. Sacred 2 isn't overconcerned with its plot about mysterious underground pipes leaking magicalness into the world (that's seriously the plot: bad plumbing!). The real story is how you run around the world and level up your character.
6) Tooltips
This is a game for those of us who love to see the numbers. There's even a single tooltip that reveals every modification applied to your character. During combat, a monster's attacks and armor type are clearly displayed. In fact, Sacred 2 lets you check detailed stats for the last ten monsters you fought. If you like stats, if you really want to get meticulous with how you build and advance your character, Sacred 2 is happy to oblige you.
5) No invisible walls
This is truly a go-anywhere non-linear open world. In fact, if you host a multiplayer game (even if you're playing solo), you'll begin near a dungeon with gates to various regions in the world, all with their quests intact, and almost all manageable thanks to enemies that scale to your character's level.
4) Fight or flight
There are literally hundreds of monsters on the road between you and where you need to get at any given time. You can fight them or run past them as you like. Sacred 2 is only as combat intensive as you want it to be.
3) Convenient inventory
Auto sort your loot horizontally or vertically. Stash a class-specific goody in your chest for another one of your characters to retrieve. Exchanges runes you don't need for runes you do need. Press the "Q" key to suck up all the loot in a radius around your character. For a game with so much detail, Sacred 2 handily minimizes the loot hassle.
2) De-mana-fication
The spells (called "combat arts") in Sacred 2 don't use the conventional mana system of waiting for mana to recharge, hoarding mana potions, or both. Instead, there are cooldown timers for each "school" of magic, and you can heavily modify these based on your equipment and abilities. So go spell crazy! You'll never run out.
1) Characters classes
Choose among six classes, each of which has nearly infinite ways to advance on the way to his or her level 200 level cap. The usual suspects include an evil wizard, a good elf wizard, and a necromancer warrior. But there are also an angel in high heel shoes, a hippie-chick elf who collects severed heads, and a robot dog with a laser gun for an arm. Let's see Diablo III top that.
By Sithinious at 8:55 AM ON 11/26/08
I just started playing this, and this may take the place of Titan Quest as my obsessive/compulsive game of choice. At least until Diablo 3 comes along. I haven't gotten far into the game yet, as I keep going back and trying out all the different characters. I hope there's a way to respec down the road, there is SO much to try out with each different character.
By Mark L at 10:06 AM ON 11/26/08
You can actually summon your horse with a whistle! See the little bitty horse head in the bottom right of the screen? If you click on it, Flicka comes a'runnin'.
Sorry if that breaks your immersion :( :( :(
By Sticky at 10:45 AM ON 11/26/08
Just picked this up two days ago. A little buggy at first. Though (knock on wood) i have forced sli and enabled Physx and have not had any crashes. I also used the utility that cleans temp files Ascaron has on their site. Being a TQ junky, this is a refreshing change and addictive.
By Tom Chick at 4:36 PM ON 11/26/08
You keep trying to summon your horse with that whistle icon, Mark L. Let me know how that works out for you. :)
(In case you haven't figured it out yet, it only works across short distances. If you lose track of where you parked the horse, you can whistle your fool head off and no horse is going to come along. I tell you this from my experience whistling my fool head off.)
By Tom Chick at 6:23 PM ON 11/26/08
SIth, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. I'm pretty sure there's no respec option in Sacred 2. So choose wisely!
By malkav11 at 6:51 PM ON 11/26/08
acred 1, with the expansion, has a daemon character who can, among other things, summon orbs of hellfire that lay down support fire (really cheesy approach - summon a bunch of those in quick succession and ride around on your horse while death lasers tear everything on screen to bits). I'm fond of her. Also the way all the NPCs run screaming when she shows up.
By Sticky at 11:29 PM ON 11/27/08
Great review on 1UP Tom! It's pretty classic. I haven't made it to the horses but I will wake your word for it. You must like this game dude. I'm psyched to burn some hours playing.
By Zarquon at 6:14 AM ON 12/04/08
Dunno what patch you're running on Tom (if any) but the whistle icon summons my horse just fine, anywhere I am. It's been a real time saver.
(Pressing 0 works too)
By Niloy at 2:54 AM ON 12/06/08
ONE REASON NOT TO PLAY SACRED 2 [that trumps all those above:]
It has horrible SecuROM protection shit that doesn't let me pirate it.
By Sticky at 5:42 PM ON 12/07/08
Ok, calling your horse kinda stanks. The one thing that does stink with the game... Ascaron services the servers everyday at 5-7 EST. That is just uncalled for. doing it in the morning would be the most opportune time. Way to ruin my Sunday evening.
Pirates suck a__. A Fort Knox security is welcomed by most gamers.
By lariva at 8:14 AM ON 12/17/08
@Niloy: search better, you will find a SecuROM fix...
By denniex3 at 11:13 PM ON 12/22/08
Hey....was wondering...what level do u have to be to even ride the horse? or what do you have to do to have one? thx
By Traveler at 1:16 PM ON 12/25/08
Tried the demo - it's just a clickfest.
By LAZ at 7:56 AM ON 02/12/09
Just wanted to point otu Sacred2 hads just won top honors in Germany's Game Awards.I wanted to state this because its not even getting half the attention it deserves here in the states.This game is plain out AWESOME..The fact that PC Gamer gave it a 58% really grinds my gears..Get the word out on this game!!
By Komah at 6:26 PM ON 02/14/09
Yeah.. Uhm.. How about 10 reasons to not play the game?
#10 Cluster****
When you get a little ways into the game you'll quickly notice that there's -so many- stats on weapons that after a certain point it's impossible to tell what's better than what.
#9 Size
The install disks total 19 gigs in size if you choose to install the "Extra textures" (which don't make that much of a difference).
#8 Character Names
Why would this be a problem? The field for putting in your name is already filled in with your "class name" (I.E. Dryad); most people who aren't familiar with the Sacred series won't realize this and will create a character that's just called their class name. Worse yet: You can't change it without being familiar with programming.
#7 Imbalanced
Certain classes get the Bargaining ability. Why is this broken? Basically, level it up and you can -easily- obtain rares and uniques from the store while other classes have to farm for them and hope that they get lucky enough to find such items. Rares alone from a vendor can be absolutely godly (See below, I found the sword off a -vendor-.)
#6 Unexplained Game Mechanics
When you play Sacred 2, you're going to get sucked into the game rather quickly. The problem with this? You'll only figure out what the hell is going on hours into the game. No tutorial, no explanation as to what certain items do, nothing. Just "Do this! Do that!". A perfect example: Runes. Runes help level up skills. Why is this bad? Pumping up a skill increases the power of said skill but also increases the penalties such as recharge time. So unless you want to use your only damage skill once every minute, you don't want to level up skills until later.
#5 Plenty of variety in the wrong places
Lots of different items in the game. -Tons-. Enough to make Diablo II run away crying in shame. The bad side? Uniques often become pointless because rare items can easily have better stats. Take for example this rare sword my High Elf found: Level 21, +2 all skills, +7 life steal, +1 speed lore, +9 Attack/Defense. The level 25 unique I was using? Chance to burn enemy on hit. .... Need I say more?
#4 It's buggy!
.. But we all saw that coming. In the developer's credit, they're patching the game like crazy (Unlike.. Say.. Bethsedia's work on -all- of their games; nothing like abandoning your player base right?). The bugs make the game hard to play, especially when you crash and lose all your progress. But hey.. It's getting there.
#3 Voice Acting
My ears are still bleeding from the Shadow Campaign intro for the Temple Guardian. Seriously, the scripts at time will make your eye twitch and your head hurt. The voice acting at times is at times a crime against nature. Look up the intro videos on google, you'll know what I mean.
#2 Character Customization
Simply put. THERE IS NONE! I mean come on, this isn't the 1990's where such things were never on the forefront of a dev's mind! Unless you feel like using a program like Photoshop or Gimp, then using WinRAR to open up the graphics files and editing the class' actual textures.. The -only- aspect of your character you can customize is by going into the console and typing "SYS HAIRCOLOR ######" where ####### is a hex value for color. Unacceptable for a current generation game.
#1 SecuROM
Just google this one, it's Copy Protection Software that can crash your computer, fry hardware, so on and so forth. It forces it onto your computer and even people who buy the game legally can be prevented from playing Sacred 2 entirely because of errors inherent in SecuROM. Why devs don't make their own copy protection is beyond us, maybe they're just lazy. Regardless, it's a threat to people's computers. Hence why it's #1 on the list.
Komah:
Yeah.. Uhm.. How about 10 reasons to not play the game? #10 Cluster**** When you get a little ways into the game ...More »