Sacred

"Who needs Diablo 3?"

Sacred is another game from across the mighty Atlantic. I've recently played other games from overseas, like Ghost Master and Gothic. Ghost Master was a lot of fun and Gothic was just too incredibly huge for me to get into. But Sacred seemed like something I could really get into. Diablo-style hack n slash with a but of RPGness to it along with beautiful graphics and a HUGE multiplayer option? How can you go wrong?!

Story:

The story is your typical RPGness of ''bad monster released on the world, you must stop it'' type of thing. Although, that is not totally apparent in the beginning. You start to pick up a lot of side quests early on. These are easy to find because usually the villager has a flashing ''?!'' above their head. A nice feature of Sacred is that when you go into your quest log, you can see a snapshot of where your goal is. It helps prevent mindless wandering (although it is actually fun in this game) but never gives too much away. Nothing sucks more than talking to a million people because you don't know who you're looking for. That makes for tedium. Sacred doesn't have that problem.

Sound:
I really like the sound in this game. At first I thought my character's grunting and screaming was a bit overdone, but it actually adds a bit of realism to the game. Environmental sounds are really nice too, and the way weapons clang off of each other is right on. The music is always fitting for the occasion, and I like the character voices. I'm playing as the Seraphim (an angel, more or less) and the way she responds to quests and enemies is prefect for her character.

Graphics:
Well the first thing a lot of people notice about Sacred is the outstanding graphics. They really are amazing. What impresses me most are the little extra details often overlooked in games. The more damage you take, the bloodier you become. Sometimes killing blows on opponents will unleash a geyser of blood that shoots out all over the ground. Items are shiny, magical, and easy to spot. Simply hitting the ALT key (like in Diablo) will show you all the items in the area.

The title screen is pretty nice looking, the water effects give you a taste of what great visuals you will be experiencing. Spells are ''pretty'' and come with all the effects you would expect. The outstanding visuals in this game help draw you in, and make you feel like you are really on an adventure, something that is LACKING in about 95% of RPG type games these days.

There are some issues with the visuals, however. I like to consider Sacred on par with games like Dungeon Siege in terms of graphical capabilites. the problem though, is that Sacred will be quite choppy on any system other than a complete monster, or one with a good Nvidia card.

I run a nice athlon 2600xp with a 128meg ddr Radeon 9200 card and 512 megs of ddr2700 ram. The game runs ''ok'' when you have an average zoom distance, but if you zoom WAY out.. the game becomes extremely choppy. I know it's because the developers didn't code for ATI since the game has another one of those ''Nvidia'' splash screens on it, but it makes no sense why other games like Dungeon Siege and UT2K4 run screaming fast, and a 2-D game like Sacred runs a lot slower. Frustrating. Maybe a patch will fix that up, but I imagine it would have to be a hefty one.

Characters:

I think what interested me in the game most, was the selection of characters you get to choose from. There is the Gladiator, your typical fighter. Then you have a Seraphim, which is an angel/valkryie type warrior. A battle mage, which both fights and uses spells is nice, as well as the wood elf which uses nature magic. Also, you can play as a dark elf, which is a martial arts type of character akin to the assassin in Diablo 2 expansion. Then there is the Vampiress, which is a GREAT concept for the game and I'm sure a lot of people will go for her right away. At the selection screen, holding your mouse over the characters will allow you to hear them tell their biography to you.Way cool.

Gameplay:

Fun fun fun. Combat is nice because you just hold down the mouse button on who you are attacking. Your opponent's life is indicated by a full circle around them. As you score hits, the circle empties. It's different than the typical ''red horizontal line over enemy head'' that you see in SO MANY games.

There are items GALORE in this game, and many are character specific. I was constantly picking up stuff I couldn't use, but, they sell for a nice price in town. That's another nice thing about the game...almost everything you sell is worth a lot of money. Sure, items to BUY are crazy expensive, but it's more fun to sell a short sword for 700 gold instead of 13 like in other games. It's just another way Sacred is different. Also your inventory is HUGE, this is nice because you will find A LOT of stuff out there.

Plus you can buy a horse.

Overall:

Sacred is one of the best games I've played in a few years. It's easy to get into, has TONS of little secrets, cool characters, a decent difficulty (not too easy, not too hard), great visuals, cool characters and just generally makes me feel like the world it offers it worth exploring. My only gripe with the game is I will not be able to experience the game with a lot of friends because of the weird lack of coding for ATI cards and a control panel that doesn't really offer much in terms of allowing you to turn down visual settings. It's a hard pill to swallow, cuz I think this game could do VERY well.

If you have a decent system, go get Sacred. If you don't, well it's one of those games that I honestly feel would be worth upgrading your system for. I've played for about 5 hours now, and I have 2% (yes that's right, 2%) of the game uncovered. There is some serious replay here, especially with all the classes.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/21/04