Kill, loot, and repeat in Ascaron Entertainment's action-RPG sequel.
Sacred 2: Fallen Angel is a loot grind, no doubt about it. In that sense, this is not a game, going to offer anything compelling in terms of narrative structure or quest. Its purpose is to offer a gigantic world for you to run around, whack stuff with weapons and explains grab the loot it drops, and repeat. Developer Ascaron Entertainment's successor certainly delivers on those elements, and offers up six interesting character classes to build and customize however you like. So if you're looking for a good old-fashioned loot grinding to play for yourself, or better yet, with others online, this will satisfy, although you can expect a number of technical problems both small and large.If you have played Blizzard's Diablo, Iron History's Titan Quest, or Ascaron's Sacred 2004 original, for that matter, the setup here should not be surprising. You click the mouse buttons to attack enemies, hack away at their power bars, quaff drink as a crazy against hard-hitting boss characters, and greedily SCOOP up all the cash and loot the fallen spill on the battlefield. Sacred 2 is unable to distinguish himself in a few ways from other types of high-fantasy, hack-and-slash action RPG out there, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse.
First you have played world Ancaria, which is impressively massive. Even the places you drive through the wooded areas to Elven jungles, desert plains, and the dragon caves laced with rivers of magma, is not particularly novel, the world is nicely detailed. But mixed into this seemingly standard high-fantasy universe filled with orcs, kobolds, lizardmen, evil wizards and monstrous, fiery demon bosses, you get this strange magic drug, called T-Energy, which gives rise to some of the more interesting bits on fiction. You must go across a field of swaying trees and green grass and suddenly see a pipe jutting from the ground carrying the glowing blue energy, which is the source of conflicts in Ancaria.
In some cases affects only appearances, so instead of fighting a battle you fight Beetle Beetle with a giant glowing blue limbs, but also account for the dog-headed Cyborg Temple Guardian character class. This guy, perhaps modeled on a combination of the Egyptian god Anubis, and Donald Sutherland from Viruses, Ancaria runs around with a laser blast. Honestly, it seems a little strange, because all others are tossing around magic or smacking each other with medieval weapons, but here is the Temple Guardian with his laser gun, which for some reason, still feels the need to carry around old-tech bladed weapons.
His personality differs from the rest of the field as well. The main quest missions, he would call out sarcastically replies with a Moon Intendance from Aqua Teen Hunger Force vocal pace of quests given to him by NPCs, and he will randomly break out absurd phrases to work to break the fourth wall. For example, do not be surprised to hear him say things like, "Look, a number over your head," refers to the genre standard damage totals that appear as you whack at enemies, or "one step closer to planned up "after killing an enemy, ridicule or hum a song for himself, if you leave him idle for too long. It is certainly a refreshing change to play something that feels more traditional, like DRYADES or Seraphim.
Temple Guardian's quirky personality aside hectares each class will have some interesting ways to level up and customize how they work. There is the standard statistical strength level, where more strength bumps up the damage you do, and more dexterity affects damage and defense spokesman ratings. While you will be managing hit points, you do not have to deal with mana or spell points of any kind. Instead, you make decisions about adjusting settings to reduce the cool down timers of your abilities, known as combat arts. As you move through the world can you find Runes to learn new combat arts, and can power up individual combat arts and spend skill points needed to add other special effects. You can also sell combinations of Runes to vendors and buy different. Moreover, combat arts can be combined into combo template chaining attacks together, which proves to be useful as the game only allows you to slot a certain number of active control of the arts at a time.
So clearly there are many ways to diversify how your specific character performs in battle and the game offers a number of useful and diverse skills from the Shadow Warrior's ability to summon spectral soldiers Temple Guardian's devastating Archimedes jet. And on top of everything you have to choose God's powers, when first creating your character, which can have extremely powerful effect, but has much longer cool downs than any of your combat arts. All in all, it is an interesting system to keep people busy and to create an incentive to level the six classes in different ways to enjoy the different play styles.
When you take these classes in the large, open world, you find there are very few load times, but will also find little that is surprising about the overall structure. The main quest can be aptly described as rambling and unfocused. Although NPC text boxes along the main quest line is complete expression, they are not a particularly good one. Before long you'll be whipping through the city and the collection side quests with little regard to what is written in text logs, because a large number of them are "X went missing, please download Y Z types of things from enemies!" or a derivation thereof. That said, a few of the quests are more interesting, like the one to retrieve the lost instruments game licensed bands, the German metal group Blind Guardian, so they can play a show in Ancaria. You can also find strange underground chess boards, a mission to test chemicals at a pumpkin to win to have a cause to explode with Gore, and other types of Easter eggs that will reward the more adventurous gamers or those who are willing to to read the quest descriptions.
The narrative ennui you undoubtedly experience with the game does the absolute best played online, something Ascaron gives you plenty of opportunity to do through their own servers, over LAN, the player versus player or player versus environment-type servers, and with up to 16 players running around in the game world. When playing with others is not your thing and you're not someone who becomes obsessed with gathering more and better equipment, you probably will lose interest long before you see all the game has to offer in its light and dark variants of the main quest. It is certainly a game best played with friends so you can fight, trade and level up together, since without the social element of the game feels more like a complex slot machine than anything else. Of course that could describe all hack-and-slash, but some, like Diablo II, do a better job of covering their roots.
However, there is a wealth of subjects of different quality and different bonuses and the game models, and there are plenty of normal and elite enemies to kill. Finally you will also find class-specific mounts appropriately named "Isle of mounts, which allows each class to the dramatic effect up. Temple Guardian, for example, get a Mobiculum, a giant wheel machine that lets him attack like normal and maintain buffs, but also benefit from increased movement speed and health. It is a strong incentive to pull you along through the game, and when you get the mount, serving as one of the moments when you really feel like you've significantly powered up your character.
Then there is the game's interface, which sometimes works well and serves to make the game more enjoyable, but can also cause frustration. For positive, there is a nice auto-swap function, which at the touch of a button retrieves all around you and you can set parameters as to what kind of loot get snagged. You can actively chain wire gates and check points around the game world in order to allow for quick, easy trip, and in multiplayer you can chain to the party members' locations, so you do not waste too much time to meet. All the quest objectives are displayed on your main map, which you can activate by clicking on the moment at which an arrow will direct you to appropriate places and a handy Loss-activated mini-map will help you navigate the sometimes labyrinthine terrain .
Despite this level of convenience, you'll still run into problems. Some quests attach an NPC follower to your party, and there seems to be no way to dismiss them, unless you complete the appropriate quest. Of course you can always completely quests, but it would have been welcome to include a soluble opportunity. NPC AI is another issue which NPCs or subpoena tagging along, if this is the type to attack, driving all over the place and trigger any number of enemies to attack. And there is virtually nothing you can do about it. If you are in an area around your character's level you should be fine, but trying to solve a higher-level content with the kind of issues can be problematic. Call mounts also seem finicky. They will sometimes appear as soon as you press the corresponding button, but other times they will get stuck in the doorway and force you to save and exit out of your game then reload in order to solve the problem.
Bugs also have a clear presence in the game world. Overheads maps will occasionally become unreadable, forcing us to restart our game. Targeting enemies can be frustratingly vague, especially when bits of the environment, and friendly NPCs stand in your way. Companion AI members, for some reason, float several feet above the game world, sometimes they would disappear, sound effects would play with no corresponding action, and there was the biggest problem in the game down. While playing on two different platforms, we have experienced random crashes and from checking the official forums it seems we are not the only ones. It is nothing that ruins the game, but it is a disadvantage that could potentially affect you. Ascaron has been releasing patches so far, so it is probably these types of issues can be resolved quickly, but for now the game in a pretty buggy state.
The game also has some performance issues, which means it's just not all that optimized. On one machine, we used to play Far Cry 2 on a smooth clip on high graphic settings, Sacred 2 was chugging on medium settings, which is not exactly a good sign. Provided you have a fairly powerful rig, but you will be able to run it okay, and be treated to shimmering, moving water effects, nicely detailed character armor and enemy models, some interesting architecture, decent spell effects and animations Nice . World terrain is also very varied, with cliffs and ravines throughout. Although it makes for a more natural-looking world, but also creates navigation problems. Even with your mini-map, it's still possible to lose your way when tying to track distant targets, and wind up in situations that require extensive withdrawal.
Sound design is pretty solid overall. Otherworldly summer and crackles accompanying magic spells, weapons clink and go down when they make contact, and whistle when they miss. You get a nice array of ambient sounds like animal calls, the rippling water and wind through the grass, and music appropriate for each section of Ancaria. The comments submitted by enemies in battle, and the temple guardian sarcasm, helping to keep things entertaining. The quality of the voice acting can be quite poor at times.
Concluding remarks
As far as Diablo-style hack-and-slash action-RPG go Ascaron Entertainment's Sacred 2 is the best genre entry since Titan Quest. It makes a huge world to explore, tons of loot, lots of monster types, and plenty of opportunities to bring its six character classes. Although it has a quirky personality, it offers little in terms of its narrative, it is convincing, and the game suffers from many bugs and technical issues, including poor friendly AI, the game crashes and performance problems, hopefully something that will work over the coming months through patch updates. Nor is it a game to try something really novel, just a lot of tried-and-true quest, kill, loot and repeat mechanics. In other online, it is a much more pleasant experience, but as of right now the U.S. servers are more or less empty, something that will hopefully change in the days and months after release.
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