Game: Sacred 2: Fallen Angel

Developer: Ascaron

Publisher: CDV Software Entertainment, Deep Silver

MSRP: $59.99

Console Release Date: 5/12/2009

Platform Reviwed: Xbox 360

Also Available On: PS3, PC

I’ve never been much of a PC gamer beyond a few select titles, so I’m not really used to the third-person, top-down view RPGs that follow in the footsteps of Diablo.  Sacred 2 originally interested me because of previous Western RPGs I had played that had sandbox-style game play, such as Oblivion and, to a lesser extent, Fable 2 and Mass Effect.

From the beginning I was amazed by Sacred 2 – the visual and audio presentation is really well done.  The bright colors and contrasting locations popped right off the screen.  The spell effects, character and NPC animations and overall general visual style draws you right into the game.  The audio tracks seem to match the mood of your situation and smoothly transition from one to the next depending on what is happening on-screen.  This works as much for immersion as it does to notify the player to remain alert, because enemies are near.  Granted, if you were actually traipsing through this fantasy world you wouldn’t necessarily hear music playing, and some might argue that it detracts from immersion.  However, I feel, in this particular instance, it helps you get lost in the world and draws you into it.  Isn’t that what a game soundtrack is supposed to do?

I was a bit disappointed with the class and customization options the first time I booted the game up.  You’re tightly bound to one gender for each class and you have very few customization options to change, especially for the males.  For example, if you want to play a High Elf (mage-type character), you have to be a female, if you want to play a Shadow Warrior (melee type), you have to be a male.  There are about two or three hair styles for the females, and none for the males, which is very disappointing.  However, once you actually get into the game, you’ll probably realize that the superficial doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things because your character’s skill and attribute customization is extremely deep, oftentimes too much so, if that’s even possible.

Let me explain what I mean by that.  Usually, you want a “battle system” to be deep and you want there to be deep character stat customization features, right?  This game has that and, truth be told, if you were given better tutorials for every game feature and what all attributes mean, I wouldn’t even be complaining about this.  However, the game has a very unforgiving learning curve because you’re told next to nothing about how things work outside a few basic tutorial pop-ups and a couple tutorial-type quests.  It is very confusing if you’ve never played this type of hack-and-slash, loot-whoring, action RPG before.  I can only imagine how confusing it would be to someone unfamiliar with the RPG genre in general.  Its even difficult to see what loot dropped, what its benefits to you are or even if you can wear it.  I really have to take points off for that, because I feel the developers should have done a better job explaining how everything works to provide a smoother experience and a smaller learning curve.

Usually the first thing I mention about an RPG is the story.  I didn’t here because, well, after many hours of game play I still couldn’t figure out what the story was supposed to be about.  Granted, I didn’t finish the main story, and that’s likely because there’s so many other things to do, however you would think in the first dozen quests or so, the story would have a general outline…and I just didn’t see it.  In other open-world RPGs like Oblivion, if you follow the story quests, you’re presented with the main crux of the story very early on so there’s usually no question as to what you’re up against, at least initially.  In Sacred 2, either the story takes so long to get rolling that, unless you’re extremely persistent, it would take you hours and hours of main-story questing to figure out what’s going on and get involved in it, or the story is just so “all over the place” that its not even worth it.  In either case, it’s a failing of the overall game design, regardless if the main point of the game is the story or not.

I did play local co-op with my brother a few times, and it worked out pretty well and was fun.  I would have liked to see more camera adjustment in co-op, as well as better looting and inventory systems (a general complaint of this game, really), but overall, the co-op experience is a decent one and factored greatly into my motivation to buy the game.  With so many titles of all genres supporting only online co-op, its nice to see a title, especially an RPG, where you can sit down on the sofa with a buddy and get lost in the adventure together, side-by-side.

There are a few other issues I had with the game, but I don’t want to get too nit-picky; I mentioned my major issues.  It would be nice if Sacred 2 did at least one thing exceedingly well even if everything else was left at the wayside.  Unfortunately, I can’t say it does.  Overall, it’s a solid title, with gorgeous visuals and audio – in fact, those are its two best features (although, no sky makes me a sad panda, but that comes with the top-down action RPG genre).  If you’re looking for a good, mindless action RPG where the sole goal, it seems, is to advance a character and get phat loot, then Sacred 2 is your best best on a console.  It’s fun to play, but if you focus too much on non-game play areas of the game, you’ll be disappointed at its deficiencies.