Customer Reviews

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

After completing this game once, only one word sums it up epic....The total area of the map in Sacred 2 is 22 square km, this equates to alot of game. The game gave me a solid 50 hours of gameplay on Silver level, and I skipped alot of side quests. It has a very open game style and I sensed minimal linearity with this game.

The gameplay is fast frantic and fluid. This is a pure hack and slash though and through. Standard attacks are activated with the left mouse button, while your right is used for special skills. Be prepared to click alot because the world is populated with many many enemies. The loot in this game, well there's lots of it. If I could level a single complaint about the standard items it would be their lack of variety. But some set and unique items seem to have their own graphics. Gameplay 5 out of 5

For the guy who below me is complaining about the "10 year old" engine, that's a load of trash - sorry. The graphics are great, not the best in existence but definitely lush and appealing. The world absorbs you and has so much more life then it's predecessor. The water effects are particularly stunning. The character models although disappointingly not customizable, are great. The Serephim with her unearthly beauty, and the Inquisitor with his almost emperor Palpatine visage are flat out fantastic. A problem with the engine is some buggy slow down, especially with many NPC'S on the screen at one time. A patch does fix most of these problems, but such an obvious flaw should have never made it to the retail release. Graphics 4 out of 5

The sound is a mixed bag in this game. Mechanics wise you get all the standard options 3d sound etc, but that is not where the problems lay with the sound in this game. A soundtrack by Blind Guardian - definitely not a problem there. The general sounds of ambiance awesome. The voice acting? Yeegads terrible... The character voices themselves are pretty good on the most part if not repetitive during gameplay, It's the enemies - They are at times seriously cheesy and do have a slight effect on the enjoyment of the game. I would have preferred a more serious tone to them, some of the one liners are flat out crap. The NPC's also seem to lack a lot of character but on the plus side they randomly interact with you and each other and this adds a sense of realism. Sound 3 out of 5

This game is going to keep you occupied for months, the amazing depth of skills spells and statistics is going to keep people busy for months on end and adds a level of customization that amazes you. This especially is felt after the initial feeling that the game would lack it considering you have no choice in picking your characters looks or even gender. If that doesn't impress you surely the vast amounts of loot will. Finding that last set item will surely have you crying out "one last dungeon!" lastability 5 out of 5

I have not even touched on the multi-player or other features of this game it is definitely worth the money and a try!

I don't want to drag on, so I'll be brief. The game world is huge, the characters are unique, and the skill system is novel and varied. There are two paths (light or dark) to play the game on, and it has pretty interesting multiplayer options which make the game particularly fun in co-op or general online play. Considering its genre it's going to be likened to Diablo, and I have to say it rivals it in every way but perhaps presentation as Diablo does have a more cinematic story, but I believe Sacred makes up for it in its vast open world. I really can't stress enough how large the game world is and how much there is to do (600+ quests with differing path outcomes and class specific quests) Without teleports (which thankfully there are) it would take nearly six hours real time to walk from one end of the 22mile game world to the other.

Overall, I can't really recommend this enough for fans of the genre, and the only negative thing I have to say about it sadly is that the developers/publishers chose to mar this game with DRM and an archaic activation system. Its even more baffling as multiplayer is a strong point in this game, and a simple key check for multiplayer should have been sufficient, but instead there are limited activations(2) and online activation is required to play it period. Hopefully, in the future Ascaron and cdv will see this as a mistake, as they are only hurting and alienating their customers and fans by harassing them with archaic DRM methods.

I gave this game 4 Stars a few weeks ago with only (20+Hours) of game play.
I am now past the (30+Hour) mark and to be honest,i can't see myself finishing this game.
I am a fan of the first (Sacred) game and own quite a few Hack-n-Slash titles(maybe too many)but this one has me practically falling asleep.

Sure the graphics are nice, which really doesn't say much, it's so *standard* these days for a games to have million dollar budgets to work with that it's becoming the norm and frankly, quite boring.

Creating over a 100 fetch quests that range from ("Kind of Interesting")
to (Completely Absurd-"Will you help me find my kitty,she's lost") is a
really sad way to cover up the fact that the game has an extremely weak
Main Storyline,and good luck trying to even make sense of it when you do
discover it.

On a good note,complete freedom in the way of customization of your character and skills is where Sacred 2 really shines, but what fun is it
to reign terror on pretty much the same monsters over and over and over
again. I haven't seen so many (rats,imps and goblins)running around in one game in my entire years of gaming.

New to the world of "Sacred" ?

Take my advice (or not), buy "Sacred Gold" Edition, you can find it here
on Amazon for cheap it has the first Sacred game with it's expansion pack
included and don't let the fact that it's a few years old throw you off
because graphics wise it still looks great, it's more challenging with the same open-ended feel of(S2) but with an actual storyline that's well
written for a game of this genre.

For those who still insist no buying this title at least wait until the price drops(drastically) or wait until the Xbox360 version comes out in
a few months and rent it first.

3 Stars for graphics: common with all PC games in the last 5 or so years.

If you like to KILL..KILL..KILL grab it, but if you're looking for a deep
storyline save your money, buy the 1st game and stash the difference and
wait until either (Diablo3) or (Dragon Age) to come out.

True Sacred Fans need not apply.

So - the first Sacred game was one of my all-time favorites (along with Diablo 2). Bought this on the first day available.
The graphics are fantastic, but of course you pay for it in system performance. Not quite as smooth as the first Sacred, but it's definitely playable.
The game play is pretty much the same as in Sacred, with a combination of monster-killing in the countryside, and mini-quests in the cities (which involve running from point A to point B a lot).
-- Update --
So, they've patched a bunch of bugs and improved game performance. My previous issue with a lack of game pausing has been fixed as well. Overall, this is probably the most re-playable game I own. I'm probably gonna stay addicted to it until Diablo 3 comes out...

Although the game starts out very good with numerous quests, weapon and spell options, and a huge world to explore, the game has several major flaws that make it a waste of money. I could not run a patch from the website because an error message that "the language of the patch donloaded is not recognized" kept appearing.

Problem# 1: on the silver difficulty mode, whenever I resume a current game, my starting place was at the very beginning location of the game. This happened with every character I played and technical support responded to this problem with "it is supposed to do that". HUH?

Problem# 2: while east or south of the desert, the game crashed anytime it started to rain with lightning. Every time with 2 different characters. After the 5th crash I uninstalled the game and stored it away.

The game is good if you like action RPGs e.g. Titan Quest or Diablo 2. i.e. your idea of roleplaying is killing the monsters and taking their loot, as opposed to plot-based and social RPGs like Baldurs Gate or Neverwinter Nights. In terms of stacking up against the competition, it's playable and looks good. I don't yet know if it has the same depth that Diablo II had but it certainly has more modern graphics. It's easily better than Titan Quest. Or Loki (argh).

The EU version of the game has securom with 2 activations. What this means is that after you install it it goes online to "activate" and you can only activate it twice. Reinstalling or replacing your PC, or changing the hardware in it (I think the game allows 1 change) will result in de-activation. You can in theory "revoke" an activation to get one back but I have yet to see that work reliably in any software.

I have decided not to purchase the EU version of the game for this reason, and will get the a US copy imported. In the meantime, until my copy arrives, I am playing someone else's. I am not buying anyhting with DRM if I can help it. Only by doing this will companies stop putting it into their games.

OK, I am a big RPG fan. I dont know if there are 'types' of RPG, but if this is one 'Type', I need to avoid it for the future.
To understand what games i think are good, Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights, Fallout 3, The Witcher, Mass Effect....are you seeing a trend. Yep, character customisation, with a strong plot, choices, and very good character development. Where you play a 'Role' in a story, where you feel you actually decide what happens.

Now onto Sacred 2. This is very like Hellgate. No real plot, you get thrown straight into the game with no feel for the game. I would say this is like a one player World Of Warcraft. Now WOW was good and bad for some reasons. I got fairly addicted before I hit a wall. But that addiction was the multiplayer side and the challenge of trying to beat other players. Take that away and you have a solo level grinding game = sacred 2.
There is no real role playing in Sacred 2. You define your character and then start grinding, reading long quest text boxes (or not, as there are just go here, find this, kill him, come back.......boring stuff). Ok, the world is big, but thats becomming the norm in most RPG games and not the stand alone selling point.

If i paid $20 for this, I may play it now and again, but I wasted just under $50, and am very disappointed. Be warned.

Firstly let me say i was REALLY looking forward to this game.
Unfortunately if you played the first game from launch you will remember how buggy it was, how slowly things got fixed, and how it felt like Ascaron did not care about you at all. Welcome to sacred 2!
While in 2 years i'm sure the game will be playable and fully rock, currently it is a complete disappointment. Most of us cant advance the multiplayer campaign mode without finding some poor sod to do it for us, MOST of the tele-portal things don't work (even though you can see them on your map), and alot of players cant make a multiplayer game PERIOD after level 60.
To look at things aside from the ones glaring me in the face every time i try to play this game... There are tons of invisible walls, the pathing is just dumb (as-in my temple guardian seems to be doing something tea-bag related to monsters i am trying to attack MOST of the time..he just kinda wants to get close to them ..even if he's a foot away, he wants to get 6 inches closer...and if the monster moves, he wants to get closer again), you need a pretty high end machine to run it (not really a con, but the performance vs. spec. ratio is way off -MSI 8800 ultra, 8 gigs ram, 3.2 ghz dual core processor, vista premium 64 and i STILL get sudden drops in performance every now and then for no apparent reason..i un-installed the elite GFX and it changed nothing so it isn't really the problem, i think in general its poorly coded), and the networking is garbage. Now i play online a lot, and have for a long time now, i know the difference between dropped frames and lag and differentiate, this is lag in the worst possible way, switching combat arts=a 1.3 sec delay, drinking a potion before you die about 1 solid second (which in game=time is life and death) there are few things worse in gaming than waiting for a server to realize you drank a potion a second ago as your health bar keeps dropping.
On still a third level i am one of the schmucks that bought the CE. It is THE cheesiest CE i have seen in 30+ years of gaming. the only thing i can think of that comes close was i once bought a comic book that was collectible simply because it had a hole through the center of the cover.
The map is the same map you have in game before you uncover anything, the cd sampler is a joke (not that i care for the band or anything), and worst of all all 4 disks are stacked onto 1 bindle. the elite GFX disk while a nice gesture is from what i hear soon to be available for download anyways and can currently be pirated pretty much without penalty as it is; despite paying customers having to deal with DRM.
Now for the positives. has great character development and alot of possibilities for each class (though not as many as sacred underworld since there aren't as many classes). The graphics are real tight and the world is rich with little details, i don't think there is an empty table in the whole game, every single one seems to have various beakers, books, or tons of other little intricacies scattered on and around them. The difficulty online is adjustable, so you can turn it up if you don't feel you are being challenged, and the monsters are sometimes quite impressive.
The sounds are just "ok" but thats the norm in any game (with the exception of a few starwars games i rarely see sound effects that go off without a hitch), the weather is pretty impressive at times, especially in lightning storms, and the world in general feels very huge and very alive.
In 2 years i can safely say this game will be a knock out. For now it sucks horribly, it has been WEEKS without most of us being able to simply play the game as it was intended, and Ascaron does not seem to care at all (nor do anything about it obviously). I feel like they are putting all their effort into pushing out the console version which i guess they don't understand is going to get them nowhere if all the PC players (who ARE in fact their bread and butter) are badmouthing their game and giving it horrible reviews (as if we don't talk to console gamers or something).
in short look to pick this game up in 2010 when it will most likely finally be playable.

I was an original Sacred 1 player, but never got completely through the Underworld expansion. But when I saw Sacred 2 was coming out, I was really excited. All I can say is WOW! They put a lot of work into this one with the Ancaria map. So much to explore, and hundreds of side quests. It would be impossible to complete every single side quest and equally impossible to explore the entire world map. That's how big it is.

As for gameplay, I've only played 2 of the characters now, and only on Level 36 in the Bronze difficulty level. But my character doesn't seem to have any problems defeating anything. Maybe it's too easy, or I just built my character that well. But I haven't really had all that much of a challenge yet. Maybe I'll see more in the Silver difficulty. BTW, I do not play the multiplayer games online. I prefer single player mode.

Game controls are easy. I've played WoW and Guildwars, albeit briefly. I didn't like the controls with those games. I prefer to control movement of my character with the mouse instead of the keyboard. Just my preference. Hotkeys are customizable for potions, weapons, combat arts, and viewing skills and attributes. I just wish there was a command for "Pause."

One thing that's nice about the game is you can choose which quests to complete, and many of them indicate the level of difficulty of the quest by using a star rating system. I usually only choose to complete the quests with 3 stars or more.

Can't seem to find very much info on what some of the modifications mean. For example, there are ice crystals, poison fangs, iron ore trophies, roast joint trophies, and others as well. I have no idea what they do and haven't used a single one yet. Guess I have to rely on the online player forums to find out.

Now for the technical aspect. This is where I have some complaints. I'm running Windows Vista 64 with 6 Gigs of RAM, and a 1024 NVidia GeForce 9800 GT for my video card. I've upgraded the power supply for the PC, and also installed an additional case fan. So you can't say my computer is lacking in the system requirements department. However, I seem to get random crashes. Sometimes the screen goes black and I have to do a hard reboot. Sometimes I get the blue screen of death and the system automatically reboots. In addition, I've found a few quests that cannot be completed. The map compass tells you where to go to complete the side quest, but when you go, there's nothing there. Or the NPC where you're supposed to get your reward doesn't give you anything and the quest does not register as being completed. Not sure what's up with that.

Ascaron put out a patch to v2.31 in early December. Prior to the patch, I think I only had one crash, which was just a system freeze. But since the patch, I get the random crashes a little more often, usually after an hour of play. I've learned to use the F9 key to manually save the game after I complete a quest, find a special or set item, or find a combat art. I also save when I'm on my way to completing a quest between resurrection points and portals. I certainly don't want to lose my stuff, map progress, or experience points by not saving--just in case of a crash.

I did see one other comment about there not being a "Pause" button. That's correct...no pause in this one. The only thing I've found is to go to a town near a merchant or combo master. That's usually a safe place. The resurrection points are not necessarily safe to leave your pc unattended, because I got killed there once when I left the pc to go eat dinner. One other thing about walking away from the pc...I placed my character in a safe place and walked away once. When I came back 10 minutes later, I found my pc had rebooted itself. That tells me the random crashes are not based on gameplay or quests. Since the game is very graphics intensive, I suspect the video card is getting too warm and shutting down.

All in all, I really enjoy the game. It could be a little more challenging, but maybe silver level will be more of a challenge. The random crashes are very annoying and hopefully a patch comes out to fix that (since I didn't get all those crashes before the last patch). And the inability to complete a few of the quests is a bit of an annoyance, but I can live with that.

The Good: The graphics are considerably better than the first version. Much of the game basics (potions, spells, etc.) are similar to the first game except potions are now stack-able (Yeah) and the spells/abilities are broken down into categories. You still get to start with only one spell slot available but you also get a buff slot for the new buff line of spells. The quest system is similar to the first version in that you identify quest NPC's by question marks over their heads and completed quest NPC's with exclamation marks. The new world is much more realistic looking and you can move just about anywhere except up cliffs or through dense vegetation. The monsters also look much better than Sacred 1.
The Bad: DRM. You have to activate the game via the internet before you can even play the single player version. However, the activation process went smoothly and I was able to get right into the game. The characters are still totally non-customizable. You can't even select the gender of a specific class. This is really bad especially in a $50 game! Also, I've found one broken quest so far out of the dozen or so I've completed. The viewing angle can be moved around in a circle (by default it's turned off but you can enable it--I've set the left and right cursor keys to allow me to swivel around one way or the other) but you're fixed looking at your character at about a 75 degree angle and it's sometimes realllllly frustrating not being able to see what's around you for a distance.
The Ugly: My computer has crashed twice in the 3 or 4 hours I've been playing the game--once, when I exited the game (computer locked up) and once when I'd just gotten back to a town (game crashed back to Windows). So, save often. I've been unable to get back in the game since the second crash so I'm going to have to reboot but thought I'd take time out to write this review.

All in all, I'm having fun and really enjoying exploring a totally new world. I just hope they fix the bugs soon!

Bill