Though you have an overriding quest line you have to follow, the game boasts around side-quests for the more intrepid adventurer. Every town, village, hamlet and farmstead seems to have a tale of woe that needs righting. Venture off the path even a little and you can almost be guaranteed of stumbling across a goblin lair, a slave-traders' hideout or an enchantress's tower.
And since 75 per cent of the massive gameworld is open to exploration from the start, you're never going to be short of something to do in the land of Ancaria. As you wander through the more friendly areas of the land, you'll encounter the usual collection of merchants and ironsmiths to offload your booty to, as well as a few unexpected traders such as horse-dealer.
Unlike most games in the genre, Sacred enables you to saddle up and travel - as well as fight - from the back of a trusty steed. And one look at the size of the gameworld will tell you that this is a good idea, as travel between towns when not using magical teleportation gates can be torturously slow on foot. The combat system is where a game of this nature lives and dies, and once again, as well as a slew of dependable features from other games, Sacred manages to pull a few new tricks out of its sleeves.
Basically, it's a 'point the mouse at the enemy and click to attack' number. However, changing between different types of weapon or special attack is much easier than in similar games, encouraging a more tactical approach. So instead of just wading in to a bunch of enemies as the Gladiator, you might use your Throw Weapon skill together with a Hard Hit special power to take out the orc shaman at range.
This means by the time the throng of axemen reach you, they're shorn of their magical support. Using the game's combo system, spells, attacks and special skills can be mapped on to a single interface button, enabling you to unleash a deadly mix of abilities with one trusty click. This means a wizard can spit fireballs at the same time as firing arrows from his crossbow in a deadly hail of magical and conventional attacks.
So far, we're having fun with the nearcomplete code we've got, even if it does feel a tad familiar. At best, Sacred is going to be a refreshing addition to a well-trodden genre; at worst, a derivative trawl down memory lane - only time will tell. That, and our review next issue. So What Are Your Choices?
You can ruin a game like this if you choose the wrong character class at the outset. If you're not keen on relentlessly hacking opponents limb-from-limb with a battleaxe, then don't go for the Gladiator. And if you don't appreciate having to sit back, always relying on your bow, don't select the Wood Elf. There are six characters in all, each with a whole bunch of unique powers and abilities.
As well as the two already mentioned, there's the sword-wielding, magicusing Battlemage, the angelic Seraphim and the ninja-like Dark Elf. But our favourite has to be the Vampiress - by day a charismatic knight, by night a bloodthirsty countess of the undead. True to Hammer House Of Horror form, when she's in bloodsucking manifestation, she can summon wolves to aid her and suck the life out of enemies with her cruel Blood Bite ability.
A whole lot of fun. Quality versus quantity - it's a debate we've had here at ZONE many times. Yes, we are that pathetic. On the one hand we have those who prefer a game to offer the most intense experience possible, polished like a paratrooper's toecap, even if the damn thing can be comfortably completed in a weekend.
And on the other we have those who aren't satisfied unless they've been given value for money in the form of hour upon hour of gameplay, vast worlds to explore and massive tasks to complete. Sacred comes down firmly on the quantity side of the debate.
It's a combat-heavy RPG that offers a vast gameworld for you to explore and a giant's jockstrap full of quests to complete. On the surface, it's a fairly modest piece of design, taking all its cues from the hack 'n' slash genre perfected by Diablo and its ilk. But what it may lack in polish, it tries to make up for in sheer scale. As sure as goblins shit in caves, your first choice, as in any formulaic fantasy RPG, is to select a character class. A little thought is well spent here, as playing through the game as the brutal, hand-to-hand specialist Gladiator is very different from peppering folk with arrows from a distance as the Wood Elf.
And there are much more unusual characters on offer here, one being the Vampiress. This blood lusty lady has a whole different set of skills available once night has fallen -summoning wolves, sucking life energy, that kind of thing. Once into the world, it won't take you long to get the basics. Click the left mouse button to move, use or attack, and click the right to fire off a magic or special ability.
Hotkeys can be used to switch between weapons and magic abilities, as well as to guzzle down potions. A quick tutorial makes sure you're up to speed with all this, and then you're on your own, off on the first leg of your manybranched quest.
True to form, the scenario is not one that will leave you confused. An evil force is threatening the world, and wouldn't you know it, only you can stop it. This generally means speaking to someone, having that someone point you in the way of someone else and heading off in search of this second someone - who will no doubt have someone else in mind for you to have a word with. You get a little bit of text at each juncture, but nothing that would keep Tolkien up at night, and the central quest seems little more than an excuse to make sure you visit all corners of the lovingly created gameworld.
Along the way however, one of Sacred's strong suits comes into play - the sheer amount of side-quests.
Every other farmstead, sheltered glade or remote villa seems to have someone loitering around with a job needing doing, and while these quests are often quite banal - wander off, kill a bunch of monsters, wander back again - they do give you some sense of freedom.
Sacred's take on fantasy is also nice and stereotypical, and sure to please the average Conan aficionado. There are beautiful, buxom warrior maidens wearing metal thongs and suspenders. Since almost everything revolves around you slaughtering monsters, the combat system is paramount. Aspiring to incorporate tactical nuances, Sacred gives you a number of weapon slots and magical power slots.
By assigning different combinations of weapons and powers to each, you can easily swap from using a sword and shield to a bow, and from your lightning spell to some healing magic. The idea is that you can quickly adapt to a situation, or adopt new tactics?
Unfortunately, this doesn't quite come off. Playable characters include the burly gladiator, the agile wood elf, and the sneaky dark elf, as well as the angelic seraphim, the versatile battlemage, and the vampire, who appears as a noble knight during the day but commands the powers of her undead legacy at night.
The world of Sacred is designed to encourage open exploration and freestyle progression, as the majority of the game's areas are accessible to player characters from the start. Each town in the game world is designed to have its own personality and player missions; characters who manage to accomplish all of a town's missions become true heroes there.
Graphics feature 3D-rendered characters against hand-painted backgrounds, with three zoom levels. It's that time of year again, a time when the forces of evil are converging to destroy the world, and it's your job to stop it. Sometimes being a hero feels like a full-time job.
You can select one of six character types in Sacred, including the gladiator, seraphim, and dark elf. You can't choose the gender of your character, so if you wish to play the dark elf, for example, your character is always male. The game starts in a different place depending on the character type you selected.
The gladiator starts in the arena, while the dark elf begins play near a cave. After that, the quests seem to be the same regardless of which race you choose. Sacred's game-world is huge, and most of it is available to the player from the beginning. As you wander around, you'll come across dozens of randomly generated quests. Most are small and within a short distance from the quest giver. The quests vary and include delivery scenarios, rescuing a person or group of people and eliminating an enemy or group of enemies.
Some of the quests have time limits, usually of a day. Bugs can make it impossible to finish certain quests, even after you've completed the actual goal. Fortunately, these bugs seem to only come about in the randomly generated quests, not the main goals, so you shouldn't come across any game-stopping bugs this way. Most of the game-world takes place above ground, so if you were hoping for huge, complex, multi-level dungeons, you're going to be in for a real disappointment.
The monsters also regenerate constantly, which can be a huge issue when you can't stock up on enough potions to reach an area far away. You'll go a little ways, find you're running out of healing potions before you ever reach the goal, return to the town to grab the small available stock of those potions, and then try yet again to reach your goal, only to find almost as many monsters in your way as before.
It would have been nice if the merchants had infinite potions or eased off of the regenerating monsters. By doing neither, Sacred just becomes unnecessarily difficult, and not in a fun way. You'll probably find yourself running or riding past hordes of monsters in the hopes of saving your potions for the later, quest-related battles. You can buy horses to make your travels across the great realm of Ancaria and saddles to improve your mount's chance of staying alive.
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