Playing Sacred 2: Fallen Angel

I feel like a game reviewer.

But honestly, I've enjoyed all those games I spent a bucketload of my earnings on, and I can't help but be excited by each one of it.

Today though, I'll focus on the supposedly most flawed and contoversial of my purchases; Sacred 2: Fallen Angel.

The first take on Sacred is that it is a Diablo clone, and being such, it must be only of extraordinary quality to warrant a look at it, otherwise we'd be better off just sticking to the original Diablo series itself.

To be honest though, Sacred builds upon the Diablo mechanics and then goes its own way with it. Most of Sacred's fighting is above ground, and the tone for the world is largely bright and colorful. Most prominent is that the game plays on a large world map that has very little area transitions. To accomodate such vastness, Sacred offers mounts, horses or such, that can traverse the world much faster than on foot.

Sacred's character development is divided to three elements; combat arts are to be found via looting (or trading at rune masters), skills are raised few points per level, with every few levels or so, new skills can be unlocked; attributes are levelled even per level automatically with 1 additional attribute point given for you to focus on one particular attribute. Adding new element over the old Sacred is the customization of combat arts via upgrading skills related to those combat arts. Now one can customize how effective the combat arts are rather than simply upgrading it per level. For example, a level 2 seraphim radiant light combat art can deal say...20 damage points, but depending on personal customization, some people can make it deal overall better damage, or increase its area of effect or duration, add a perk that sucks enemies into the combat art...etc.

Sacred 2 has 6 characters, but I'll get to them later down below....

Having established the basics there, I'll get on to the bad first. I know people like to go to the good first typically, but I'll go to the bad first.

1. Bugs. The common plague of the sacred series, Sacred 2 suffers from several bugs upon release, some of it severe, others contribute to the decline of the game's feel. Fortunately some of the serious ones are ironed out by several patches already, though the game still suffers occasional stability issues. Game crashes occur not that often, but still it's more than you like. Fortunately the new patch enables on the spot save game feature, so F9 is your bestfriend in the game. That aside, the most prominent bug in the game I can see is largely non-lethal, but annoying; undeads that ressurrect are almost always "submerged" waist deep in the ground.

2. Character customization. Look, some people like blondes, I like red heads. Some people like tattoos, some like a clear face, and so on. I find it hard to grasp why a new and modern RPG, one that uses 20GB of space at that, has 6 character classes and all are unable to be customized in appearence sense. It's not that hard to do I would think, and the features are more or less there. I found out that you can for example change hair types and color for the seraphim via a few codes or so on the console. Thus, the question is why not just make it a formal feature. I'd love for a non-pig-tail hair style redhead seraphim.

3. Voice Overs. Some of the voice actors here do admirably well, some are good enough, and some are silly enough to be humorous but there are moments that punctuate the gameplay with odd comments, silly cries and the like which sounds like a 4th rate effort at best. Whats up with that? Redo all the bad VOs and I would feel a whole lot better about it already.

That about lists the major grievences I have about it. To the good stuff.

1. Character designs. Seraphim: sexy warrior. High Elf: sexy mage. Dyad :Sexy ranged combat. Inquisitor: Cool Evil Guy. Shadow Warrior: Heavy Combat guy, Temple Guardian: Cool cyborg. You can check online and such for the pics, but though some may object, I have to say I am largely satisfied with most of its design.
2. Open map. A vast majority of the map is open for you to get to from the get go. It's just a matter if you are brave enough and/or strong enough. Add that with the myriad towns and cities, to explore, sidequests that go from helping find a cat to saving hordes of people from death (hey I like domestic lifestyle quests sometimes too!), you get quite a filled up world.
3. Rides. Look, we travel the world ey? So was it in Diablo. So we should have had horses and such.. Fortunately they do here, even have specialized mounts for characters like an awesome tiger for my sexy warrior.
4. Items and loot. Aside from the fact that largely the items given to you are for your class, I only have one other thing to say. Metal Bra and thong with utility belt, defense total... 60... (and you havent factored in the high heel boots, pantaloons, hand and arm guards, helmet and wings, as well as jewelry yet). So nice! Awesome bonuses for making a chick look seductive~!
5. In game concert. Blind Guardian rocks.... hahahaha.

So, Sacred 2 isn't perfect. It's a flawed gem, but it's still worth keeping, at least that's what I think.

7 outta 10 I would say.

Can't wait to get back and play, and do some lingerie/wargear shopping for my seraphim... haha..