GC '07: Sacred 2: Fallen Angel Hands-On

LEIPZIG, Germany--We recently got to play Sacred 2: Fallen Angel at the Leipzig Games Convention. Fallen Angel is the sequel to the original Sacred, a popular hack-and-slash RPG in the same vein as Diablo. Sacred 2 will follow similar lines, but take a unique online multiplayer approach. How unique? Well, the entire game will be geared toward online play, so that even when you're playing solo, you're still be playing online. This makes it much easier to have other players jump in for cooperative play. You'll also be able to fight other players in PvP arenas. The demo we saw at the show combined these elements into one, quick gameplay session. When it began, we picked from one of six classes (though only four were on display: High Elf, Shadow Warrior, Seraphim, and Dryad), then entered an area with all the other players.

Here, we raced our competitors to slay computer-controlled enemies. The player who slew the most foes won the round, and they did that by picking up treasure, armor scraps, and new weapons along the way. In an interesting twist, the health potions we picked up in the game were rendered as cans of Red Bull as a promotion. While Ascaron's representatives assured us our dryads wouldn't be drinking Red Bull in the final game, it was certainly surprising to see the cans on the battlefield. They may not have given us wings, but the health was helpful.

Once five minutes were up and players had slain all the beasties they could get their swords on, everyone was teleported to a small arena where we duked it out. The person with the most kills won. However, the player who slew the most artificial foes got a buff, and chopped through the competition with ease. Unfortunately, we were not that player, so we got to experience the difference from the chopee's perspective. It wasn't pretty.

But it was unusual. While we aren't entirely sure how Sacred 2: Fallen Angel's unorthodox online approach will work in practice, we can say it's an interesting hack-and-slash RPG that will try to wow you with interesting ideas, rather than fancy graphical effects, when it ships sometime in the first quarter of 2008.