With the sheer amount of content available to you in Sacred 2, you'd be hard-pressed to find a bigger bang for your buck
Surprisingly, the content is of very good quality as well. Indeed, all of the quests you find will be interesting in some way, from simple fetch tasks to "kill x amount of monsters" and everything in between, the game just stays fun while you're questing. Quests that are not part of the main story are text-only however, so you'll have to do some reading to know what to do. Not only are there six hundred quests, there is also a "Light" campaign and a "Shadow" campaign. Those who want to be the "good guy" will pick the Light campaign, and those looking to bring destruction upon the world of Ancaria will choose the Shadow campaign. Your choice of campaign will mean the game will change which quests and story are available to you, making each campaign worth checking out at least once in your journey through Sacred 2.
Besides questing, a large chunk of your game time will be spent killing things. Lots and lots of killing. Every few steps you will encounter waves of enemies in a true Diablo-style fashion. If you haven't played Diablo, you can expect wave after wave of enemies all ganging up on you as you smash them to pieces. You will kill all sorts of various nasties and use your Combat Arts to take them down. Of the six races present in the game, each has their own unique Combat Arts that you choose for them. It's great fun leveling up these Combat Arts so that your killing becomes more and more efficient and fun.
I mentioned the game being similar to Diablo, but it's not an exact carbon copy and there are differences. For one, most of the killing and looting takes place above ground. While the game does have dungeons and caves and various holes in the wall to explore, the majority of time is spent under the open sky. There are various biomes to explore, such as a desert region, a jungle region, beaches, mountains, human and elven realms, etc. The landscape differs enough from area to area that you never get bored exploring. There always seems to be something tucked away in the far reaches of the map, be it a quest, or a treasure chest, or a random boss creature waiting to beat you down.
As you kill various enemies, you will watch as their corpses explode with shiny new loot for you to pick up and equip. The loot is a game in itself. There is so much loot to equip here, it's mind-boggling. Swords and pauldrons and longbows and guns (yes, guns are in the game) and on and on. Each character can equip quite a large selection of the various treasures you find, and it's extremely satisfying finding that next piece of armor that completes your set or that legendary sword of epic proportions. The loot makes this game extremely addicting and fun and there are just massive amounts of it. Awesome.
The story is pretty decent too. It leads you along the path well with interesting twists that lead you further into the unexplored lands of Ancaria. And did I mention the size of the map? It's approximately 22 square miles. It's enormous. Not only is it huge, but the amount of little nooks and crannies to get lost in is staggering. You will even find areas of the map that look inaccessible, but once up close you will find hidden paths that lead you into new areas to loot and plunder. The exploration in this game is phenomenal, and goes a long way to keeping the game fresh for countless hours.
The graphics and sounds are nice. I liked the voice acting of the children in the game. "Mother says I shouldn't talk to strangers, but I do anyway". The game has a lot of little quirky moments in the sound design, and I mean that in a good way. For example, your warrior will shout various things at the enemies as you destroy them, and hearing these phrases is often hilarious. Hearing the Shadow Warrior yell, "Die with dignity, you coward!" as he slays a wild boar never gets old. The voice acting in these parts is excellent and a welcome addition.
The graphics are pretty solid, and the camera offers you a good selection of close-up zoom or far away, top-down style. I wasn't blown away by the graphics, but I did like them. I'm more of a gameplay-over-graphics kind of guy, so I don't have much to say about how the game looks really. I did like how various weapons with different enchantments on them glow in different colors. It was a nice touch. Also, the art design of the various gear you find is outstanding. You are constantly equipping new gear that not only gives you great attribute bonuses, but it looks cool as heck. They really nailed the art design in this game.
When you are finally "finished" with the game, you realize that you are just starting. As mentioned, the game has five difficulty levels and each level offers you better and better loot and more challenge. The default Bronze and Silver difficulties are pretty easy, but it gets more treacherous on the higher difficulties, and your character builds and skills become much more important. After you finish a campaign on the lower difficulties, your character is maintained to be used on the higher difficulty levels. That means that you don't lose any progress, loot or abilities you gained during your first play-through. Also, you can level your character to level 200. I have never seen such a high level-cap in a game like this, so 200 levels of loot and plundering is very welcome in this game.
So there you have it. All in all, if you want hours upon hours of RPG entertainment, you can't go wrong with Sacred 2. If you fancy playing an action RPG on various difficulties and probably spending at least 100 hours, if not several hundred hours looting and pillaging and slaying hordes of monsters, then look no further than Sacred 2. Dare I say, this game epitomizes the loot-fest action-RPG genre. It is like a complete culmination of many great ideas in this genre, and if you love this genre as I do, you will find many things to love with Sacred 2.
Final score - 10/10