This is a fine Action RPG game taken to the extreme.
Sacred is set in the huge world of Ancaria. Here you can choose between six classes to play: Gladiator, Dark Elf, Wood Elf, Battle Mage, Vampiress and Seraphim, each one with particular abilities. Your mission is to kill a wrongly summoned demon, but to do so you'll have visit a lot of different places to solve step-by-step the main quest. While traveling through Ancaria, you'll find cities, castles, villages etc, and each one has a respectable selection of side quests. The secondary missions are a bit generic, but it will reward your character with all the important things in this game: gold, experience, items and runes.
The runes in Sacred are the only way to improve your special moves and spells of your character. Here is where this game really shines, because the characters don't have any kind of energy to cast them. The use of special moves and spells is limited to a regeneration time. So, if you use a hard blow (special move) or cast a Fireball (Spell), you'll need to wait some seconds to re-use them; so it's a good idea to let your regeneration time as low as possible. To achieve that you can wear magical items (such as rings, amulets, weapons, torso armor, boots etc) that give some bonuses to the regeneration time, as well some specific Skills that also helps about that.
The skills in Sacred are improved by leveling up your character. All classes have particular and general skills. For example, both Gladiator and Seraphim share Weapon Lore, but only the Seraphim have Heavenly Magic. There are also the attributes that will be automatically improved as your hero gain levels, although the game also allows you to put a few points and increase a particular attribute of your choice.
The only thing that will make you feel a deja vu is that you'll pass a lot of your time killing monsters, just like any other game of the same genre. In Sacred, however, the enemies are ludicrously numerous, and your main activity here is killing the hordes of creeps, instead of spending your time with puzzles or lengthy secondary missions. The side quests are as numerous as they're fast-to-solve: defeat a beast, kill a specific number of monsters, recover an artifact, find a treasure, scout a noble or a beautiful lady etc. What makes Sacred a singular game is that it have a huge world that is free to explore. You don't have a particular way to reach your objectives, as you can travel from different paths in the Ancaria world. Only 30% of the map is locked, and you need to solve the main quest to reach these areas. So this game is grossly like this: a exaggerated version of the other regular Action RPG titles. What many other games have, Sacred has just more of it.
The gameplay is OK; it becomes a little boring at some particular places. For example, the desert is a huge place to explore, and there is nothing cool about it, only an endless amount of sand. It would be nice to find a city or an oasis sometimes, but the lack of detail makes that region a bit boring. Nonetheless, there are a few cool features that make Sacred fast paced sometimes. For instance, the 'Collect All' button is used to pick up all items on the ground. Also, the information function is actually very intelligent and useful, which shows all the objects on screen that you can interact: people, chests, items and enemies. The shortcuts are nice too: five slots for the weapons and another five ones for the spells. I don't know why, but you start the game with only two slots of each type, and you'll receive additional slots as your character is improved (at level 30 of character you'll have already all the ten ones).
Sacred offers a good replay value as well. You can finish the campaign up to five times, as there are five difficulty levels: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinium and Neobium. You'll unlock the higher difficult levels when you beat the earlier ones.
Graphics are fine, but this is a very subjective concept, especially if it comes from me. I simply love 2D isometric projections in games, and Sacred is the one featuring the most beautiful engine so far. Naturally, the characters are 3D models, but they fit perfectly fine with the static scenario.
Multiplayer mode works fine. It's possible to save and load the progress any time you want. There is also the option to play in both cooperative and competitive games, and if you have a fast connection, you'll not experience any serious lags while butchering the goons over the net.
The real problem with Sacred is the bugs, which will force you to update the game as soon as possible after the installation. The 1.0 version is glitched as ****, and I had the unfortunate opportunity to play it when the game was released. Nevertheless, the updated game works a lot better. Don't forget to apply the free official plus version of Sacred to add more cool places in the world of Ancaria as well.
I found this game very entertaining and it's indeed a solid Hack 'n Slash for fans of the genre. If you liked similar games such as Diablo and Dungeon Siege, you'll find almost everything you need in Sacred.