A gorgeous world to behold yet the innumerable (and seriously annoying) bugs will set the game back big time.
Graphics: 10 (If you have 25GB hard drive and a beefy PC you're in for a treat)
Sounds: 7 (Ambience sounds are terrific / voice acting is something to be considered)
Value: 10 (Huge land, 500 plus quests, three main quest chains – you can't go wrong)
Tilt: 7 (Constant crashing to desktop irked me. However kudos goes to the developers trying to correct the issue ASAP. And giving more out quests for every patch places a smile on my face)
Total score: 7.3
Imagine an RPG where you get to witness rolling hills, sandy beaches, dark gloomy forests, volcanoes, vast deserts and friendly orcs! Now imagine where future technologies and fantasy combined in vigilant harmony. Well if you can imagine this then that's what Sacred 2 is all about. Set approximately 2000 years before Sacred it's a world ruled by elves whilst other humanoids are a distant second. The main reason for this is that T-Energy, this liquid power that can transform anything for the good or bad literally flows like water. Yet unfortunately (or fortunately depending upon how you look at it) there are other beings who wants to control this T-Energy to serve their own purpose. So the choice is yours – be the good person and harness this T-Energy or be the bad person and utilise it all for yourself.
To begin with, you'll need to create a hero and the type of campaign you'll like to complete. There are six archetypes that will suit all walks of life from the grunt warrior (shadow warrior) to the ranged type (dryad), to mages (inquisitor and high elf), a combined fighter / mage (seraphim) or even a technological freak (temple guardian). Then you'll need to select the campaign whether be the 'light' (the good guy) or the 'dark' (the bad guy). There's an exception to this as the seraphim always needs to play the light campaign and the inquisitor the dark. Lastly you need to select one of the six available gods as they promote powerful spells and an additional campaign trail. Typical me I like to 'bend the rules' therefore choose the dark dryad (as I rarely played ranged characters and apparently it's the hardest one to master). Also I mucked around using the temple guardian and the seraphim.
Upon entering the world of Ancaria my jaw dropped twice. Firstly the world is nothing short than brilliant as it's the most beautiful world I have ever encountered. I witnessed the ocean crashing to the sandy shores (coupled with sea spray), rolling hills in the distance and even the sun rise! Later on you'll get to see dense forests, barren lands, volcanic activities, gloomy swamps, endless deserts and impenetrable jungles. Add to this you'll have day / night cycles (sit back and witness the sunset), detailed buildings that you can even enter, people going about chattering about nothing and even in some towns a bard signing 'Blind Guardian' tunes (more on that later). Yet with all this you'll need a beefy machine – something that NASA will be proud of. Allow me to say that it requires 25GB of hard disk space and if you managed to get that collector's edition with enhanced graphics add another 8GB. Other words it will put any but the beefiest PC to shame but heck there will be no loading times (other than entering dungeons).
With all these details arrives the bane of this game. It is riddled with bugs that often crash to your desktop or simply freeze. Yet (and strangely though) there's minimal quests bugs. Your saving grace is the quick save option but even then the quick save can fail and upon reloading as you'll be back at one of the last touched resurrection points. The main cause of this crash is the terrible memory leaks therefore this mainly happens between loading screens (i.e. in / out of dungeons). Also if the collector's edition enhanced graphics is turned on the game's engine simply cannot handle this therefore will crash as well. This mainly occurs when visiting towns as there's plenty of graphics to render. How ironic to those who bought the collector's edition.
The good news is that patches do regularly occur and even the developers will add extra content within the patches. Some examples are more bosses, extra quests and even an additional land to explore (Arcania's Xmas special). I guess it's their way of saying 'sorry' yet the downside is more consumed hard drive space. I think in total there's approximately 4GB of patches for which brings to version to 2.65.2. And still the game crashes yet not quite as often as before. Another sad occurrence is that the company is no longer in existence therefore this means no more patches.
The game play is very similar to Sacred 1. To those who never played Sacred, the controls are a simple matter of left click to attack / use and right to cast spells. Movement etc is just a matter of pressing WASD and naturally you can change the key bindings. Beware though that even though you may save your new bindings, if the game crashes it wipes out these bindings. To avoid frustrations save your bindings, exit the game, fingers crossed it doesn't crash and come back. A neat feature in this game is the concept of combos. You can select two, three or four combos depending upon the skills you have chosen and watch it pan out. And there's literally no limited to what combos you like to execute. For example my dryad (voodoo archer chick) has a combo where fires multiple arrows and then fires a single powerful shot with possible knock back. Also another one I use for the same character is launch a snare attack followed by disease as this is damage over time.
Yet the best feature is that every character will get a unique mount that further enhances your character. With my dryad I scored a monitor lizard; other words a big ugly lizard that speeds up my movement rate and combo regeneration. Other examples are the seraphim grabbing a tiger, the inquisitor's black widow spider and so forth. Yet you'll need to complete a series of quests to score these beauties. Other features include pressing one key to collect all loot, using runes to enhance weapons / armour and many more.
Arcania is unquestionably large; so large the game boasts 500 plus quests. Upon completion I knocked off 610 and failed a couple due to some silly bugs. The area can be considered a sandbox however you cannot enter the next realm unless you finish off the main quest chain for that particular realm otherwise you'll be greeted with a massive locked door or a teleport that just doesn't work. Also there are three major quests chains to complete being your class (in my case the dryad saving the forest), your chosen god and the main quest. Yet the main quest is the only mandatory one to get the ball rolling. Then of course you'll have the 500 plus side quests which mainly consists of fetching, saving, killing and whatever else. Lastly you can complete the game using both the shadow / light campaign however I have noticed there's little difference between the two.
If you think there's plenty to do in the single player mode, the multiplayer has tonnes of features as well. An excellent drop in / drop out feature allows the same character from the single player mode into the multiplayer game. Yet there's only one game play mode that these characters can play and that's under the 'Open Net'. 'Closed Net' are dedicated servers that players cannot bring their single player character/s so you can say it's a lot secure. And of course there's PvP for those who likes to get ganked or doing the ganking. Sadly though, the servers are all quite empty save a few.
The mix bags of goodies are the sound qualities. Ambience sounds like waves crashing, trees swaying, crickets chirping and so forth are top notch. Combined these enhances the already stunning world. Musically is not bad at all however it can be repetitive as the 'combat' music tends to be a lot more than often yet you can tone this down in the main menu. From time to time you'll also get to hear some of the scores from the power metal band 'Blind Guardian'. These tunes are mainly played via the bards in every major town. And if you managed to complete a certain quest line that involves Blind Guardian, you'll be treated with a special concert. Yet the bane of it all is the terrible voice acting. Some are comical for all the wrong reasons and even worse the female voices are just male voices impersonating as females. I don't understand why with such a detailed and striking world can easily be spoiled with such hopeless voice acting.
Sacred 2 brought all the good stuff from what made Sacred special. Plenty of quests, immersive world, and explicit attention to detail will make you sit back and enjoy the sunset / sunrise. Yet with the innumerable (and seriously annoying) bugs unfortunately sets back the game big time. A total shame for the amount of effect the developers have done to make this game as immersive as possible. Granted that during their time of existence they are quick to respond to the many issues that plague this game and even added extra content. I guess it's their way of apologising for any inconvenience caused however (and sadly though) it's the bad moments that will be remembered.