This is the Champions of Norath, Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance of this console generation...no doubt about it!
Sacred 2 is an Action Rpg, think Diablo2 for pc or Champions of Norath for ps2....it's that style, but Open World. Yeah the whole game is open world with mounts and dungeons and all that. There are 6 characters (classes/races...diablo2 style).
1. The Seraphim -angelic fighter (Paladin holy angelic sexy female warrior with wings wearing thong armor)
2. The Dryad -Half naked female nature ranger type class, uses nature magic blow guns, bows etc..
3. The High Elf - Female magic user , nuke destruction expert wearing skimpy clothes..
4. The Shadow Warrior - Undead warrior who was resurrected, speciallizing in melee and undead arts talking with the dead, bringing corpse back etc..
5. The Inquisitor - The elven -turned evil priest from killing too many heretics. specializes in pole-arms and demon, torturous dark magic
6. The Sacred Guardian - Half robot Canine that has a gun arm that uses laser beams and bombs and all sorts of mechanical apartus.
There are 2 campaigns in the game. A light (good quest line) and Shadow (evil quest line) The shadow warrior, dryad, guardian, and high elf, can choose to do either and the game plays differently with different quests, different starting scenarios, different spells etc.. depending on which campaign chosen. The Seraphim can only do the light camp. and the Inquisitor can only do the Shadow camp. Now you also get to choose a god there are 6 gods each gives a different power. There are mounts in the game and special class mounts.
The game has 5 difficulty levels, bronze, silver, gold, platinum, niob, each one raises the level cap and gear and enemies can go beyond the cap too. the levels go up to level 200!!! There are set gear and 5 different quality gear from common items to 4 different rare levels. Each character has 3 unique skill/magic trees where there are different unlocks in each skill, The character development and loot in the game is about 2x as deep as diablo2...it's insanely deep. Everything from stats to percentages etc.. is tracked and modified, sockets, artifacts, rings, amulets, and more can be socketed into certain gear. There are armor Pieces for each individual armor piece, feet, legs, waist, chest, shoulders, arms, gloves, and head.... (not like oblivion with just 3 places for armor). You can skill up to dual wield, specialize in certain weapon classes, or different skills, oh and there are combos where you can stack skills in a sequence. Like I said it's incredibly deep.
The map is large, 22 square miles long and the game is long. I have about 8 hours in so far and I am a level 12 seraphim, There are portals and resurrection shrines you can activate to teleport back to. The game is beatiful in full 1080p native on the ps3, with aa! and no slow down that I've seen. There is a minor screen tear when zoomed out all the way, but once you change the camera to manual it mostly goes away. It is in no way game breaking and you don't notice it when playing.
This game can be played in either offline single player, offline co-op with 2 players, or online co-op with 4 other players. You can play campaign mode, or Free world mode in either co-op or player vs. player. There is even two psn account login in this game and a patch is in the works for offline co-op mixing with online co-op. The enemies scale to your level and to the number of players in the game. When you have 4 players there will be massive swarms of enemies! There is nothing like being in a group tackling a swarm of 50 goblins while there shamans are resurrecting them as you kill and shooting poison volleys at you. The game gets really intense, and there are bosses to.
The trophies for the game are pretty good but if not time consuming, there are trophies for leveling up each character class. This game would take well over 400hours to get a platinum, I am sure of it. In my 9 hours of playing, I only have 2.6% of the map explored and 5.4% of the main quest finished! There are over 40 towns and 600 quests! The land is in all different types of environments with day - night cycles and weather effects. It plays in a 3d isometric view with zoom in look at the player zoom, but you can't see the sky, you are looking from above mostly, think champions of norath.
In closing this game is massive and so much fun!!! There is also a pc version but it's not as polished as they took an extra 6 months to change up the game for the console version, and guess what it wasn't dubmed down at all. This is this generations Champions of Norath (and if you are holding off on getting this because of how awful that untold legends game was, I got news for you, that game was abysmal, and this game is nothing like it. This game is like diablo/champions of norath, not the quasi - button masher wannabe that was untold legends...god that game was awful!)
If you like rpgs, hack in slash action rpgs...you must get this game!!! period, it's the funnest game like this and nothing is like it this gen. If you liked champions of norath, baldur's gate dark alliance, diablo2, titan quest, or just thought untold legends was the worst pile of dung in this genre...than you need to get a copy of Sacred2!