Sacred 2 - Fallen Angel
This game is HUGE! Two DvD's! 25GB! It seems to share some features with Diablo, but only as much as all good isometric RPG's must share features with Diablo, simply because Diablo was so sensibly put together. 5 times switched from one disc to another. The intro video would be very cool, if it weren't for the terrible, terrible music. I started with the "Temple Guardian" as my character, a cybernetic Anubis firgure which the game warned me was 'for experienced players' I've played RPG's for a while, so why not? Immediately, I am curious about my world. I am awoken by looters digging up an old temple site, and I must gather my possessions, some clothing, a hammer, and my teddy bear and ball. My Temple Guardian has both a melee and ranged mode, and he switches between the two sensibly.
The world is massive and well detailed, and i want to explore the grey sections of the not-on-fire in game map. A consequence of it being a freakishly huge game are the freakishly huge updates. My game crashed (twice!) and I spent close to an hour downloading an update (at 150kbps) to hopefully help with not crashing anymore. Immediately after I download the patch the first time, my computer freezes and when I restart, it says the file is incomplete. another hour or GTAIV sandbox mode, and I can finally install the patch. Start up Sacred 2, and the game freezes six seconds into playing. Restart computer, try again, freeze again.I tried to create a new character, thinking that might be the problem, but the game froze halfway through character creation, which in this game consists of four clicks. I'm going to reinstall. This game just takes forever. It took forever to install, took forever to patch, and takes forever to start up.
Then, my computer dies and I have to get a new one. So, on a fresh computer that meets all of the requirements (and then some), the game still takes a very long time to install, patch, and start up. I still wouldn't call it a Diablo clone. After some hours of playing, I would call it a 'Diablo-WoW hybrid' The combat doesn't feel urgent at all. in Diablo, if your character gets hit by an opponent, he reacts at least something like a person react - there is a character there, and if feels more like a role-playing game. In Sacred, your character gets hit and a small red number with a subtraction sign in front of it pops up from your character.
The only sign that your character is nearing death is when he or she actually requests healing. 'I could use some healing here!' I suppose that I could then cast myself in the role of some sort of god, but I don't feel as though I am role-playing anything. The voice work is bland, largely. there are some funny moments, such as when the character I am currently playing - the High Elf, a half naked woman whose armors all seem to consist of miniskirts and stockings. Three of six characters are shapely women, the other two are muscular males and the last one is the Temple guardian.
One of the heavily advertised features of the game is it's massive terrain, but since in an isometric RPG you can never see past the fifty or so in-game yards that your screen will show you when you at maximum zoom-out, it doesn't feel that big. Only when you look at the world map (which is quite a nice one) and weigh the black-and-white unexplored bits versus the colored explored bits do you realize that the world is absolutely bloody enormous, and because of your tiny viewpoint it seems needlessly huge. In a first person RPG like Oblivion or Fallout, you can see the scale of the land, and the sight of long-distant mountains fills you with a desire to explore. In Sacred Angel, I just want to give up. You can buy horses to cover gorund faster, but they are quite expensive and they are only about twice as fast as your character's walking speed. At a later level, you can summon a mount, but unless it is XR-71 fast, I can't imagine it being much better. Still, it's a decent enough game, and supposedly the Co-Op mode is a lot of fnu. If anyone gets it, drop me a line and we can find out.
The world is massive and well detailed, and i want to explore the grey sections of the not-on-fire in game map. A consequence of it being a freakishly huge game are the freakishly huge updates. My game crashed (twice!) and I spent close to an hour downloading an update (at 150kbps) to hopefully help with not crashing anymore. Immediately after I download the patch the first time, my computer freezes and when I restart, it says the file is incomplete. another hour or GTAIV sandbox mode, and I can finally install the patch. Start up Sacred 2, and the game freezes six seconds into playing. Restart computer, try again, freeze again.I tried to create a new character, thinking that might be the problem, but the game froze halfway through character creation, which in this game consists of four clicks. I'm going to reinstall. This game just takes forever. It took forever to install, took forever to patch, and takes forever to start up.
Then, my computer dies and I have to get a new one. So, on a fresh computer that meets all of the requirements (and then some), the game still takes a very long time to install, patch, and start up. I still wouldn't call it a Diablo clone. After some hours of playing, I would call it a 'Diablo-WoW hybrid' The combat doesn't feel urgent at all. in Diablo, if your character gets hit by an opponent, he reacts at least something like a person react - there is a character there, and if feels more like a role-playing game. In Sacred, your character gets hit and a small red number with a subtraction sign in front of it pops up from your character.
The only sign that your character is nearing death is when he or she actually requests healing. 'I could use some healing here!' I suppose that I could then cast myself in the role of some sort of god, but I don't feel as though I am role-playing anything. The voice work is bland, largely. there are some funny moments, such as when the character I am currently playing - the High Elf, a half naked woman whose armors all seem to consist of miniskirts and stockings. Three of six characters are shapely women, the other two are muscular males and the last one is the Temple guardian.
One of the heavily advertised features of the game is it's massive terrain, but since in an isometric RPG you can never see past the fifty or so in-game yards that your screen will show you when you at maximum zoom-out, it doesn't feel that big. Only when you look at the world map (which is quite a nice one) and weigh the black-and-white unexplored bits versus the colored explored bits do you realize that the world is absolutely bloody enormous, and because of your tiny viewpoint it seems needlessly huge. In a first person RPG like Oblivion or Fallout, you can see the scale of the land, and the sight of long-distant mountains fills you with a desire to explore. In Sacred Angel, I just want to give up. You can buy horses to cover gorund faster, but they are quite expensive and they are only about twice as fast as your character's walking speed. At a later level, you can summon a mount, but unless it is XR-71 fast, I can't imagine it being much better. Still, it's a decent enough game, and supposedly the Co-Op mode is a lot of fnu. If anyone gets it, drop me a line and we can find out.