Sacred

PC review by James Frazer, published on Sunday 18th April 2004

There are always new pretenders trying to battle for the crown in different genres, like True Crime: Streets of LA taking on Grand Theft Auto and Club Football playing for a draw against Pro Evolution Soccer 3. Sacred is the next in line, stepping into a market literally dominated by Diablo and with barely any chance of victory. Or so they thought.

On the back of relative success with Patrician and Port Royale, Ascaron (a European developer I’ll let you know- surely this is the end of the decline?) seems to have taken the simplicity of Blizzards Diablo and added various other RPG elements to come up with something far deeper. From a studio behind crafting intricate, complex yet eminently playable strategy games, Sacred fits the mould perfectly.

Starting off in the lands of Ancaria, a detailed yet gigantic fantasy world relying on the usual elf, dwarf, human and monster clichés, the storyline is unsurprising. An evil wizard, summoning a demon that puts the world in danger. This plot has been used so many times that we should all be turning away right now, but because of the familiarity the developer has been able to play around with the world and make it their own, as strange as the phrase may sound. With almost 70% of the world open from the start, you are free to explore and get used to the comings and goings of the game and get involved in a few battles to test your strength, and with so much to do the player never feels lost or aimless. Free to take on all manner of quests at your own will, you can leave missions for a rainy day and get on with finding spectacular views and unusual items. Only quite far into the game does the story really kick in, which encourages you to play around and get a few items before strolling along.

Before you are unleashed into the world of Sacred, however, you must create your character from a set of six classes, with mages, gladiators and scouts ready for selection. Without spoiling much of what makes Sacred tick, let me give a brief run down of your options. Wood Elves enjoy using bows and magic based on the moon, with Dark Elves being the opposite; the males using poisoned blades and martial arts with females being Priestesses and using magic. The Gladiator is the typical tough badass with all the heavy artillery and armour. Seraphim’s are heavenly creatures that conjure magic from afar, with the Battle Mage being a powerful magic dweller. Finally is the Vampiress with an interesting background. Once a noble woman, she was turned into a soulless vampire and preceded to suck the blood from anything that moved. However, once she bit a Seraphim and was granted her power and soul back. Now she’s a blood sucking goth girl on the good side. If you haven’t sat up with interest by the time you read this sentence then maybe this game isn’t for you.

Exploring the vast lands of Ancaria with your chosen character is no chore either, as you can ride horses to get to your chosen destination quicker. This makes earning experience points for finishing quests and killing monsters far less tedious than other games tend to do, and also makes exploring more absorbing. Finding quests to tackle is easy as you just search for people with a question mark floating above their heads, and new scenarios are unlocked by gaining hit points and various powers

Of course, with all this exploring taking place there will be times when your life is in danger. Using the mouse to take down enemies is as easy as boiling an egg, especially if you have one with a wheel (a mouse silly, not an egg). The left button, as usual, is your main port of call as this engages monsters, opens doors and treasure chests etc, whilst the right button triggers special attacks, most noteworthy is the ability for the Vampiress to turn into a fully fledged vampire for a limited amount of time, much like the Devil Trigger in Devil May Cry. The mouse wheel utilises the zoom feature, so one minute you can be far out to see ahead, then zoom back in to view something of interest. Even better is the ability to string together combo’s to unlock even the strongest monsters defence strategy. Clicking ahead o the character makes him walk there, much like Command and Conquer and other click-fest adventures.

Whereas most of the time you will venture alone, sometimes another character may tag along in a quest for the ride and will gladly accept weapons to defend themselves and participate in combat. Thankfully they don’t take away your items with them, instead dropping the sword you’ve searched high and low for on the ground. Of course, you don’t just scavenge for weapons and items, there are various traders plotted around the map who will gladly exchange your gold pieces for their goods. Also featuring are blacksmiths, who play quite an important role. By finding gems and other rarities you can present these along with an item to said blacksmith, who will improve your weapons and add attachments to make them more powerful. Of course, none of this labour is for free. You’ll have to pay more for the powerful weapons, but if it’s giant monster slaying you’re after then you’d be best to part with the cash.

Playing in the world of Sacred is not only a joy for your key pressing and mouse clicking fingers, but also for the eyes. Backgrounds are lush, bright and beautiful 2-D pictures with 3-D characters. Zoomed in, things start to look rough around the edges, but the compromises of lesser strains on low-end PC’s is a pretty big bonus, making this title accessible for a wide audience. That said the graphics look superb with fancy video cards, and with these ‘lesser spec’ graphics comes non-existent loading times, which gives the game a character and a cool atmosphere in a seamless world. The added feature of a subtle and effective transition from day to night, plus weather cycles, is a very nice touch and will make your ageing PC look top end. Plus the audio is pretty decent, if a little unremarkable. Each monster roars quite convincingly and whimpers when you slice a sword inside it, and birds twitter and chirp as day breaks, which is good enough for me. Voice acting is nothing too special, but it does the job that it set off to do. This won’t win any awards, but the audio complements the game well without trying to be flash or dipping too low.

Character animations are also nicely done, with enough variety during battles to keep things fresh. Transformations using the right mouse button look quite flashy and special, and little bits like getting on and off your horse literally tie up the game, as does the equipment that you pick up which can be seen on the character. There really is nothing like buying a really strong piece of armour and parading around showing it off on your chest, zooming in and out for the best effect.

And if you ever fell the need to stray away from the engrossing first player mode, there is always the option of competing online or through a LAN. Team up with three people co-operatively to take on the whole world of Ancaria (just like Phantasy Star Online or from two to sixteen in a monster-infested hack ‘n’ slash mode with the full map exposed for your slaying enjoyment. Hell there’s even player versus player should you feel the need to slay human characters as well as computer ones. Sacred certainly doesn’t match Diablo for multiplayer fun, as I explained earlier the former is simply borrowing the simple ideas from the latter and mixing them up with other RPG elements.

Of course, Sacred isn’t without it’s problems. Whilst there are plenty of combat arts, skills and other powers to garner the gameplay, which makes the game similar enough to other titles to become instantly accessible, you may spend some time trying to get used to the combat system. Finding which button does what, left clicking on a target and zooming in on it can seem pretty tricky, but stick with it and you’ll reap the rewards. Thankfully you can simply hit the ‘A’ button to gather up all of the dropped items in the available area, saving time to click on each individual one and accidentally missing some.

Now I’ll admit that I’m not an RPG fan. I first broke onto the scene with the Dreamcast’s Phantasy Star Online, carrying on with V2 and the GameCube version before turning my sights to Final Fantasy and various cheap PC RPG’s, so I’m not an addict, more of a newbie. However I found that whilst Sacred isn’t a genre busting game, it’s a damn fine title with good solid gameplay and an honest chunk of heroic fantasy. The clichéd story works in Sacred’s favour as you can explore the world, build up your character and not worry about any rules to adhere to. A refreshing break from the usual linear story-driven tat that is churned out, Sacred take the best bits of the RPG genre and fuses them together with a great deal of style. The polish, attention to detail and obvious love that has gone into the game has paid off and more than makes up for the shortcomings of being unoriginal and minor combat issues. Perfect for Diablo fans looking for a new yet familiar challenge, and the rumours of a map editor to be released which will surely increase the life of this title. I thoroughly enjoyed Sacred and, if you have an ounce of sense of what makes RPGs tick, then you should do too.