You do remember when Diablo 2 was released? Large as life and twice as natural, a huge success whichever angle you look at it. However in it's wake a handful of bright young developers, with honest greed in their eyes, sought to get a slice of that cake too. The results are speaking for themselves, becoming a forgotten footnote in the grand history of gaming. One of the daring competitors was Sacred: an open world hack'n'slash with pretty hand-painted backrounds, unique characters and an innovative skill system. Alternatively-- in my opinion-- it was a complete failure. Dead and forgotten for a good reason. Despite that and to my surprise a sequel was being developed. So when an english demo was released I had to see if it had managed to set things right and I could finally lay my old grudges to rest.
GRAPHICS
Since this is usually the first criteria by which a game is measured and which seems to motivate people the most it is more than fitting to start from there. In short: the game looks fantastic. Or it definitely would look fantastic if my PC wasn't so horribly outdated. The world appears to be at least in partly open. Very hard to tell by the demo alone. The animations however are the quality I remember from the original: the monsters and critters are alright but animations of people tend to be sluggish and slightly unnatural looking.
SOUNDS
Apart from the opening scene-- which is of outrageously bad quality-- the sounds are quite decent with the clash of swords and buzzing of energy weapons (no, really) and the dying enemies sometimes let out comments resulting in audible chuckles. But then again the game is originally German and therefore as a result the english version is translation, voiceover a dub. Meaning that during dialoque your reaction may vary from mildly amused to visibly agitated.
GAMEPLAY
The heart and soul of every game. I disliked the game mechanics in the original Sacred. Not even half of the features had any documentation whatsoever and there was an air of mystery surrounding the way your gear would actually function. But what I totally hated was the skill system; because you see, in Sacred you upgraded your skills with runes which you could find from slain monsters. The deal however was that when you upgraded it, not only did it get more powerful but it would also recharge slower. Worse, for a boost of 5-10% in power would often result in 30-40% increase in recharge making all skills essentially useless if carelessly leveled. If I remember correctly most of the winnning strategies involved pumping most of your character points into the attribute reducing recharge and either using very low level skills or gathering a huge mob and nuking it with one shot, and gather another one while recharging. See, Sacred was the first and only game that openly tried to prevent you from using skills. This, accompanied by mobs respawning if you ventured more than two screen aways from the said spot made me quickly lose interest in Sacred.
So after the lenghty rant, what has changed in the development? Unfortunately, not much. Spawning issues seem a bit better, but that might be due to mob density being considerably lower. Also the AI quite pathetic, the monsters only seem to take interest in you and the farmers are all so oblivious of the kobolts that are running amids their cows. This could also be forgiven and most likely easily fixed if the skill system was improved. Well, its not. If possible its been made even worse. Ok, given, there's now an option to tweak any skill better fit your individual playstyle but it really doesn't alleviate the original problem. Because in Sacred 2 not only does upgrading skills increase recharge, but so does applying buffs and wearing better armor. Fortunately having more money doesn't increase it. Then again, maybe I'm unnecessarily harsh and there's a solution, and forums, and guides and whatnot but I still feel that the recharge system is the most retarded thing ever. And even after that the combat feels very boring. The characters moving stiffly and as in slow motion. There's not even the frantic clicking present like in Diablo 2. Don't know if it was a bug but if clicked out of sync the character would stop the attack at mid swing so it was better just to hold the left button down at all times and auto-attack everything to death. Buggerall the skills.
The final judgment: while I only played the demo and thus cannot give opinion other characters than the leather-thong wearing, katana wielding cyber angel most things I've said would probably still apply. I can't honestly recommend Sacred 2 for anyone else other than pathologically masochistic. Of course you could also disregard everything I've just said wait for the good folks that actually get paid for doing this sort thing to give their opinion but as it stands Sacred 2 only mediocre at best and no fun at all at worst. And did mention that it comes with the lovely DRM copy protection?
4/10