Sacrifice

********** Overview ********** Sacrifice was one of those games that ought to have done well, but was reduced to a budget title at light speed. Even amongst gamers who usually treasure and support underselling gems, it rarely gets a mention. It is my theory that the main reason for this is the time it takes to be any good at it. It’s quite easy to learn the basics, but it is a peculiar third person action/RTS and to lay a smackdown on the enemy requires a measure of skill that it takes time to acquire. Once mastered, this game delivers rich rewards. Another factor that may have put off potential punters is that almost everyone you command or meet is a hideous mutant or twisted monstrosity. Even the main character looks like a peculiar mix between man and insect; half-formed from premature birth. These monsters hobble, lope, flap and stalk across stylised, highly coloured landscapes under a sky that ranges from bright blue, to purple clouds boiling with unrest. There, they tear each other to pieces in impressive displays of magic and visceral sprays of blood. *********** Gameplay *********** The tutorials take forty or fifty minutes to play through and are well worth the time. It’s usually possible to move quickly through the parts you understand immediately and spend time practising the things you find difficult. There is no sudden difficulty spike in the missions, either, gradually progressing from small skirmishes to three way battles that will depend heavily on your tactical skills to overcome. Winning in Sacrifice is about knowing what powers to use, where to make your stand and when to run away. The battle system for the summoned creatures under your command is a variation on Rock, Paper, Scissors. The early units fall into three categories – melee, missile and flying units. Fliers are devastating against melee units, who cannot reach them. Missile units take down the weak-bodied fliers with ease and Melee units will rip apart any enemy missile units they encounter. Many units have special powers that you can trigger, like shields, stealth and even playing dead. As you progress in the game, creatures that are more powerful come under your command; some possess very nice talents indeed. Relying on the raw power of your summoned creatures is a recipe for defeat. It takes more than numbers to win a battle and the wise wizard will use at least some of his creatures to consolidate strategic points he has already taken. Knowing when to spend your mana on throwing spells at the enemy and picking where you make your fight is crucial. A well-timed spell can turn the tide of battle far more efficiently than merely summoning a few more creatures. In this respect, Sacrifice outclasses a great many of the more conventional top-down RTS games that rely on troop numbers to decide the outcome of a battle. Another aspect to the strategy of Sacrifice is the commodity of souls. In order to summon creatures, you must have enough souls for that particular creature type. If you run out of souls, you will probably lose the battle, although I have managed to claw my way back from 0 soul status once or twice and very satisfying it was too. Some souls are easy to collect – pure blue souls need only be run over and they are yours. Red souls are impure and you must summon a sac doctor to collect it, resurrect it and sacrifice it at your altar before you can put it to use. The enemy wizard can collect red souls as easily as you collect blue ones, but to take the blue souls, the enemy must also purify them at their altar. This is a process that can be interrupted, allowing wizards to save the souls from the hands of the enemy. The altars also have a more final purpose. It is only by desecrating an enemy wizard’s altar that they may be permanently vanquished from that land. They will, naturally, be aiming to do unto you first. Aiding Eldred in his somewhat unfortunate adventures is Zyzyx, an irreverent Homunculus/imp who offers advice, information and acidic observations in equal measure. While occasionally irritating, he serves a useful purpose, warning of attacks upon your buildings, the death toll of your army and the phrase that will follow you into sleep after a lengthy play session, ‘enemy sighted!’ Where the game falls down is the occasional difficulty in selecting units in action. It’s highly advisable to group units as soon as they are summoned. When the battle is raging it’s pure chaos and they’ll cross in front of you at the most inconvenient moment possible and selecting creatures at a distance can be very hit and miss. Grouping and using the mini map to issue commands when your view is obscured is a vital art to perfect. ************ Conclusion ************ The missions in Sacrifice usually boil down to defeating at least one enemy wizard, but the tasks you will be set are varied enough to make it feel far fresher than this suggests. The characters involved are well conceived and surprisingly complex after all the initial assumptions have been made. The story would probably be unrelentingly grim, were it not for the humour evident in much of the dialogue, character designs, names and events. Even the sound effects are often funny, with all the various ‘oofs’ and ‘ouches’ the creatures give out while in battle. The voice acting is superb – Tim Curry lends his talents to one of the gods. The musical score is something you’ll probably hardly ever notice while playing, but it serves its purpose very well, enriching the atmosphere without being overbearing. It was composed by Kevin Manthei. The controls could have been an absolute nightmare, but apart from a few minor niggles, anyone capable of multitasking is going to have fun working out the most devastating strategy for each situation. Graphically, as indicated at the start, Sacrifice is a very strange mix of the beautiful and the hideous. You may never love it, but it seems to be a visual demonstration of the sly humour that permeates the game. The spell effects are increasingly spectacular as you grow in power, some of them even carving off chunks of the land, sending them tumbling into the void. Battle sites are permanently marked by the buckets of blood splashed across the ground. Get your hands on this game and spend a few days commanding twisted creatures for warped gods. If you enjoy the gameplay as much as I do, maybe you’ll find yourself still heading in for a round or ten of mutated violence nine years later.

I remember playing this game few years ago. Innovatory gameplay and twisted atmosphere. What else do we need to have fun?

in my opinion, one of the best games of all time. I picked the boxed version of this game up on whim one day years ago, just thought the box art looked cool(no, I dont normally do that) and ended up having one of the most enjoyable experiences of my gaming career!!! dont miss this one!

If you still have your copy it will run just fine on Vista and XP, but if you weren't fortunate enough to play this years ago you have to buy it now. The only problem with this game is that it can be troublesome to order your units around the way you want.

I like a good challenge, but Sacrifice frustrated me for a while before I began experimenting a bit more with the way I was playing. It's fun most of the way, for certain, and the visuals are certainly good for their time, brought upward in quality by the amazing sound design - voice cast, music, and effects are all incredible. The creativity involved in both the style and the units themselves is also great, along with the diversity of deities that leads to diversity of units and spells. This game, as far as I have played games, is unique in its experience and quality. For 6 bucks, pick this up now.