Sacrifice

...games that deserved a sequel or at least an expansion. Highly original, creative, mind opening, memorable and unique.

"I put on my robe and wizard hat." I first read this review almost 5 years ago, and only NOW have I found out where it actually came from. Oh my god, lol As an actual review to the game though, Sacrifice is alright. I haven't actually played in a couple years, but from what I remember, the game has a lot of positives, and a few strong negatives. The story's pretty good, and has quite a bit of replayability if you like seeing different outcomes. The multiplayer is very fast paced, and allows you to directly participate in fights with your units. About those strong negatives, though - the campaign ramps up in difficulty VERY strongly, to the point where I wasn't able to finish it without cheats (then again, I played this when I was about 13). The multiplayer is...well for starters, good luck getting anyone on Earth in 2018 to play the video game Sacrifice by Shiny Entertainment with you. The game was extremely obscure when it came out, and hasn't really gotten too popular since then. The multiplayer itself has another strong issue, too - the way souls are distributed is waaaay too much of a zero-sum game, to the point where if you watch videos of people playing matches at a "high" level, they just quit as soon as their opponent gets even a little bit of an edge on them in the late game. This was...weirdly in-depth for something that was just supposed to be a response, but then again, this might help someone someday. Who knows?

Sadly this game never recieved the credits it deserves - the story, voice acting, the graphics, the gameplay - the sheer concept and all those funny easter eggs and the overall design is just praiseworthy. And it didn't help that due to the collaps of Shiny Entertainment it never saw a successor or expansions afterwards.... however it's still a blast and extremely entertaining! And due to its age you can play it on low end PCs without any issues! The graphics (and particularly the particle effects) are still awesome!

Played on Win 10 and it crashed once. It also has some weird bugs like sometimes an enemy corpse will slide away out of bounds of the map or the spell having weird, inconsistent casting times. None of the bugs were enough to make me not enjoy it, but it does mean I can't give full stars. If not for those problems it would be an easy 5* from me. Sacrifice is a hybrid RTS with third person perspective where you control your summoner with keyboard and mouse, summon creatures to fight for you and support the battle with your own assortment of spells. The campaign lets you take part in a conflict between 5 gods and depending on what missions you do for them they will give you access to different spells and creatures. Depending on which missions you choose to do, other gods may not want to deal with you anymore so while there is some non-linearity, you will still be looking at about 9 missions per god + 1 last mission that is largely the same for everyone. It's still a quite good piece of content and each god's campaign (should you choose to stick with 1 god per playthrough) will take you about 4-6 hours to complete, giving 20-30 hours of campaign and since most spells and units are totally unique the replayability is high. There is also the matter of story - which is presented with almost no exposition. Things will happen and characters will react naturally like they are familiar with the rules and characters of the world, there are no lengthy explanations of who's who and what's what beyond the absolute minimum. This means you will have to play more than 1 god's playthrough to have the full picture of what's going on and uncovering the story is pretty entertaining. The voice acting and sound design is top-notch with pre-mission briefings being fully voiced. Pros: + Great gameplay + Visual design + Sheer amount of units and spells + Story and it's presentation Cons: - Uneven difficulty curve - Bugs - Some models for units are reused, reskinned as different units

Not only is Sacrifice one of the most fun and best looking RTS games ever created, it's one of the very few 1st gen 3D titles (around '95-'00) that still looks great today rather than ugly triangles. Run around as a wizard summoning a few units. Kill enemy units, sacrifice the souls from all the corpses to create more units. It's incredibly satisfying as you slowly snowball throughout a level. Did I mention the art design is gorgeous? The best looking game from a company known for great looking games. Also as a nice bonus, it boasts the best story ever in an RTS. Lots of replayability as you run through the campaigns again trying out different gods, all of whom grant different spells, units, and levels. Definitely pick it up if you're an RTS fan. Unlike a lot of games labeled "classics" here, this one still holds up.