Sacred Gold

A lot of people liken this to Diablo, but the mechanics are a bit tighter, so you don't have the tedious click-click-click-click-click through every battle. That aside, another huge difference from Diablo is that rather than a dungeon with individual levels, Sacred takes place in a big open world that's mostly open to you from the very beginning. For the most part, the world is a joy to explore, and held a sense of intrigue for me, wondering what was up on that mountain to the west, or what was in that weird forest to the east. You have a decent variety in equipment, and can switch between several sets on the fly. Leveling allows you to improve both stats and passive skills, while active skills are found as items, and level up as you use more. Having 8 different playable characters keeps things fresh; there's a lot of variety among them. The combat is passable; there's no real room to be very strategic, but it gets the job done. While the Ancaria Campaign is a very enjoyable romp, the Underworld Campaign is where you run into some problems. Enemies scale to your level, so they're always 2-5 levels higher than you are. This alone isn't so bad, but everywhere you go, you're attacked by giant mobs. Again, not so terrible, but all of this combined with the fact that you'll often find yourself in a situation where there are no shops at which to buy health potions can leave you completely stranded, relying on cowardice or straight-up dumb luck to survive; the final stretch is particularly grueling. Map markers are glitchy in this campaign, too, and a lot of it just seems slapped together. This is especially true of its world, which just teleports you to the tiny bits of map that weren't in the other campaign. To its credit, though, these areas are visually interesting. Even if the Underworld Campaign drags a bit, you still have the Ancaria Campaign, which is worth the price of admission alone.

I used to play this game for hours and weeks until each time the difficulty got too much. I loved the part where you can find and kill dragons. Some of the aspects that bothered me is how quests are layed out and some are time based. There is one quest you can get early on that is impossible to get to because you have to run all the way to one end of the map cross the river and go all the way back to find the location. There are also other game breaking bugs which making some quests unplayable, like a door not opening when the correct thing should have triggered it.

Sacred is a hack-n-slash game where you battle innumerable enemies, gather loot, gain experience, and level up. The world is huge, but you can employ horses and teleporters to cut down the travel time. Each town you enter has people providing quests. There is a storyline, not very deep but serviceable, that keeps you moving towards your final goal. Sacred Gold consists of two complete campaigns, the original Ancaria and the sequel Underground. You can play completely with a mouse, but shortcuts are bound to the keyboard. There are eight character types, such as a melee fighter, an archer, or a mage. Each character type has its own unique play style, but there is no customization. That is, if you choose to be a melee fighter, you will be a male gladiator. The only thing that you can uniquely assign is a name. There is no changing of body shape, the color of clothing, the hair style, etc. Sacred is a relatively old game, but the graphics are beautiful and hold up very well. There are few cut scenes and character movements are somewhat stiff, but the game ran smooth. (I played on a Windows 10, 64bit system and experienced no graphical glitches or crashes.) The tutorial, which can be skipped, helps the new player get started. Sacred shines in its attention to detail. Equip any of the thousands of items and your character reflects the change. Enter a town at night and the townspeople approach with flickering torches. If you want to immediately jump into the Underground campaign, two premade level 25 characters are provided. The dialog is memorable. You'll hear wounded enemies yell "Mommie", bandit leaders bark "Alright you dogs, I want the heart...still beating", and evil priests screech "Pray for forgiveness". The game has a truly elegant system of difficulty levels and an interesting use of runes which makes multiple playthroughs enjoyable and challenging. I completed the Ancaria campaign as a level 55 daemon on silver difficulty and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Divine Divinity, Titan Quest, Diablo 2 - They just don't make them like this any more...except for Underrail. Divine Divinity is still the best :)

Nostalgia hits hard. Only part missing is the german sound and texts. Considering that the original developer was from Germany this is quite odd. Anyway! Blast from the Past