Sacred Gold

Definitely worth grabbing at sale price if you like trying out arpgs. I'm unsure if I prefer it over Sacred 2 like other reviewers. I think I prefer 2, but the grittier tone looks better than the bright 3D models of 2. This also feels more like a well-crafted CRPG whereas 2 feels more like an MMO. Some plus points: * Easy to get into and fun to learn. Manual doesn't explain everything, but you can use save/loads or simply experiment to see what things do. * An open map. The campaign takes you on a linear tour around it, but you can go explore. There's not a huge amount to find, but the game world overall feels open and cohesive, when other ARPGs are very obviously linear. * Good variety in the player classes and lots of choices for a character build, beyond just picking a single stat or skill to min/max. * HUGE variation in loot drops makes it interesting to keep playing, and means there is a variety of potential drops to suit various builds. Some negative points (largely coin-flips of the plus points, heh): * Limited fast travel options. There's no "town portal" ability and a limited number of static portals to use. It's also very easy to overlook new portals when exploring the map. * While there's a lot of flexibility in builds, there is also a chance to create a bad build and the game has no point reset system. It's part of learning the game, but a character you put 10s of hours into could end up useless. * No shared stash! The game drops loot for all classes but has no shared storage! Check the discussion forum for a workaround, but it's effectively an item duplication glitch, you're on your honour to only use it for shared storage! * Occasional crashes (seems to be when using skills and not totally random) mean frequent hard saves are needed. Since you need to save frequently and the game is bad for backtracking, the game's respawn system is useless, just reload!

I just finished playing the Ancaria campaign as a Battle Mage, using no health potions, a lot of magic and almost no battle skill. Bad things first: scrolling is uneven in an annoying way, finding passages can be exasperating despite the (vague) map, entering doors and passages can be a pixel-hunting exercise, pathfinding often fails and goes into a surreal dance, horses tend to die rather easily, there is a lot of back-and-forth boring travel, money is useless. Now the good part: the world is open and you are free to meet most challenges in any order (e.g. to commit suicide by attacking a dragon while at level 1), the map is *huge* but does not feel randomly generated, there are a lot of secondary quests, some trivial, some hilarious (I don't think I discovered half of them), you can explore around for hours and often discover small hidden settlements or little surprises, some monsters require a bit more of tactics (especially for the first character levels), graphics are good and decently varied. A problem: I don't know if I missed something here, but I couldn't export my character before the final battle: I found no way to type a name, clicking on available slots had no effect. In short, not a great game but a nice pastime. I gave it four stars also because of its hypnotic quality: you find yourself saying "let's just play a few minutes" and end up having spent half an afternoon and completed a sizeable number of sub-quests.

First thing to say about this one is the music and sound effects. Top tier! So great. When you slash a wee goblin down with your 2 handed sword, axe or hammer it really feels like it. The sounds sell it. And the music is just straight up always enjoyable. The graphics are great too, and still hold up today in my opinion. I don't even usually like Diablo type games, but i've found myself loving this one. Been looking at it for a while now, glad i finally picked it up. It's a good one. Really easy to jump into. Finishing quests is easy, just look it up on your map. Having loads of fun with this one.

what is great: - the open world that seems alive, it has a bit of the same feeling that i had years later playing Skyrim. When i first played it i was blown away by the fact that one could go anywhere on the map. The art design is also appealing and neatly put together. - fun to play, specially as a Vampiress. The story is good, captivating enough. What is not so great: The story towards the end is a bit dull. and the Sacred Underworld Addon is a bit too Fantasy for my taste.

This is probably the game I have spent most time with and even it's 6-7 years old it still has lasting appeal on me. The reason for this is maybe in the fact that Sacred struck the right formula: an action RPG with decent main story, tons of side quests and big open fantasy world, begging to be explored and ofcourse mass of loot. Also the hero classes are pretty original and fun to play with lots of different skills to use. This pretty much sums it :P