I played that games almost since release. Sacred 1 with a group of friends, some of them had connections to the devs and found themselves buried on graveyards in Sacred 2. I bought it again on GOG for playing it again with community patches. It was and is buggy, but it is still installed on my PCs. I have seen about half a dozen reviews with life footage. I have read several comments on steam and here. I have been a host programmer for financial companies (nothing game related) since 1980 until about 15 years ago. I've seen the changes. Maybe they improved some parts of the game, but worse than that is that they skipped important parts (only 3 of 5 drinks can be assigned now, fur was removed from armor and animals, targetting was made worse). This were important parts of the original game. I don't believe in: win some, take some! This was disappointing and nobody saw it coming? Where was QA? Sorry, I'd rather stay with my old stuff. BTW I bought the original about 10 years ago here for 14,09€. Considering inflation I assume I should have gotten the new version as a gift. I've seen one guy comparing this version with his old PS3 version. It was worse than that version was and now they have to pay 30 bucks. In it's current state it's worth is less than 10% of that (in my POV). And I don't care much about improvement pledges. It's sad that the first patch after release healed many of the crashes. Why was this patch so fast? It should have been included in the release - which would have been an automatic result after tests. There are so many fans and veterans out there. We would have liked to test it. Well this surprise was a bad surprise and the bad taste will linger for some time to come. When software is 20 years and older, you don't repair it. You write it new according current rules and environment. But for that to happen you need to understand the content and intentions of the past. You need to burn to make it right!
This game was build in times of 32bit world and it shows. Sample: you go back to town via portal and when you return stuff appears new - shrines, enemies, drops - all of which you die not even know existed. Stuttering and other problems point to the same history and make this game resistent to repairs. Improvements into such an old game requires deep knowledge, but the devs of this game moved on or retired - not much chance to get needed patches or improvements. The ancient lore history makes it easy to connect to the game lore. The amount of masteries available (including the additional DLCs, which improved and upgraded the system - and are required if you don't stuck to this game) give you more than 50 classes to play (most dual masteries, but each mastery can be played as single as well). Some of this classes are easy, others not. But you can find the style that fits your way to play. My summary: rusty, not perfect, but still worth playing. I still do AND love it!
I own the standard edition and I formerly owned the CD version. Sadly this game does not work. I tried it, I checked the forums - nope no chance. When starting this comment I was asked to keep it to a player's view. I tried, but there is no playable version. I love and loved this game. But I just was disappointed with this version. GOG can do better than this.
I like the game - a lot. But I don't like to get this offering when I own all of the parts of this offer AND more.
