If you are looking for a Planescape Torment or NWN style RPG with a compelling story, a lot of talking and one where your decisions actually have an impact on the outcome of the game (or for that matter one where you can make any decisions at all), then keep looking. If you enjoy micromanaging different characters and controlling each step of a battle, deciding on every spell and planning exact strategy for all of your characters, then again, Sacred is not for you - you can't even pause the game and plan your moves/spells ahead here. On the other hand, if you loved Diablo, like a simple gameplay, enjoy blasting, hacking and slashing enemies to pieces by the hundred and thousand, then this game should be on your list. The story is as linear as it gets, offering nothing much in terms of surprises or twists, and when finished leaves no lasting memory. In addition to the main quests you can get dozens of miniquests ranging from RPG classics on the lines of "rescue XY from a (band of) evil monster(s)" to somewhat silly ones like "find a rose bush for my garden." Again, contrary to what you would expect from for instance the aforementioned Planescape, "find" in the context of Sacred does not mean "Search for", but rather "Go to the indicated spot on the map and pick it up, killing some random bad guys along the way." So all in all, the quests offer little entertainment, but that does not matter much, because really the most fun part is exploring the huge world. And trust me, the map is *huge*. The monsters and environs change during the game, so it takes a while to get bored. To make a long story short, Sacred does not have an enthralling story, interesting lore, quests that you will be left pondering over for hours or characters you can develop any sort of affection for. On the other hand, the game is easy to play, although harder to master, and if you enjoy killing the bad guys en masse you can have a good few hours of fun with it.
Being a long-time fan of the series and having played all of the previous HOMM games, often over and over again (I think I've had HOMM3 installed on all the computers I ever owned), I grabbed this game shortly after it was released. As others have mentioned, after the disappointment that HOMM4 was, playing HOMM5 felt like getting back to the good old gameplay we saw developing through HOMM1 and 2 and perfected in HOMM3. I'm not saying that HOMM5 is flawless, but as far as game mechanics go, it feels very much like HOMM3 that we learnt to know and love, with some minor changes on the sides - for some those might be improvements, for some they may not be such a great idea, but most of the time they don't affect your gameplay very much and I felt the new and the old was fairly well balanced and put together. The only thing HOMM5 is really lacking is good storytelling - I used to enjoy the stories behind campaigns and different factions with their respective agendas almost as much as I enjoyed the actual game. This is hardly the case with HOMM5. The story is fairly linear and not very captivating, you don't get much of an insight into the history/mythology of the world, and the cutscenes you are presented with are just butt-ugly. So with all that said, if you are looking for a captivating story and characters you can identify with, go and find a good book to read. If you are looking for a clone of HOMM3, you may end up annoyed and/or disappointed by HOMM5 like other reviewers here seem to be. But if you are looking for a good successor to the HOMM series which can give you almost as many hours as gameplay as the HOMM3 did, and you are willing to accept a few changes, HOMM5 should be on the top of your list. Actually, having seen it here, I think I'm going to install it now and have a rerun of the whole game...
