I played it shortly on my friend's PC and considered it not worth my money. Game was obviously developed on small budget because in 2018 there are still game breaking bugs. Once the game menu stopped to show so no save or change settings was possible. Other time cursor stopped to work on geospace screen. Random crashes here and there. Additionally they removed some features that were useful, like cycle through combatants with time units left or even menu button on screen. Like in original game - missions are repetitive and too frequent. No reason to play it when 2 proper reboots are available now.
This game was soo close to be eternall classic of all times. Some nasty bugs prevented it. Firstly i played GoG version 1.1 and installed mod "Age of redemption 2015" which was supposed to make all things better.As far as i can tell it didn't. Dissapointer number one is retarded AI. It's obviously hardcoded because modders were not able to repair it. The party characters don't spare any inventory items even if instructed to do so with option "use only quick slots". The same for using disciplines. Second annoyer is path finding. Party members are notoriously blocking each other. To make it worse the AI is constantly converting enemies to party side even if told not to so by removing disciplines from quick bar. Once theese temporary party members even feeded on my characters to death! I managed to finish the game only by lowering difficulty with mod - without it it's frustratingly hard in negative way. The keys are also not remapable and defaults sucks. The map navigation is annoying - no position marker. I don't understand all the 5-star reviews. Other than that there is outstanding plot and voice acting. Many new games lack such good storyteling and atmosphere. Although visuals/sounds are old, theese are immersing me better then in many current productions. It could have been sooo much more...
Finally forced myself to finished it, after 3 years after buying it on GoG, and no - fights wasn't hard for me. There are other repellers. So this is obviously a game where one creates a party and tests how do they fight, right? It would be ok if not all the annoying puzzles implemented only to make the game longer. Many are unlogic and solvable only with a guide anyway. The D&D3x system contains many social and thieving mechanics, but these are used sporadically here to make a place for mentioned puzzles. What if i would like to finish the game without a single fight using my speech skills or sneaking my way in and stealing some papers compromising my enemies? Not in this game and actually hard to point such one, maybe DeusEx1 or Fallout2 were close to it. At least it is fine debugged and more player friendly then other Infinity games - i used only XP-mod. Therefore my 50% rating - either skipp it or grab a sword and stop complaining soldier! Note: I run it under playonlinux because under Win7 it was too sloow. Additionally to switch to KDE Alt+F4 works best.
I played sacred 1 a couple of times and liked it. I was a bit disappointed with this title and forced myself a little to finish it. My concerns were: a) no engine optimisation; all Blizzard games run smooth on my PC while i had to play this on minimum settings b) bug with dissapearing interface c) i hate new uninspiring classes - robocop instead of dwarf and no vampire d) this is rather for online play and nothing memorable on solo in it. Nevertheless i belive that fans will play it anyway.
