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.
