Probably my favourite PC game, despite being a Diablo 2 rip-off, it became a milestone amongst RPGs. Much more enjoable than its successor (and less buggy/hardware hogger), this version includes both Sacred Plus and Underworld, the two expansion packs. The online multiplayer is dead, but it's still tons of fun to play nowadays if you're a fan of this kind of games. Sadly, the are problems due its age, mostly random crashes triggered from specific heroes skills and such, but overall, it's worth the price.
As my review title says, the game starts out fun, with a neat blend of Diablo-style ARPG and elements from other fantasy games like Neverwinter Nights. It's the usual get quests, kill stuff, receive gold and cool items, repeat. But soon the excitement and novelty wears off, and the game becomes just an annoying slog.
What appears to be a big, open world to explore turns out to be just a few towns with huge stretches of wilderness in between, with dozens upon dozens of monsters that respawn the second you leave and reenter an area. Apparently this is to make multiplayer more interesting, but I only did single-player, and it was just a frustrating grind, constantly having to fight off enemies, even in towns. You can buy horses that are somewhat helpful at dashing past enemies if you're just trying to get from point A to B, but many enemies have abilities that can stop you in place, forcing you to deal with them and their underlings.
The voice-acting for the heroes and enemies gets extremely repetitive. There's one priest enemy that for some reason sounds like a woman doing a bad Spongebob impression and has a death-wail that goes on for a good five seconds, so when you end up fighting a bunch of them, it's just like nails on a chalkboard. And there's no way to disable the enemy voices without turning off all sound effects.
This game has a lot of potential, and has aged well in many ways. The graphics still look pretty nice, and there is some fun to be had. But there are just too many little annoying things dragging it down to keep it from being a great game.
First of all, I've still playing this game till now, from the first time when it has some bugs, and fewer now.
For you who like adventure rpg, this one is not for you, for you who like turn based rpg this one is also not for you, but if you like fast paced rpg and hackslash like diablo, titan quest, you may like this one.
+ a lot of side quests, like a mean a lot
+ all character classes are unique
+ open world map
+ The graphic is really good and really cheap on the pc spec
+ Dragons
- You can't choose a gender for your character
- Some bugs still exist especially side quest
- The main story is boring
- sometimes the enemy is too much and can gang you till death
I finished the Ancaria campaign and started the Underworld campaign. I couldn't finish it because I encountered a game-breaking bug. At the Dryad treetop village, just before entering a cave to the east of it, my gladiator character suddenly could not pick up loot or do any combat arts and combos. I entered another cave and fought a demon-boss. After defeating it, it dropped a lot of loot. I tried to pick up all the loot and my character just started to run in one place where the loot was...end of my game. I put in a lot of hours in (190 hours), so it that was a little disappointing. The game can be finished, many have done it, so play at your own risk. There are other bugs such as broken quests and weird animations. Sometimes I couldn't do my combo for no reason.
Besides the bugs I really enjoyed the game and I had just as much fun as Diablo or Baldur's Gate. If you're looking for an ARPG to fill some time, this is a good one to try. It's over 10 years old, but the graphics are still good and good music to support it. I recommend it to any ARPG fan, but you must bear the bugs in this game to enjoy it. Now on to Sacred 2!
