A lot of people liken this to Diablo, but the mechanics are a bit tighter, so you don't have the tedious click-click-click-click-click through every battle. That aside, another huge difference from Diablo is that rather than a dungeon with individual levels, Sacred takes place in a big open world that's mostly open to you from the very beginning. For the most part, the world is a joy to explore, and held a sense of intrigue for me, wondering what was up on that mountain to the west, or what was in that weird forest to the east. You have a decent variety in equipment, and can switch between several sets on the fly. Leveling allows you to improve both stats and passive skills, while active skills are found as items, and level up as you use more. Having 8 different playable characters keeps things fresh; there's a lot of variety among them. The combat is passable; there's no real room to be very strategic, but it gets the job done.
While the Ancaria Campaign is a very enjoyable romp, the Underworld Campaign is where you run into some problems. Enemies scale to your level, so they're always 2-5 levels higher than you are. This alone isn't so bad, but everywhere you go, you're attacked by giant mobs. Again, not so terrible, but all of this combined with the fact that you'll often find yourself in a situation where there are no shops at which to buy health potions can leave you completely stranded, relying on cowardice or straight-up dumb luck to survive; the final stretch is particularly grueling. Map markers are glitchy in this campaign, too, and a lot of it just seems slapped together. This is especially true of its world, which just teleports you to the tiny bits of map that weren't in the other campaign. To its credit, though, these areas are visually interesting. Even if the Underworld Campaign drags a bit, you still have the Ancaria Campaign, which is worth the price of admission alone.
