Sacred 2: Fallen Angel

Truth be told, I didn't even know Sacred existed, let alone the existence of a sequel, Sacred 2: Fallen Angel. Of course, after looking it up, I know why I haven't heard of the series... because it started as a PC game and I stopped playing PC games about the time my computer blew up after trying to play Tomb Raider 3 at anything above 640x480 resolution.

Ironically enough, Sacred 2 plays a lot like another PC game I played a lot before my PC melted down, Diablo. You can choose one of six character classes to play through the game with and, depending on the character class, you may also choose between playing the Light (good) or Shadow (eee-vil) paths. As you explore the world of Ancaria, you'll fight random animals, people, monsters (pretty much anything with legs) as you complete quests, level up your character and outfit your character with the weirdest combination of equipment possible.

If you're looking for the most bang for your gaming buck, Sacred 2 offers a lot of content. The world map is huge (the real world equivalent of 22 square miles) and there are hundreds of quests to complete. Not only does each character class have specific quests, but each path also has specific quests as well. With this much content, you could be playing Sacred 2 until Sacred 3 comes out. Too bad the game gets repetitive fast.

The quests basically break down into talking to someone to get the quest (by the way, are the inhabitants of Ancaria just really lazy? Everyone's got a quest they need done!), finding the objective on the map, killing whatever's in the area and returning to the person you talked to so you can get your experience and gold. Sure, as you progress through the game, you can customize your character to obtain different combat arts, Sacred 2's version of spells, but it all comes down to mashing the right button.

On the brighter side, Sacred 2 is a great looking game. The landscapes are meticulously detailed and I found myself zooming in on the action just to check out the different character models for the monsters in the game. It is fun to continuously get new equipment and change the his/her/its appearance. (My character, a Temple Guardian, looks like what I'd imagine Cable would look like if he turned into a robot dog, a la CapWolf...)

Playing cooperatively with a friend, either online or locally, is fun but it doesn't seem to add to the experience. It's basically the single player campaign plus another person to play alongside. Specific multiplayer quests would have made the co-op experience more worthwhile... then again, the world is so big, maybe that is in there but I just missed it. I did experience some issues while trying to connect to other players online though. Besides the normal disconnecting issues, playing online introduced more glitches which were only solved by rebooting the game.

Rating

Recommendations

Nethack - I wonder how many of you out there have already played this? To this day, I still think this is the hardest game I've ever played. There might even be enough content in the game to rival Sacred 2. Sure, the graphics are nothing to write home about (your character is the @ symbol!) but there's nothing quite like eating a leprechaun corpse and randomly teleporting around the map.

Before I sign off, I'd like to give a big shout out to Griffin McElroy over at Joystiq for including Another Videogame Webcomic in his Weekly Webcomic Wrapup for the fourth week in a row. Although, due to problems with the site, we were taken off last weeks wrapup (we couldah been a contendah!) but it's always nice to be included with the big boys. So if you're not already reading Joystiq (and seriously, if you're reading this webcomic and not reading Joystiq, you've got a lot of catching up to do) head on over just in time for their sure-to-be-comprehensive E3 coverage.