Sacred 2: Fallen Angel offers a rich history that takes place in a massive open world continuously. This world contains hundreds of dungeons, treacherous opponents and hundreds of delicate missions. Intelligent enemies, each time adapting in number and difficulty based on player progress, challenge in heroic battles and multiplayer
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T-Energy has been flowing through Ancaria since time immemorial. This mysterious power forms the beginning of all life, is the source of all magic and the origin of all thought. For eons the angelic Seraphim watched over the T-Energy and therefore over the fate of the entire world. But eventually tiring of their burden, they passed their knowledge on to the High Elves. T-Energy helped the realm of the High Elves to experience an unimaginable boost of prosperity, making it the reigning culture in Ancaria. But a force as powerful as T-Energy carries great dangers. Not taught how to deal with this, no sooner did the Elves take control, then a heated dispute erupted among them as to how and to what purpose the T-Energy was to be used. Dispute morphed into irresolvable conflict, then rift and eventually to a civil war among the High Elves, where all participants were losers. Their realm collapsed and with it the entire power structure of Anacaria. In the turmoil all the peoples of Anacaria coveted the right, either openly or in secret, to wield the power of T-Energy and in the end, unmanaged, the T-Energy raged out of control warping creature and lands alike. Can anyone regain control over the T-Energy. And if so, will he/she strive to prevent the world from lapsing into final chaos, or deepen it? Gameplay
Gameplay in Sacred 2: Fallen Angel in divided into two campaign paths: Light and Dark. As the game begins players choose and customize their character and choose the path they will follow. This choice determines the ultimate goal and intentions of their character, and as the game progresses through literally hundreds of quests and side quests, the paths of different characters intersect at different junctions. Choose one way and you may be tasked to defend a town and its people, while another path could result in you attacking the same town. The choice is yours and the fate of the world and your well-being are at stake. Key Game Features:
Character Classes
In Sacred 2: Fallen Angel players assume the role of one of six characters -- five of which are new to the franchise -- and delve into a thrilling story full of side quests and secrets that you will have to unravel. Breathtaking combat arts and sophisticated spells are waiting to be learned. A multitude of weapons and items will be available, and you will choose which of your character's attributes you will enhance with these items in order to create a unique and distinct hero.
 | Seraphim Often referred to as 'Fallen Angels,' these mystical and angelic creatures are the oldest inhabitants of Ancaria. Fast, elegant and acrobatic warriors from a technological future they fight with light to medium weapons and, if required, with massive technological support. Players can assume the role of a Seraphim and protect the world from chaos. |
 | Shadow Warrior Shadow Warriors were originally humans trained as elite soldiers in service to the High Elves. Upon their death their souls were stolen by an Elven general, bound to lifeless bodies and imbued with T-Energy. Now free, they travel between this world and the next as undead beings with only the desire to return to the peace of the golden halls of Elysium. |
 | High Elf The best student at the ancient academy of magic in Thylysium, the High Elf character lives and breathes magic. Her hunger for adventure and her insatiable desire to increase her personal knowledge and the influence of her once-powerful house are the driving forces as she sets off into an Ancaria boiling over with turmoil. |
 | Dryad Masters of the hunt and akin to the Elves, The Dryad are in tune with nature and are equipped with the strength of the forests. The most powerful and the strongest among them are knowledgeable of the dark art of voodoo and were chosen in order to save their peoples from extinction. All are expert with the bow, traps, poisons and lore of the forest. |
 | Inquisitor The Inquisitors are the High Priests of the High Elves. Arrogant and deadly, they are only committed to themselves and their ultimate goal of assume control over the T-Energy. Proficient in close combat and able to gain increasing power as damage is taken, their manipulative spells make them powerful fighters from the shadows. |
 | Temple Guardian Since the beginning of time the purpose of Temple Guardians were to maintain and protect the Great Machine, so that it could keep the world in balance. Neither fully flesh or mechanical, they are half human and half machine. Propelled by T-Energy and devoted to protecting it, they are part of the Great Machine and so able to use the T-Energy for their purposes. |
A Wide Variety of Mounts
Across Ancaria you will find many horse dealers. They offer all kinds of animals, from the simple nag up to a real war horse. You can equip a war horse with bridle, saddle and even special armor. These special items can be found in the game just like player items, ranging in quality from regular to rare and even unique items. In addition, every character also has a unique mount created specifically for their character class. This mount not only fits the personality of the character, but also complements the various aspects of the character's playing style perfectly. All character classes can fight from a mounted position using a variety of tactics that the player chooses depending on the terrain and battle conditions.
Customer Reviews
Fun, but not perfect
I've been waiting for a good hack 'n slash for the PS3 for a while, like Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance and Champions of Norrath. In some respects, this fits the bill but it is lacking in others.
First of all, this game is pretty complex. Learning about forging, runes, and upgrading Combat Arts takes some time. I've been playing for a few hours and am just starting to feel like I understand all of this. Also, the quests are plentiful, so it can be interesting trying to keep track of them all and determine the order in which you'd like to do them.
I found several frustrations with the "couch co-op", or offline multiplayer. There is no way to zoom in the camera for this mode, and the camera is zoomed pretty far out, so the characters are pretty small. Also, there is no way to trade between characters in this mode (currently), so it can be annoying when one person picks up some cool gear that is meant for the other person. I did find that drops are so plentiful, though, so this may not be a big issue later on when lots of stuff is being picked up by both parties.
The combat is fun and the world is huge.
Once I felt like I knew that I was doing, I've been having a lot of fun questing, exploring, and trying out the various combat arts.
Good Game, Needs More Variety
This is a solid dungeon crawl. Plenty of loot, and lots of Diablo style killing. There are a few things that are curiously absent from the game. First, the ability to customize your character. I know this is a small thing in the bigger game picture, however not being able to change the gender of your character is odd. Even stranger is they give you two options for hair and eight or so hair colors. RPG games tend to be all about customizing your character, and you really can't do this in Sacred 2. Maybe they will add some more options in a patch or future release, but for the time being you are sort of stuck with the few flat character options.
The character classes are all solid. Nothing too exciting. The Temple Guardian is sort of silly, but unique (he is a laser totting Egyptian robo-dog). There is a token spell caster (elf), warrior (shadow warrior), ranger (dryad), and warrior mage (seraphim in the light campaign, inquisitor in the shadow campaign). These are all rough descriptions of the classes, as combat is central in the game so one way or the other it all comes down to your weapon load out.
Being able to play co-op is a huge for a game in this genre. One major complaint, you can't give items to the other player if you are playing co-op on the same PS3, which is really odd. I have no idea why the programers would have set things up this way.
All in all it is a fun game. If you enjoyed Diablo this is a good option for the PS3. Nothing really unique or original here, but not a bad game either.
I heard there were a number of glitches with the game right out of the box. When I put the game in my PS3 it auto-updated, and I can't say I have had any major issues with the game.
We Wanted to Love This Half-Baked Sequel
I love me some RPGs. I also love me some offline 2-player coop games, a residual effect of having grown up on Atari and NES platforms. So it is a rare day indeed when an offline 2 player RPG coop comes down the pike. Unfortunately, this one does more to reveal what is missing from a good RPG than to stand out on its own.
Sacred 2 is basically a poor man's Diablo 2. It has good visuals, but that's about where any favorable comparison ends. For example, combat in Sacred 2 is fairly uncertain and frustrating -- you can cast a spell that goes right through someone without injuring them, or continue standing in place and swinging a sword and hitting someone who is running away over a distant hill. It really drops you out of the game when you can actually "feel" the combat code locking you into a fight with a foe, artificially rotating your character and triggering combat moves and the like, instead of just intelligently dealing damage like Diablo 2 did. Btw, Diablo 2 came out like a decade ago.
A variety of other frustrations require you to actively ignore elements of the game in order to enjoy it -- never a good idea in a game:
1) Horrible, hammy in-jokes by the programmers. I don't even try to read the "hilarious" gravestone warnings anymore. And the catchphrases spouted by your characters are beyond atrocious. Remember how annoying it was for Anakin Skywalker to shout "Yippie!!!!!!!!" in The Phantom Menace? Well, apparently the 1 person in America who loved that movie ended up working on Sacred 2, particularly the Seraphim character. She shouts that phrase about every 5 dead monster. I recommend playing with earplugs.
2) Numerous broken skills. For example, on the PS3, the Blacksmithing skill doesn't even work. At all. Good thing I told you that before you built up that level 40 warrior, right? Wish someone had told me. Another skill claims that it will unlock "additional powers" of various divine relics that you pick up, in addition to their basic armor boosting abilities. Like an antidote relic might do more than give you more poison "armor". At least, that's what the skill says. However, pumping points into it does exactly nothing. 30 points later, I finally looked it up online and apparently none of the relics actually have any other attributes you can unlock. Another character goes onto the trash heap.
3) Extremely elaborate skill system. If you even figure out what fraction of player skills actually work, pumping them up and distributing related "modification" points is confusing in the extreme. Modification points are additional points that might make a given skill do more damage, or last longer, or have a greater area of effect, or the like. They are in addition to just pumping up a skill directly from runes or skill points. Get it? Me neither. Anyway, they unlock at seemingly random, and you get trapped in the "modification" page, so sometimes you end up having to modify and waste points on a skill you never use just so you can get back to the game. Better still, the higher a skill level, the longer it takes for cooldown between uses. The game itself warns you to NOT make skill levels high quickly, because you won't be able to use them often. Fantastic.
4) Every fetch quest known to man. "Fetch" quests are common quests in RPGs where you have to get Vial X or Lump of Metal Q and take it back to NPC Y to do something. Who cares what. Well, this game has hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of those quests. They are everywhere. Seemingly every single person in the game world has a burning problem, and none of them can solve them alone. It's all up to you. I had a 45th level undead warrior character chasing rabbits around a city park. They're faster than you can run, so eventually he had to go buy a longbow for the sole purpose of helping a groundskeeper kill rabbits. Again: rabbits. What makes this worse is that once you wise up and start ignoring these people, you actually miss some good stuff. 99.9% of the quests are worthless time sinks that require you to run or teleport halfway across the globe to recover someone's teddy bear (actual quest!) but that 0.1% of real quests will net you a unique longsword that deals 250 damage or permit you to, say, actually use Runemasters. It's beyond annoying -- it makes you wonder if the game is actually a gigantic social experiment thrown together by our space ant overlords to see how well we could be trained to chase sugar cubes across the galaxy. Answer: quite well.
5) Loot. Most of everything you find is garbage. However, occasionally, completely at random, you will find unique armor or the like. Unless you happen to see a suspicious name pop up when auto-collecting another field full of trash ("Axe," "Broken dagger," "Alex's Firey Blaster Mace of Tyrannical Justice," "Boots"), odds are you will just sell it by accident at some point. Better still, many items are class-specific AND CANNOT BE TRADED DURING OFFLINE COOP. So if your warrior picks up that unique magic staff that only a dryad can use, the only way to give it to your friend is to sell it to a shopkeeper, and then spend millions of gold pieces buying it right back with a dryad character. Brilliant.
6) Uniques. Most foes are a dime a dozen. There are vast fields filled with annoying kobolds just waiting to lard up your inventory with worthless equipment. To paraphrase the Matrix, for the longest time I wouldn't believe it, but then I saw those fields with my own eyes. So too will you discover the beaches of a Million Identical Pirates, or the Forest of a Thousand Nearsighted Wolves. But the truly interesting monsters are unique. Once you kill them, they apparently never ever come back. For example, one time I followed this random river deep into the mountains. It kept going and going and going. And going. Honest to god, a good 30 minutes later, I popped out into this cave in which I was assaulted by a gigantic, screen-filling dragon. It was AWESOME. Then I killed that dragon, and got some mediocre loot. Later, after some saves and reloads, I went back. Dragon was still dead. Confused, I checked online, and learned I had killed one of maybe 7-8 dragons in the entire game. If I want to fight it again, I have to start all over again -- including a reset of the eleventy zillion quests I'd already completed. If it was a quest-related foe, I might understand -- but why purposefully make it so you can't fight any of the FUN monsters more than a few times? Why??
A related annoyance is that monster difficulty can vary wildly, and XP is related. Now when I start a new character, I simply take an hour and sprint -- literally running and ignoring everything -- until I reach the desert area where I can actually stock up on XP. It's far, far faster than popping skeletons on the head for 7 XP a whack.
7) Two player offline coop is very lukewarm in terms of fun. This is probably the kicker for me. Basically, one character starts a typical quest, and the other joins as the character class of their choice. In addition to the stupefying idiocy of not actually being able to trade with each other directly, it's also random as to who the computer will even permit to pick up dropped loot. Sometimes you can, sometimes your friend can -- and it bears no relation to which person opened the chest, which killed the foe, or anything like that. You just have to hope for the best. Having two players also reveals enemy pathfinding to be a joke: foes usually gang attack one player and ignore the other. You can kite a vast herd of foes in a circle with your friend as the hub and your friend can just kill and kill and kill and nobody notices. It's even more hilarious when you have NPCs travelling with you because of some stupid travel quest you may have picked up -- some NPCs, apparently chosen at random, are immortal. I've had NPCs in full plate with magical swords die almost immediately (you fail the quest, of course), while at present my 38th level Temple Guardian has an accompanying NPC fishwife -- literally an unarmed woman who screams and runs away at the sight of a foe -- traveling with him for a good 20 levels. She won't die. She can't die. And she's awesome at drawing all the incoming fire. It's like a Monty Python skit where she just runs by screaming in one direction, we blast her pursuers with magic or arrows, she runs back screaming in the other direction, etc etc.
All told, Sacred 2 could have used about another 6 months of development work. Some of its foibles are traced back to the old PC game and apparently were deemed "good enough" to keep (although I note that game at least had Dragons come back to life so you could fight them again) but others are sheer laziness. If there are character skills that don't work at all, and players cannot trade items, your game should not be released. It's just one of those rules gamers have collectively decided upon.
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