PC RPGs belong in a world of their own, far removed from the fantasy adventures we experience on consoles these days. In fact, any half-dedicated RPG fan would be missing a huge chunk of the genre if they did not experience games such as Diablo, Lionheart and Sacred. The simple matter of fact is that these mouse-based games would never really translate to a console. The good thing, however, is that the best examples of this genre do not need a monster PC to play, in fact games like Diablo II require little more than a 233 MHz processor with a good amount of RAM and a graphics card.
I have played scores of PC based MMORPGS from the likes of Faldon, Priston Tale and Risk Your Life to smaller scale RPGs like Neverwinter Nights, Dungeon Siege and Diablo 2 which limit the number of players online. Sacred demonstrates a good combination of both the old styled top-down RPG and the modern styled 3D extravaganzas of today - mixing beautifully drawn scenery with well modelled player and non-player characters and dazzling special effects. It is this blend of old style and new technologies which make, in my opinion, the best and most highly playable RPGs of today and allow for highly detailed environments without unnecessarily high system requirements. Due to the 2D scenery Sacred actually looks far better than most 3D alternatives such as Dungeon Siege and Neverwinter Nights - real-time 3D graphics do not necessarily mean good graphics as the pre-rendered backdrops of Final Fantasy games have proved time and time again. Sacred also blends the multiplayer elements of these game types, to an extent, whilst the game is not an MMORPG it does not restrict the number of players to a mere 8 but doubles this to a sizable 16, allowing more friends to get together and the possibility of 8v8 clan wars. With such a huge world to explore it would not be impossible to imagine a much greater number of players battling it out together and I would certainly like to see more massively multiplayer gameplay implemented if such a thing were easily possible.
Like Diablo 2, Baldurs Gate 2 and Dungeon Siege your characters are stored offline and can be played with in a local network game as well as online. This means you can spend time levelling up in a local network game by yourself or with some select friends, and then proceed online to test your mettle against other players if player VS player combat happens to be your forte. For the more laid back player, those of us who love to do endless quests and hack our way through legions of monsters, Sacred has plenty to offer. It is set in the world of Ancaria a huge, highly detailed and varied environment which has been carefully crafted and dotted with towns, cities, caves and dungeons. The landscape varies from grassland, to tundra and desert ensuring a welcome change of scenery accompanies the welcome change of enemies. Ancaria is an entirely open-ended world; the only factor restricting your exploration is, in fact, the chance of being easily killed by stronger enemies as you venture further from the starting town.
To travel across such a vast world you can purchase a horse, one of the few animals you will see in the game. The world of Ancaria is dotted with wildlife, which, whilst not interactive, makes it feel somewhat more alive. Other games which have opted to include wildlife usually have it attack you under the pretence of an evil spell or power driving the forest creatures mad, it is a welcome change to see more of the good in the world you are destined to protect from evil. Unlike Diablo the world of Ancaria is truly open ended and seamless allowing you to travel miles across the countryside to seek out new enemies and quests. Quests make use of this open space and lead you into exploring it, taking you to remote locations and leading you on true adventures.
At heart Sacred is another attempt at replicating the huge success of Diablo 2, it sports more than a passing resemblance to the game and boasts a very similar method of character development. Instead of crafting your character by selecting a gender, race and skill-set Sacred adopts the simplicity of Diablo and gives you a simple choice of 6 pre-defined characters (3 male and 3 female) which each have their own unique skills, abilities, strengths and weaknesses. You can choose from a tough Gladiator which is Sacreds answer to the Barbarian, the Seraphim; an angelic warrior whose race predates even the elves, a keen-eyed Wood Elf specialising in archery and nature magics, a skilled Dark Elf with unrivalled hand to hand combat skills, a spell-casting Battle Mage capable of wielding almost any weapon to assist in sticky situations, and finally the Vampires who can turn into vampire form and raise an undead army in her wake. Once you have selected and begun playing with a character the different weapons, items and armour you find and use will ensure that you have at least some way of making your appearance unique. Everything from typical body armour to gold rings, boots and hats is displayed in some detail on your character when you equip it.
The limited choice of characters is not the only similarity Sacred bears to Diablo 2, upgradeable items, class specific items, magical items, and armour sets make for other similarities - although it could be argued these are present in almost all RPGs, and indeed they are - your loot is also stashed in a Chest, not unlike the chest which is almost the first thing you see when starting a game of Diablo 2. Due to the detailed, hand crafted world in which Sacred is set randomly generated dungeons become somewhat impossible which limits the replayability of the game. Random dungeons, however, only thinly veil the fact that you are playing through the same adventure again, personally I prefer the hand-crafted world approach and a careful attention to detail giving me places to explore time and time again until all of their secrets have been revealed.
As I have mentioned above, Sacred sports beautiful classically styled graphics with 3d characters, animals and monstors animated in realtime over the top of the 2d scenery. It does not stop there, however as Sacred sports a day/night cycle and weather effects such as passing fog which temporarily obscures your view. All of these effects add up to a stunning whole. Sacred affords you three view distances, an extreme close up to examine your characters armor and weapons, or just get a close view of battles, a middle distance view which is the most comfortable to play in, and a long distance view which allows you to survey the surrounding area. It has to be said that at full detail settings on this 2.8ghz computer with a GeForce 5600 Sacred suffers from severe slowdown at long distance and sometimes middle distance views. As there are relatively few characters on screen I find it baffling that the game would suffer from such crippling slowdown, particularly a game with a 2d graphics base.
The effects in the game are nothing short of beautiful, everything from thorny glowing blue chains which bind you to the ground, to gory blood effects splash your screen with colour, weapons sport fire effects and glowing hilts, and skills/spells result in some incredably beautiful eye candy.
Sound is used well in Sacred, the creatures make a variety of sounds on attack and when they die. The goblins are, without a doubt, quite comical and the voice actors must have had a barrel of laughs producing thier voices; as they attack they scream nonsense words which I can only assume are "goblinese", you will have to play the game to hear this for yourself. Sacred is also packed with ambient sounds bringing the world even more to life. Bursts of music will rattle your ears when you enter battles, and music seems to play sporadically giving you a little jingle to listen to every now and then.
Overall Sacred embodies everything a good RPG should be, it has many little features, which combine together to form a very pleasing whole. Most of these features are, of course, standard to RPGs but the addition of horseback riding amongst other things sets Sacred somewhat apart. Sacred does not take the daring leap into lush 3d graphics, which has never really done an RPG justice. This allows it to easily sport a huge handcrafted world made even bigger by additions in the +Plus+ pack. The sheer amount of detail in the world of Ancaria makes for one of the games greatest strong points and gives the feeling that, whilst you may follow a string of quests through the game to complete different chapters, the game is non-linear. The other major plus, no pun intended, has to be the scenery graphics which present you with a detailed world at minimum system requirements and do not change with the power of your PC. Those with more powerful machines however can benefit from better character graphics and special effects as all characters, animals and enemies are rendered in real-time 3D.
Philip Howard
