RPGWatch Feature: Sacred 2 Preview

During our visit to the Leipzig Games Convention, Myrthos had the opportunity to check out Sacred 2. Here's a sample from our preview:

The world of Sacred 2 looks beautiful and varied and is estimated to have a size of 22 square kilometers. In addition to the world, above there are also two dungeon levels below it of the same size. This means the game world is big enough to get lost for a while and Sebastian explained that it takes six hours to travel from one end to the other and there are no loading times when doing that. The world is completely open from the beginning - you can go anywhere you want but you'll probably get killed if you don’t follow the route of the main quest as least for a little while, as the monsters you’ll encounter might be too hard if you come across them early in the game.

Read it all here.
More information.

Sacred 2 is The Game Of The Year for me. I hope this one will be more bug-free than the previous.
Any news about hardware requirements?

Thanks, very informative preview. I haven't been playing action RPG's for a long time, but this sounds interesting for the big world that's to explore. You talk in detail about the geography of the aboveground lands, but if the dungeon levels are as big as described, what kind of variety can we expect there?

I had a very strange experiance with the first sacred. I absolutely loved the beginning especially as a vampire, the atmosphere was great, and the combat was fun. But it just died after like 10 hours. I found all the characters were empty, the quests were randomly generated and bugged out, and nothing new came just the same type of combat forever and ever.

I really enjoyed it for those first 10 hours though

I felt the same, actually. I hope the quests are better this time around.

I'm quite looking forward to it, with that and the new divine divinity coming up the action rpg market is looking vaguely promising for the first time in ages.

Quite like the look of the argonauts thing too.

I lasted longer, but had the same result as GG and Dhruin. The amount of combat in Sacred was just mind-numbing. There were thousands of complaints about it, yet they brag that Sacred 2 has even more combat! I'll wait for the bargain bin unless folks here tell me that there's a deeper game inside.

Same here, more or less. Goblins. More goblins. Wolves. Goblins again. Goblins *and* wolves. Yay, orcs. And goblins. And wolves. Only spiced up by the occasional crash to desktop. IOW, I utterly failed to get what was so great about Sacred.

Everyone's got me confused now . . . I can't remember whether I enjoyed it or not, I might be getting it more confused with divine divinity.

Was the first one many years ago or do I just have a shit memory.

@ Benedict—Sacred was put out around 2004, I think.

I also have tried several times to slog through Sacred—patched and updated—and enjoyed it at the beginning only to get worn down by the combat—which is saying a lot, since I generally have little problem with grind in arpgs, but the spawns in Sacred were relentless—you never had an area really cleaned out.

Hopefully they've made the combat more tolerable with a new skills system, choice of light or dark paths and larger world in this one.

Thanks for the preview, Myrthos.

After reading this preview I watched some gameplay movies on youtube and the game looks fun. I hope that it will be on the same level of Hack'n'slashing experience as Diablo 2. I'm very interested to read the review here on Watch, before buying the game.

Originally Posted by magerette
@ Benedict—Sacred was put out around 2004, I think.

I also have tried several times to slog through Sacred—patched and updated—and enjoyed it at the beginning only to get worn down by the combat—

Now that you mention it I don't remember finishing it . . .

Although I don't really properly remember anything about it at all so that doesn't really say much. I can't even remember what character I played . .. was there some kind of vampire thing?

I wish that I could be excited about this release, but it seems like an empty shell of a game. Time will tell.

Off-Topic @ Santos: I'm sorry Santos but "empty shell of a game" is a trademark of Space Siege All other games are displays of amazing depth in comparison. Even the original Siege game.

I admit it, you have me there. I must also admit to playing Space Siege (after a disgusted friend passed his copy along). How about this. Sacred is a peanut with one nut missing. Fair?

I played Sacred to the end.

It just fuelled my hate towards hack & slay (had got down off the D2/LOD train at one point before that).

To me, the environment was just "throwing pearls to the pigs", so to say. Everything was in my popnion TOO detailed for a true hack & slay game - but much, much rather instead for an TRUE RPG …

Hoa is hot… I hope she speaks English. O.O

Really looking forward to this game!

Will hopefully be the Game of the Year for me as well

Currently trying to finish Sacred with my DE and enjoying that game as well. Yea there's a lot of repeat attacks, but imo if you don't enjoy that kind of gameplay then perhaps a ARPG isn't the best choice. They are called Hack & Slash for a reason

And I love all the details in Sacred, the world feels/looks/sounds more alive than any ARPG that I've played.

I'm looking forward to hopefully the same caliber of development in Sacred 2, can't wait to play it!

Again, thx for the article

Regards & Good Hunting!

One of the big problems of the original sacred was that all the different character types had the same type of combat moves (with the exception of the battle mage and arguably the wood elf). They all had multihit, attack, etc.

Sacred was a fun game for the first ten hours or so, then it became the most boring game i have played in recent years. Maybe more questing, relationship building with npcs, puzzles and so forth. Basicly I yarn more rpg stuff between my action stuff thank you. Or if they wish to make a hack n slash game, better make sure that combat would be more intresting than just mouse clicking.