Sacred 2: Fallen Angel Review

I wish I had an Angel.

The world of Ancaria is a rather strange place. A semi-generic fantasy world full of elves, gods, and kobolds, wizards and warriors, brigands and thatch roofed villages. Sweeping fields, towering mountains, lush scenery, dotted by ancient towers and dank underground passages. So far, so Tolkien.

And then come the Seraphim and the Temple Guards. Easily by far the most interesting of Sacred 2’s six playable races, the celestial Serpahim are a race of warrior women, with distinctive metallic wings and the sluttiest armour we’ve seen outside of World of Warcraft. Their eyes glow, their words are fuelled with righteous fury; angelic half-nymphs, perhaps, given their attire. The Temple Guardians are rather different; jackal-headed war machines who fit weapons to their arms and who pulse with the glow of T-Energy, which is also the power source of the Seraphim and the High Elves. It is this T-Energy that is responsible for a lot of the problems that face Ancaria, since Sacred 2: Fallen Angel is actually a prequel to the first game, set 200 years earlier, and before the war between the High Elves and humans that decimated the land. The storyline in this game acts as a lead-up to this war, highlighting divisions between the two races. You can choose to take one of two paths through the game; Light or Shadow, though this is no moral-heavy RPG by any stretch- the path does not alter throughout the game; you simply choose beforehand which path you want to take. Still, when coupled with the six playable characters, this offers a fair degree of diversity.

Even more so when you realise just how big the world of Ancaria is. The world map, available right from the outset, is gigantic (22 square miles reckon Ascaron); after the first 8 hours or so of the game I had barely explored beyond a few inches on screen when the map was zoomed out. And that’s not because you’re faced with winding paths, or blocked routes, or copious amounts of enemies- although all three will naturally afflict you at one point or another- but simply because there is so much to do. The scattered settlements are populated by dozens of people, many of whom will offer you quests, helpfully marked on your map by a now-traditional Question Mark symbol. These form the optional side-quests of Sacred 2, commonly light on story but heavy on action, much like the rest of the game, but no less entertaining for that. Some are simple item delivery quests, whilst others are more involved, like slaying enough Kobolds in an encampment to lure out their massive chieftain for a boss battle. In fact, there’s probably a little too much to do in Ancaria- or rather, too much optional content, and not enough meat to the core storyline. The main story arc begins as soon as you first step into the world of Ancaria, but it’s easy to lose track of (and interest in) given its segmented presentation; rather like the implementation of the central storyline in Oblivion or Morrowind. But, just like with those titles, the fun of Sacred 2 does not come from deep characters or epic events- it comes from the thrill of adventure and exploration.

And with so much to explore, so many characters to play as, thousands of items to find, equipment to upgrade, gems that can be socketed into items, and an open-ended skill progression system that lets you unlock more potent abilities to some of the 15 spells available to each class as you advance, there is definitely plenty of drive to explore. It comes back to the old Diablo formula of luck and risk vs reward; you want to continue pressing on in order to find that slightly shinier belt, that pointier spear, that twangier crossbow. It’s as compelling a formula as it ever was, particularly given the myriad of skills and depth of the skill and item customisation systems, and with a level cap of 200, plenty of room to grow as you explore, and navigation around the map is made mercifully easy thanks to the irregular placement of teleportation gates and resurrection stones that you can warp back to whenever you feel the need, or if you die. No Town Portal scrolls or thinly-veiled copycats, though. Characters are persistent, separate entities from their own campaign worlds, so you can take your single-player character through repeated playthroughs on higher difficulties or, preferably, join a friend locally or online for some co-op play (or a duel, if you’re that way inclined).

The characters themselves are a decent mix of semi-familiar archetypes with predefined roles, armour sets, and genders. The most interesting are the Temple Guardian, with its mixture of specialist supportive Combat Arts (read: abilities) and Dryad, who specialises in ranged weapons and stealth. The other classes play similarly to counterparts in other titles, such as the death-magic Inquisitor, the versatile warrioress Seraphim, the spellcasting High Elf and the melee expert Shadow Warrior, but just because they might feel a little familiar doesn’t make them any less fun to play. Each has 15 unique Combat Arts which can be improved by finding and crafting Runes and spending skill points, which helps to add variety and allows you to specialise in a specific skill set, but once you have learned them all and figured out which ones you like best it’s just a matter of improving those skills, without the promise of anything else left to learn. But you do at least have more weapons and armour to look forward to.

So there’s definitely plenty of content to Sacred 2. Hours and hours worth, certainly; even the central quest itself is long enough to stretch out further than many games in recent memory. But the breadth comes at the expense of polish and focus within that content; the 600 or so side-quests are mostly unimaginative and forgettable, there to add padding to an already lengthy and deep experience, but not to provide greater value to the experience. There’s also the issue of the game interface, which is hit and miss at best. The zoomed out, isometric camera might work well for the PC version, but feels cumbersome and distant on consoles, and although you can zoom in to a third person, over-the-shoulder(ish) view the camera is sluggish at following you and won’t pan low enough to provide you with a good enough view of your surroundings. When you’re trying to pick out targets in a crowd, that gets even more difficult, given the equally cumbersome targeting system- your character will highlight the closest enemy, and you can hold down your weapon button to auto-attack, and flick the right stick to change targets. Well, sometimes, anyway. Quite often the game won’t let you, and if you’ve zoomed in you won’t be able to see the different enemies, but if you’re zoomed out you probably won’t be able to target them. Further complication is added by the vast array of mappable hotkeys for abilities; the face buttons of the controller make up your four main weapon / skill hotkeys, but pressing R2 or L2 switches to secondary and tertiary quickslot banks, whilst the D-pad grants quick access to potions. With L1 reserved for examining objects, talking to people and picking up nearby items, and R1 bringing up a radial menu screen, you’re left without any dedicated controls for attack or defend- it’s all down to how you map it, which is great for offering freedom, but can be a little counter-intuitive- particularly when your controls are remapped if you mount a horse, for instance.

The menu system is at least capable, offering fairly clear information, but given the complexity of Sacred 2’s systems it is still likely to confuse at first. Your inventory is sub-divided into sections for weapons, armour, potions and so on, but the controls between the sections aren’t always coherent- with weapons, your equipped items are presented at the top of the list, for instance, whilst armour is sorted by type, with equipped items marked by a small badge. There’s a slightly clumsy ‘compare’ facility that lets you mark two items and flick between them for quick comparison, but it would have been better if the game could have showed both item’s details on screen at the same time.

The graphical engine is fairy decent; Ancaria is a very rich and detailed world, and the characters boast some lovely details and animations when viewed up close, not that you’ll often get the chance. Spell effects are sufficiently flashy, and there are some lovely atmospheric details and flora to admire. We’ve already touched on the inability of the camera to follow your movements; that doesn’t ever really improve, but at least the game looks nice when you’re not getting a close up shot of a roof or a wall. Texture details are high, character and enemy models boast good polygon counts given the number that can be on the screen, and we rarely encountered any slowdown, though there was a fair amount of screen tearing present. Sacred 2 also loads very quickly, which is definitely a boon, and if the voice acting the predictably mundane, the score at least offers some imaginative themes.

Written by :

James Hall