Developed by Ascaron, the European studio behind intricate strategy games Patrician and Port Royale, Sacred is Diablo-like fantasy action role-playing game that takes you to the Kingdom of Ancaria's medieval fantasy world. The story in Sacred is pretty generic fantasy stuff, as usually you have to save the world from the clutches of evil.

The game lets you customize which type of hero you want to be by allowing you to choose from 6 different classes - these are the Gladiator (a close combat expert), Seraphim (some kind of female Paladin), Dark Elf (some kind of Elf-Ninja, uses unarmed & blade weapons and is a trap expert), Wood Elf (uses ranged combat and nature magic), Battle mage (he uses spells and his staff) and Vampiress (a good fighter at day, and even stronger at night, with special magical, fang, and claw attacks). So there is no character creation, you can just choose the name of your hero or heroine. Each character allows a wildly varied gameplay experience, especially the Vampiress - at night she morphs into her vampire form (displayed using a particle system), thus becoming more powerful and gaining the ability to summon wolves and demons. All of these characters, as you might expect, have different abilities and skills. To develop your character, you need to find runes which give you special abilities/spells. If you learn a special ability/spell several times, it levels up. Each level you go up will gain you skill points, which you can assign to your current skills.

Surprisingly, combat is a bit more intricate than the usual mouse clicking. The left mouse button is mapped to interact with the world in some way, attack a monster, open a door or chest, the right mouse button is used for certain special abilities and powers such as the Vampiress' ability to turn into a proper "Vampire" for a limited amount of time. In terms of attack, you can also put together "combo chains", which allow you to string together a variety of attacks and magical spells. In order to learn or increase a special attack, you need to find the appropriate rune for the particular combat art you wish to learn or increase. The game also allows you to press the "A" key to automatically gather up all of the dropped treasure from dead monsters.

Sacred also offers a number of other innovations to the genre. One major aspect of Sacred is the horse action. You can ride horses (it's also possible to attack from this mounted position) to get around and earn experience points for finishing quests and killing monsters. The key thing about Sacred is that you can go almost anywhere from the beginning. More than 70% of the huge open-world is available for you to explore right at the beginning of the game with the remaining land opened as you complete the 30 main missions (16 different regions including forestland, ice covered landscapes, mountains, deserts, catacombs...) throughout the game. In addition, Sacred has well over 200 side quests you can undertake on your path to completing the main story line. One thing you can complain about is the bugs in the game. None of them will take away from your enjoyment of the game, but they are numerous enough and prevalent enough to be really annoying.

What seems to excite most is the online aspect of the game. Sacred features two different MP (LAN/Internet) modes: Co-operative and Hack 'n' Slay. The co-op allows you to play with up to three other people co-operatively across the whole game's story, while the Hack 'n' Slay supports up to 16 players in monster-infested matches. There's no doubt there will be a lot of online play that will extend the life of the game greatly. Sadly, this is another part of the game which is still slightly buggy at this time. I hope that the future patches fix most problems. I recommend you to download and install each patch as it becomes available.

Overall, this game has incredible replay value. The six character classes each offers their own unique twist, making the game playable at least six times, plus the addition of a well designed multi-player experience. If they eventually fix the bugs, this game will become one of the greatest action oriented RPG ever. If you enjoyed Dungeon Siege or Diablo II, then you will enjoy Sacred as well. Despite the bugs, I highly recommend it.

Related links:  homepage, demo (242MB)

System requirements:
Minimum: PIII (or compatible) 800 Mhz Processor, 256MB RAM, 16MB 3D Graphics Card - DirectX 8 compatible, DiirectX Soundcard, 2GB free HDD space, Windows 98SE*/ME/2000/XP ; Internet Connection/Network Card required for Multiplayer modes

Recommended: P4 1.4Ghz Processor or higher, 512MB RAM or higher, 64MB 3D Graphics Card - DirectX9 compatible with DirectX 9 drivers, 3D Soundcard with DirectX 9 Support, 2.5GB HDD space, Windows 2000/XP
*Sacred is NOT COMPATIBLE with Windows 98 First Edition