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SaCred

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SaCred - Ascaron Entertainment

This is the SaCred review that I submitted to PCFormat?

Sacred hangs comfortably suspended between the hack and slash that was Diablo and the heavily storyline-driven games such as the Baldur’s Gate series. It contains elements of both (the good ones I believe), encompassing the pleasure of blasting enemies with devastating spell effects as well as the satisfaction derived from a quest completed to perfection.

The sheer number of quests is overwhelming, some mission critical but most optional, with the developers boasting a count of between 200 and 300. These quests are very well conceptualised and implemented, with the challenge coming from completing the task, rather than struggling to find out what you need to do, a problem that plagues too many other quest-driven games.

The landscape is stunning, with streams, trees, bushes, rocks and sandy patches dotting the countryside, as well as constructed features such as farmhouses and fishponds, all excellently rendered. The lighting effects are spectacular, especially for the various spells and combat skills, and certain weapons and pieces of armour also glow, adding to the overall ‘shininess’ of your character.

Sadly, Sacred is as buggy as the Nine Hells, with quest items occasionally disappearing, random graphical glitches as well as certain equipment and spells not functioning as advertised. Ascaron Entertainment have, to their credit, followed up with a heavy patching regime that is slowly fixing the various problems. At the time of writing, the current version is 1.66, with 1.7 in the pipeline. They are also taking suggestions for feature inclusions in future versions, which will lead to a far stronger game in the end.

Despite all the problems, the game is still very addictive and great fun to play. I have dedicated many hours of my life to this, and I see many more disappearing in the future. As bug fixes and features emerge, my rating of this game will only go up.

Rating: 79%

• ryan has started playing with the female paladin angel character, and I swear it sounds like a porno every time he fights - he refuses to change to a male character in case they grunt instead - d@vid June 2 2004
• Shouldn't that be "conceptualised" - second paragraph, second sentence and remove either the "certain" or the "some" from before "equipment" in the fourth paragraph. I'd recommend asking my brother to do edits and proof-reads, he's shockingly good with that sort of thing. - LothrielPixie

• All the Characters "prance" around. Beyond Gay. Enchanted. Anyway after about 6 hours or so I was bored stiff, something about the implementation of the different Skills seems .... well ~UberCheese?. I mean ~BeeEffGee?(Seraphim) or worse the barba... Gladiator skill "Dagger Stare" (U hurt foes by looking at them funny. WTF? Reminds me of The New Guy.) Mebbe ah didnt give enough of a chance though? -YanKa?

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