Title: Sacred 2: Fallen Angel
Platform: Xbox 360
Genre: Action/RPG
Rating: M for Mature
Release Date: May 12, 2009
Publisher: cdv Software Entertainment
Developer: Ascaron
Website

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel is a hack and slash, action/RPG, most reminiscent of the Diablo series. I’ve always found the term “Diablo-clone” to be a little misleading because no game is a Diablo-clone. I have yet to play a game described as a Diablo-clone that wasn’t marginally worse then Diablo. So I will not use the term to describe Sacred 2.

Sacred 2 goes for an MMO feel in gameplay. You can either play your game offline or online, hosting public or private games of up to 4 players online or 2 offline. Since I was brand-new at this game, I chose to play by myself, as not to incur the “noob” wrath from other players. Many aspects feel similar to MMOs. For instance, there is no pause. When you level up you have to choose your new stats and abilities on the fly, where you’ll sometimes get attacked by enemies during your choice making.

You are offered the option of 6 different classes, making the replay value much higher. Classes range from burly warriors to powerful magic welders to technical robot fighters. Each character has their own customization options (though they’re very limited), attacks, spells, talent trees and mounts.

The gameplay is similar to MMOs. You start out avenging someone’s death, and you make your way through the world doing odd-jobs for random people stationed all over the world. Quests consist of killing a certain amount of a certain enemy, collecting an item that was stolen, escorting people and delivering items among other things. Completing quests offers you experience and gold.

There are two different campaigns for the player to choose from; Light and Shadow. These paths will direct the character to certain sides of battles that will be fought against the opposing side. For example on the Light side you will be asked to defend a town that is being attacked by the Shadow side. Some classes are only available from one side.

One nice aspect is the loot ability. Instead of having to rifle through each corpse, you can just walk over them to loot anything they’ve dropped. If there are a lot of corpses around you can press one button that will loot everything in a pre determined area. These aspects help limit your downtime.

The graphics are pretty good. Because of the good graphics it is not uncommon to enter a town and have to wait for things to load. This really slows down the action and makes the game feel less like an MMO, which is what it feels like they were going for. The sounds are also good. Background music blends into the environment and rarely gets noticed and speech and enemy sounds are implemented well.

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel is available for Xbox 360, PS3 and Windows. Since the game is nearly a year old, you can find it for around $30 or less either used or in the bargain bin. That being said, I still don’t think this game is really that great. It’s a decent game but it doesn’t do anything that hasn’t already been done better somewhere else. If you love action/rpgs and just cannot wait for Diablo III to come out, you can probably take a chance on this one. It’s good enough to waste away some of your gaming hours between now and the Diablo III release, but not good enough to win any awards.

Overall Rating: ***1/2

The Gaming Savant, Ryan Smith

February 23, 2010