Sacred 2: Fallen Angel Review for Xbox 360

Though it has a small amount of bugs, it is worth spending some time playing.

Graphics: 90

Audio: 75

Gameplay: 85

Replay: 80

Overall: 75

General Premise:

As one of several classes including the Temple Guardian, Shadow Warrior, Seraphim, Dryad, Inquisitor, and the High Elf, you will take part in individual storylines for each of the respected classes.

Initial Reaction:

From the moment you choose what class you want to be, you are thrown into a game with detailed environments and lush visuals. Almost from the get go, you are able to start questing, finding vast amounts of loot, and each of your classes have their own unique feeling and look about them. Being that the game is in a third person overhead view, you can really appreciate the work put into the game.

Questing:

Questing is text based questing, similar to World of Warcraft in which players accept quests from NPC’s around towns  and in encampments or even as far as people in dire need. The upscale on the text-based questing is that the scripts are fairly detailed and your character classes often respond with some sort of remark in regards to that particular quest. There are also a lot of dungeon-like caves and sewers which remind you of the eeriness and excitement of dungeon running in other games and can be just as entertaining as games similar to Sacred 2. The main quests have voiced text which makes it easy to distinguish which quests are main quests and those that are pick-me-up quests. The con to the questing is you are often caught grinding out quests that seem very derivative which follow the mindset “go here, kill that, travel here, find this.” This is similar to many other commonly known and widely popular games including WoW, but what makes it repetitive at times is the fact that you are doing quests which literally most of the time have no correlation to anything and do not even link to the story at all. The map set up in Sacred 2: Fallen Angel is fairly vast and this gives you a lot of room to explore and quests, dungeons, and monsters to find, slay, and conquer. Thought the game is big, you have gates that act as return stones which allow you to teleport back to where you set it. In turn, this makes it very easy for you to get back to where you need to go to turn in quests or buy items, etc. Additionally, quests are marked on the map by a circular ring which will give you the name and general area of where the quest will take place. The last big hiccup in the game’s questing is that a handful of them were bugged. For instance, in one area you need to lead a group of people into a cave, but once you enter it you become unable to move at all, you can’t see anything except your health, and your spells and you are forced to reset the game. We tested this bug a few times and received the same result and this may have been due to the fact that this game was a port from the PC to the Xbox 360.

Fighting (monsters included):

The combat in Sacred 2 is much like something you would see from Diablo or Gauntlet. In our collective opinion, Sacred is a mash up of the two, but in a good way. The monsters for the most part are unique and original to the game, but you do see some mobs recycled along the way. The boss monsters you encounter are epic compared to other monsters are much more challenging, but fun to fight as well. The only issue with the combat is that you seem to be drowned in monsters constantly to the point where it is painfully annoying to move more than a few hundred feet (in game of course). It is virtually impossible to leave your character idle if you are not in a main town or safe area without getting attacked by someone or something. Also, sometimes you feel like you are being led linearly along the map because you cannot even cross rivers and certain mountainous terrain without being forced to use a set trail which takes away from the otherwise generally free roaming environment. The fighting controls are based off of your basic action buttons and each specific attack has a cool down timer to prevent you from using it over and over. Each character has their own set of what Sacred 2 calls Combat Arts. These combat arts are intuitive to the choices you make such as alignment of light or dark and make your character unique from all other classes in the game. Each time you level up you are also allocated points which allow you to become proficient in professions and even some that allow you to customize the way your character is built (i.e. stamina, dexterity, intelligence, etc.). Each class also has a specific special mount which is attainable through a quest line. We bring this up because there is mounted combat which does not hinder the character from using any moves or spells. On normal mounts however, you are limited in action which makes it worth your while to attain a class specific mount. This part of the game is very well done in our collective opinion.

Xbox Live/Co-operative:

With co-op, you can work together and complete the quests as a team which would be expected, but you can also further your own personal storyline alongside your partner. The Xbox Live is seamless and almost never lags at all. You can have up to four players playing at one time and can teleport to them at any given time and anyone can join your session online at any given time unless you set it to where players cannot connect to you. You do not have to stay together either and Xbox Live play is essentially co-op online. 

Closing Thoughts:   

From what we experienced, the game is fairly entertaining and it is enjoyable. Though it has a small amount of bugs and some flaws, it is worth spending some time playing. Sacred 2: Fallen Angel is enriched with customization of your character and is not hard on the eyes either. Though we wish that there was a little more flare to the storyline and a little less grinding, you shouldn’t pass a chance to at least try the game and see what is has to offer.