The game is all hack-and-slash and rarely has time for you to explore without being interrupted by infinite respawns.
I don't like the fact that you can't pause the game and that the game doesn't pause while you're shopping either. It's a nuisance that never seems to hinder. It's like a neverending war. I've logged 55 hours with my Shadow Warrior and enough time for 4 other characters to get to level 15 for the achievements. I currently haven't taken a high elf, yet.
I see this game as more of a chore than an adventure. The story is weak. You constantly fight hordes and hordes of monsters. I didn't like that they took out the color-coded stuff, as while I was so busy fighting, I didn't have time to scroll through my stuff while being assaulted. Sometimes I had set items alot better than my own stuff that I could've been wearing, but didn't realize it right away. Being able to sell equipped stuff prevents power-selling. Having to put things in your stash one at a time. How annoying.
Don't get me wrong. I love rpg's (the games and the guns, lol), but this game just goes on and on. No grinding, my butt. The game is one continuous grind. I also found it particularly odd that my guy, being extremely higher level than a monster, still had trouble killing them. I also didn't like being hounded and chased by extremely low-level monsters. It's like a T-Rex being hounded by mosquitoes. It would have been better when I got close to them, if they had've run away in fear. After all, what fun is a hunt when your prey is always running towards you and not away from you. And also, monsters' skills should suffer a penalty on effectiveness against someone way over their level. My level 37 Shadow Warrior did not appreciate trying to run by monsters to uncover the map only to be halted by a guy who couldn't even hit me.
And what's up with Ascaron talking about Sacred 3? Sacred 2 is fun, but it's also a mess. Don't make another mess before cleaning up the one you've already made. Do you think Ascaron cares about us? They don't. That's why there are so many glitches/bugs in Sacred 2. They ran out of money during production and needed to cash in. And they did. It seems to me that they did not even play through the finished product before releasing it. Some of the bugs were so obvious, you'd have to be blind not to notice them.
I won't beat the game through and through like some people. I'll just get what I need out of it, and then pass it on to someone else. It's too much of a chore to do the same quests again and again and again. I'm not a serious gamer who needs to squeeze every point out of every game. I just squeeze out enough entertainment to satiate my satisfaction and then move on.
All in all, it's worth a play-through even if you're mildly into the genre. If you're heavily into the genre, then you must own it and play it consistently.