Exactly the game I was looking for
Let me move on by actually reviewing the game by listing the games pros and cons.
Pros
- Excellent visuals despite its age. Sacred has very sharp visuals. You play from an isometric perspective similar to Diablo. However, Sacred's images are much sharper than Diablo 2's were and it also gives you the freedom to zoom in and out to a limited degree. You can actually view a pretty decent area of the map fully zoomed out, but this can sometimes cause even more powerful computers to chug a little.
- Massive open-world map. The map in Sacred is huge. You will spend an awful lot of time exploring the world that has been created for you and uncovering all of its little nooks and crannies. Sacred populates this world with many different enemies, towns, and tons and tons of quests.
- Limitless replayability. I have read other reviews saying that it doesn't contain much replayability and I must say that I disagree completely. To me, playing a game like this is all about building up your character that is exactly where Sacred excels. There is tons of loot to be discovered (not to mention tons of inventory space). The game itself is quite lengthy, but you will be rewarded with better loot by playing it again on higher levels of difficulty. On top of that, you will find plenty of items that only work with certain character classes. Fortunately, you can store the items you can't use in your chest, start a new character of the different class, and he or she can use the items your other character discovered. This gives your new character a bit of an advantage early on and gives you incentive to try out the world again. You can also import and export your character between single-player, multi-player, and between Sacred original or its expansion, providing you with flexiblity to work on his or her stats whenever, whether with friends or by yourself.
- Smooth interface. Once you get used to playing the game, you'll find it's a breeze to use. The interface isn't quite as clean and easy as Diablo's, but it still works quite well. Spacebar will replenish your health by using potions when you get into the really hairy battles, you can easily map a special attack to your mouse, and the tried and true hack and slash combat is a joy. It's not quite as gelatinizing as Dungeon Siege, where you can basically set your character to auto-pilot as you traverse the world, but it's close.
Cons
- Story? Sacred contains a story somewhere, but I have no idea what it is. However, Sacred is one of the few games that can get away without much of a story because it's not about story, it's about questing and building up your character.
- Landscape blockage - You'll encounter places that are difficult to traverse. You will find yourself in a situation similar to this quite often: I want to go from town A on one side of the river to town B on the other side of the river - there has to be a bridge near here, nope; well maybe down here, nope; I can't believe I have to walk all the way over there to get to where I want to go! There are frustrating little blockages like this all over the world, and it can be especially frustrating since the map is so large and you won't know the right paths until you've actually uncovered the entire territory. This leads to all sorts of back-tracking and unneccessary monster slaying of respawning enemies.
- Auto-leveling and level-scaling. In a lot of ways, this game can more easily be compared to Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion than it can be to Diablo. Both feature wide-open worlds, which is a great feature, however both also contain annoying leveling practices. In Sacred, your character basically has his skill points alloted for him automatically whenever you level up. You will find yourself getting stronger, but will notice every time you level up you only get to allot one skill point - this is because the game automatically allocates the other skill points. What this does for you is prevents you from screwing up your character by neglecting any particular skill, but it also eliminates a lot of freedom of skill customization. You'll never be able to wield magic as a barbarian, so get that thought out of your mind. If you want to do that, you'll need to create a new character from scratch. Sacred also contains an annoying little aspect also found in Oblivion - level-scaling. The enemies strength in any given area will be tied to your character's strength. That's not necessarily to say the world will be as powerful as you are like throughout Oblivion, but it is disconcerting to an extent. Not only that, but if you return to an area containing weaker creatures, you will be given a nearly miniscule amount of experience for killing them, while a weaker character will receive much more. This is frustrating if you're playing with someone new, who is trying to catch up to where you are in the game, and you're killing little minions to keep him safe but receiving approximately 1/50th the amount of experience he is for each kill. You already need to gain tons more experience than he does for each level you gain, what's the point of the game reducing enemies experience value to values that will never, ever result in a level increase for you?
I've heard the game also contains some bugs, but I've never encountered any in my time of playing. If you're looking for a game with lots of action that also contains deep story for a single-player experience, you may want to look somewhere else - I would recommend Divine Divinity in that situation - Divine Divinity also gives you absolute skill customization if you're looking for that and can be found on GOG as well. However, if you're looking for a character-building game, filled with all sorts of distinct weapon and armor types, that you can casually play with your friends over LAN and that will keep you occupied seemingly for an eternity, look no further than Sacred