Sacred 2?

[souha13]

I'm leaning towards trying Sacred 2 but I never tried Sacred 1. I like hack n slash and free roaming worlds (get annoyed with nwn 2, crappy witcher and mass effect). But the classes kinda turn me off.

How well is the story, npc interaction and general atmosphere in the game. I prefer more mature settings.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

I liked Sacred 1, but I must say that I prefer "lighthearted" themes - visually, too.
Free Roaming is there, a lot of ! There are always a few things new to discover ... even whole small villages !
Other than that I cannot say, since I'm no ARPG expert. I keep away from this genre, normally. Sacred was my last try in it.

 

[Dhruin]

The Witcher "crappy"? I don't think our tastes align enough for me to advise but Sacred is particularly weak with story and NPC interaction. In Sacred 1, the quests were mostly randomly generated, with the quality you'd expect from that. The world is too large to develop NPCs to any worthwhile depth, especially since you'll be moving on quickly to new areas. It's not mature - standard high-fantasy cliche, down to chainmail bikinis.

Sacred is free on GameTap and there's the Sacred 2 demo, so you have plenty of opportunity to try for yourself.

 

[Maylander]

NWN2, The Witcher, and Mass Effect are not hack'n slash games, so if you prefer Diablo 2-ish games, you really should go for Titan Quest, Sacred 1-2, etc. I liked the classes in TQ better than Sacred, but that's a matter of personal taste.

 

[souha13]

Oh I like both hack n slash and crpgs. Gothic 1 and 2, Bg2, Morrowind, Kotor 2.. are games I loved. Witchers npcs (felt cliché to me, the very thing reviewers said it wasnt), fighting and loading put me off. Dragon age, diablo 3, dungeon lords, fallout 3, there are so many good games coming out soon that makes me drool.

Well that sounds quite bad Dhruin. Ill check out the demo.
Thx for answers.

 

[szokol]

The demo of Sacred2 was good, I can advice, if you like ARPG-s. It's free roaming, you can always find something new to discover.
What I didn't like: The respawn rate is as high as in Sacred1. It's very annoying you can't clear an area because of it. A mod would be nice to turn this thing off.
My other problem is the small inventory with small, ugly items. They should have used the same as in the first game.

 

[dyze]

The demo of Sacred2 was good, I can advice, if you like ARPG-s. It's free roaming, you can always find something new to discover.
What I didn't like: The respawn rate is as high as in Sacred1. It's very annoying you can't clear an area because of it. A mod would be nice to turn this thing off.
My other problem is the small directory with small, ugly items. They should have used the same as in the first game.

damn, thats the one thing i really hated in sacred1, the bloody respawns!
directory, i assume you meant inventory?

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Yes, I hated these respawns, too.

 

[pibbur]

Yes, I hated these respawns, too.

The most annoying were those low levelled ones you got no xp for killing. But who still managed to stop you by throwing some web at you, so you had to fight them.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

I think with the last patches they became passive, the more, the higher the character's level was, I think.

But they still were there.

 

[chamr]

Is the US demo running sluggishly for anyone else? I don't have a top-of-the-line rig, but I can run Company of Heroes on all high settings, for instance, with no trouble. With the Sacred 2 demo, I'm on all medium with shadows and AA off, and it's like the mouse pointer is slogging through mud and the action is in semi-slow motion. What gives?

 

[szokol]

Is the US demo running sluggishly for anyone else? I don't have a top-of-the-line rig, but I can run Company of Heroes on all high settings, for instance, with no trouble. With the Sacred 2 demo, I'm on all medium with shadows and AA off, and it's like the mouse pointer is slogging through mud and the action is in semi-slow motion. What gives?

I had to turn graphic settings low, so the game was uglier than the first one, but my PC is two years old. I should buy a new one, but didn't dare to tell it to my wife yet

dyze:
Yeah, inventory, of course

 

[Gragnak]

I've the CE - Italian version.
My rig:
Asus P5Q Deluxe, 4 Gb Ram (VIsta 32 uses only 2,85), Intel Core 2 duo E8500 (3100 Mhz - overclocked 3800 Mhz), Soundblaster X-Fi, nVidia 9800 Gx2.
My tech review:
The game runs smooth with all settings on high, but I think they need to optimize it a lot. It's not so scalable like they say. I couldn't install the elite textures pack because it seems to have a lot of nasty bugs. When fighting caves and dungeons it runs slower and also the free camera mode is terrible when you try to visualize your character in narrow corridors.
Multiplayer doesn't work for now and I couldn't try the Carrier Imp coming with the CE.
I think they'll solve a lot of problems with future patches. Perhaps the late to come US version will be more bug free and ship with latest patches just included.

If you like Diablo clones, Sacred 2 is really a good game.

 

[pibbur]

One thing I've always liked with the Sacred game was the number of easter eggs/the frequent (addmittedly cheesy) bits humour.

Lot's of it here as well. My favourite so far is the minstrel suddenly taking up a heavy metal pose, playing power chords...

 

[GothicGothicness]

Sacred 2 demo is out! WOHO gone to download. How come I missed these news?

 

[GothicGothicness]

I tried the demo, I have to say the gameplay is just like sacred 1 from what I can see of the demo. It also ran terrible on my machine even on the low setting ?!?! I guess it is a sign my machine is getting old. But still it should not run so terrible on the low setting, Bioshock which looks a lot better ran fine on my machine.

Anyway anyone played the full game? how do you think about it ?

 

[Gorath]

It's possible Ascaron will release an updated demo when they are through with all the further optimisations. They mentioned they expect to get a lot of low-end tweaks through back-conversion from the console versions.

Sacred 2 still has random performance issues. It's really hit or miss. Take two 500$ PCs. Equip one with a GeForce 8800 and the other with a 9600. Both cards perform within a 10% margin, but you can't really predict how they will run Sacred 2. One could stutter at minimum details while the other runs smoothly on FullHD.
Hard to say why. Forum posts indicate that Sacred 2 doesn't like old drivers, especially for sound cards.

Give them a bit more time, maybe until after Christmas. Or uninstall the demo and try a borrowed full version and apply all the patches. Ascaron allows this. It effectively becomes a demo which runs until midnight the same day. It's not unlikely the performance will be better.
Patches are coming every few days.

 

[txa1265]

Someone on the Dreamcatcher boards got the game through GoGamer and has been having a terrible time technically with it ... and with the DRM he is concerned about hitting install limits ... not encouraging.

 

[Gorath]

If the DRM works as Ascaron said, he can install and activate it on as many PCs as he wants as long as the number of parallel activations is not higher than 2. Revoke & re-activate should work without limitation, apart from a daily maximum to avoid abuse. The way Ascaron explained the authorisation system is: It's not much more than a stupid (they really used this word AFAIR!) server which checks if the number of "active" activations is <= 2. If the answer is 'yes' it greenlights another activation.
So theoretically speaking it should be no problem to revoke, reinstall & activate it on at least one PC per day for an indefinite time.

 

[chamr]

It also ran terrible on my machine even on the low setting ?!?! I guess it is a sign my machine is getting old. But still it should not run so terrible on the low setting, Bioshock which looks a lot better ran fine on my machine.

Same problem here, Gothic. Don't have a new rig, but there's no way it should run as badly as it does. Makes exploring just the demo too painful.