Sacred 2 Preview
While roaming the floor of Moscone North's expo hall, I found myself sitting down at the booth belonging to Ascaron Entertainment and getting an in-depth look at their upcoming Sacred 2: Fallen Angel. The game, due out simultaneously for both the 360 and PCs in Q1 2008, is a sequel to the 2004 action-RPG Sacred that will take place in the same universe as the first title. No plot details have been given out yet, but the seraphim character from the first game is making a return and is featuring a vastly different look than before, so one would assume that she the central point of the game's overall story.
Players will have the option of assuming six different character classes, each with their own unique storyline, and almost all of them having supernatural elements. Heiko tom Felde, the publishing director who gave me the preview, told me a few of the classes (but not all of them: seraphim, shadow warrior (an undead spellsword), the temple guard, and the inquisitor (the only character in the game that does not provide the option of following the path of goodness and light). Most of these classes have two separate story paths to follow, good or evil, and each path will take approximately 30 hours to complete. As each character's storyline is totally different from the others, Sacred 2 has the potential to provide hundreds of hours of gameplay.
Graphically, I thought the game looked really good. We're not talking Gears of War good, but the developers have created a world which has an awful lot of detail on the screen. As we played on the 360, I was struck by two things in particular, though: the camera controls are really easy and can provide just about any angle that a player could want, and the character's art style is one of the more unique that I've seen in recent games. The closest I can come to describing the seraphim character, in particular, is that she looks a bit like Todd McFarlane's Angela, and a number of the suits of armor available seem like a gorgeous mesh between steampunk and anime genres. Also, the character animations were really smooth and beautifully rendered, which was apparently due to the fact that they were all done by hand (something that Ascaron is really proud of, seeing as how Heiko mentioned it about five or six times).
Now, in terms of gameplay, the combat seemed a little simplistic and buggy, but since the game isn't due out for another year at least I expect it will be tightened quite a bit between now and then. Seeing as how there really aren't that many RPGs out for the 360, I'm rather excited about Sacred 2's upcoming entry into the console's market. While I certainly can't pass final judgment, I have no problem saying that this looks like it's going to be a really fun game.
Boy of Tomorrow
Posted to Video Games on 7 March 2007
· Comments (2)
Other stuff like this: action, ascaron, pc, rpg, sacred, sacred 2, seraphim, xbox 360
Too bad my original copy of Sacred is nothing but a coaster because it doesnt play on my new computer... Copyright protection is working too well when it "protects" you from playing the game >,
@XanX01: try the latest official patch v2.28, it removes any copyprotection from the game!