Comments on: Sacred 2 Add On Announced: “Be” A Dragonmage

By: Rhygadon

Rhygadon — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 20:59:43 +0000

Oh, and on topic: I played Sacred for a week or two, got distracted and never went back. Played Sacred II for about a week, kept waiting in bafflement to see if there was something I was missing, and quit when I realized that no, the whole game will be like this:
- Terribly broken balance, with combat veering between trivial and lethal
- Useless skill documentation, which can make it easy to irrevocably gimp your character (with no way to respec)
- You have essentially your full set of powers (CAs) within the first few hours of play, and from there the entire game is nothing but adding TINY percentage modifiers to improve your efficiency. In conjunction with autoleveling enemies, this means the game is a pure treadmill, with no significant change in appearance or strategy after the first dozen leves (out of 200).
- The world is huge and (in places) beautiful, but somehow despite being hand-dressed it has the same pervasive sense of meaninglessness as a randomly generated one. I found an gorgeous remote mountaintop castle, with navigable parapets and unique statuary and such … and there was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO THERE (except loot the one-lootable-chest-per-room which can be found in every house in the game). This actually quite worked for me as a prompt for meditation on the human condition, but as a game location it was desolate and disheartening. The game is full of interesting-looking houses and hidden hilltop camps, which all turn out to have nobody to talk to and nothing to interact with but a randomized lootable chest.
In short, this wound up being one of those games that I found myself hating myself for continuing to play as long as I did. It’s like when all you have in the house is some really bad junk food, and you’re eating it even though a) it’s bad for you and b) you aren’t enjoying it at all because c) there’s nothing else to do.
Whew. Ranting, was I?

By: Rhygadon

Rhygadon — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 20:42:17 +0000

For anyone considering playing Titan Quest (or who did play it way-back-when): Install the regular game, play it for a session or two, then go get the Lilith mod and never look back. Lilith is a completely separate adventure, with far better balance and pacing, more variety in the combat, and a more original and interesting world. I played the first game (and IT) through to the end and liked it, but after Lilith was released I just couldn’t go back.
There is also the Masteries mod, which is more of a total conversion of the game; I’ve never tried it. Lilith is essentially the core game with just a few judicious balance fixes (and some minor mods for costume changes and better loot), used to build a better SP campaign.

By: malkav11

malkav11 — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 22:29:56 +0000

Oh yeah, Kult was pretty awesome as well, but never gets any love.

Titan Quest is, imho, Diablo II with physics, a more flexible skill tree system, and some niceties that Diablo II lacked. Yes, it lacks the cool story of Diablo II, but that was 90% in the cutscenes anyway, and I don’t think most people replayed DII over and over and over because of the story.

(I’m not one of them. I can stand one or two trips through Diablo et al, not more, unless there’s a lot more meat there than mowing down monsters.)

By: theleif

theleif — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:01:26 +0000

I just started to play Sacred 2 before going on vacation, and of course i forgot to install it on my laptop. Anyway, what i saw during the hours i played was pretty good. Totally worth the 9€ i had to pay for it.

@Stabby
I’m reading the Malazan Book of the Fallen right now. Pretty good reading, but not as good as A Song of Ice and Fire. But then again, nothing is as good as that series when it comes to fantasy.

And finally, i titally agree with Wulf. If a developer want to treat women as sex objects, they should treat men the same.

By: Serondal

Serondal — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:46:17 +0000

Did the know the main character in Nox (awesome game BTw, I loved it when it first came out) is voiced by none other than Stiffler from American Pie ? Strange these things you find out years after the fact.

By: DSX

DSX — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:43:13 +0000

It should be noted there are already some player made mods for Sacred 2 that add new mage classes.

I enjoyed the game initially, but could not finish it, much like Titan Quest. It simply gets too repetitive for the scope, the leveling and skill tree rewards don’t reward enough to make the grind worth it IMHO. There is a huge amount of tongue in cheek 4th wall breaking moments (just let your char idle for 20 minutes and listen to them rant, read all the gravestones, etc) but even the humor isn’t enough of a push to keep you going.

By: Serondal

Serondal — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:46:37 +0000

Er, Steel Bikini’s , Is that some kind of mental slip or what ? :P

By: Serondal

Serondal — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:43:40 +0000

About Steal Bikini’s – Nothing in Scared is realstic why should the armor be? Also angel character has magical armor any how so it protects her with magic no so much actually covering body parts. The other female character which is a vampire is very well dressed, nothing skimpy and is an honorable character ect.

I see this from every angle, my wife is a video game player don’t forget. The simple fact of the matter is sex sells, it always has and it always will. If there was really this public out cry against it then people wouldn’t buy the video games and the devs would go under from lack of sells. It is the oppiste however, the more sex and violence a game the better it sells (GTA any one?) Maybe that will chance in the future maybe it won’t.

I’m not attacking anyone here everyone is welcome to their opinion, I was just wondering how many people who come out against these sorts of characters in games are really just pretending not to like it to save face.

@Diablo 2 Clones – Depth of Peril looks interesting, I will have to give that one a go. I saw Titan’s Quest when it came out and played a demo of it, I never really got into it very well. I thought dungeon siege was way to simple but may try out Dungeon Siege 2 based on suggestions here that it has more depth. I got Evil Island when it first came out and didn’t care for it much, may have to go back and try it again.

I dunno if anything will compare to my days of leaping into a horde of monsters with my barbarian and laying them all to waste with my twin axes of doom ;)

By: Serenegoose

Serenegoose — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:24:36 +0000

Matt: The game is not really more complex than clicking on monsters til they fall over. Titan quest is a -really- simple game to enjoy, or not, because it’s entirely based on and framed around the simple prospect that killing monsters = reward through xp and prizes, and the satisfaction of progression will mask the relative simplicity of the game by basically being a primal experience. If you need more flesh on it than that, you won’t enjoy it. If you can get into that, you will.

By: Lintman

Lintman — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:01:14 +0000

I bought Sacred Gold. The combination of auto-leveled monsters and quest bugs made the game unpleasant enough for me that I just gave up on it. So I’ve stayed well clear of Sacred 2.

By: Jacques

Jacques — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:41:35 +0000

SwiftRanger, Revenant was good fun, but nowhere near finished.

I wouldn’t compare Guild Wars to D2, the gameplay is very different.

By: Wolfox

Wolfox — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:35:17 +0000

For me, the best “Diablo clone” is Depths of Peril, with Titan Quest in second place. Sacred Gold would be third or something.

I highly recommend Depths of Peril, if you like that genre. In many senses, it’s a breath of fresh air.