What sets Sacred 1 & 2 so far apart from other games in its genre for me

[bhav 28]

I touched on this a little in another thread,but after returning to playing Sacred 2 after a long time of playing newer ARPGs, there is a lot more to note regarding what set this series apart from the other games, and why I enjoyed it so much more. The main games I will be comparing to are Diablo 3 and Path of Exile.

1) Fully open, massive explorable world.

In the other ARPGs, you have the game segmented into tiny levels / areas. This completely removes all sense of having a full open world to explorable and makes it feel like a level based game instead. You complete one level then move onto the next, instead of just being able to explore in a different direction and finding new areas and challenges seamlessly integrated into the game world. All sense of adventure and exploration is lost to me in the newer level based ARPGs.

2) Offline play

Let's face it, none of the online only ARPGs can eliminate internet connection based lag and desync. In this genre, a single second or less can mean the difference between survival and death. Even worse when mechanics are placed in the online only games that punish players for dying, and when deaths are caused due to internet lag. Optional multiplayer is a great addition to ARPGs, but forced online only play destroys them too much.

3) Online balance

Due to being online only as noted above, other ARPs need to focus too heavily on balance and keeping everything in check. Discover an amazing new build and gear combo that works great and wonderful? Share it with anyone and within a month its merged to uselessness. Then on the other extreme is where the developers balance the game based around the 1% or less of players running the top most / imbalanced builds, meaning that if you also don't run the same overpowered idea, the game becomes unplayable, as opposed to just becoming harder.

In the sacred games, you can literally make the game as hard or easy as you choose based on how you build your character. Rather than having the game difficulty and balance dictated by the developers and top 1% of players, you choose whether you want to play an overpowered or underpowered build, and as such you choose the difficulty of your game by delevoping your character to match your personal playstlye.

4) Drop rates / loot farming

Online ARPGs are heavily burdened by player to player trade economies. In path of exile, the chances of self finding the rarest uniques are non existant. For most players, the only chance of finding the gear they need is by buying it off other players. This completely destroys all sense of enjoyment behind having a nice rare item drop for you that one of your characters can use, you can be playing the game for years on end and you will never have a single rare unique drop, and the only way to get it is to spend massive amounts of currency to buy it off a lucky person.

5) Character development / complexity.

In Diablo 3, they removed manual character building entirely. Stats were automatically increased on level up, and each character had zero customization.

What if I wanted to play a melee sorcerer or a warrior casting ranged spells for fun? Oh well, too bad, you can't.

6) Tiny game world / rushed difficulty

In sacred 2, you can spend years just playing in silver difficulty and never going any higher if you don't want to. There is so much content to allow you to do that. In newer ARPGs, you complete the whole game per difficulty in a few hours or less, then move onto the next difficulty. I seem to be the only person that found this incredibly boring. Also what if I don't want to play the hardest difficulty? Well I can't play any of the endgame because that content comes after the final difficulty and is even harder, and due to the stingy drop rates, my gear isn't good enough for it so I just keep on dying.

I may add more things here as I remember or come across them.

Edited March 14, 2016 by bhav

[lujate 578]

#1 and both #5's are huge for me.

 

I would add keyboard movement plus mouse turning. I may be the only person on the planet that feels this way, but IMO click-to-move is the antichrist.

[podgie_bear 184]

#1 and both #5's are huge for me.

 

I would add keyboard movement plus mouse turning. I may be the only person on the planet that feels this way, but IMO click-to-move is the antichrist.

You are not the only one.

 

I would also add the problem with online games is that the developer can completely change the game mechanics in an update and you have no choice about updating your game. For example I play LotRO and for 6 years the skill system worked well, then Turbine decided to completely change the mechanics of the skill trees and altered the game beyond all recognition to a dumbed down and far worse skill system which restricts you like a straitjacket on your characters. Players were unable to choose not to update their copies and keep the old system, whereas with offline games like Sacred we could decide to not install the update and keep the game we love.

Edited March 13, 2016 by podgie_bear

[bhav 28]

#1 and both #5's are huge for me.

 

I would add keyboard movement plus mouse turning. I may be the only person on the planet that feels this way, but IMO click-to-move is the antichrist.

I just noticed I had two number 5s oops.

[Flix 5,116]

Well said. Sacred games are a special thing. I especially agree about offline play. I understand Path of Exile being online, it was always intended as such and it's free anyway, but D3 alienated a lot of fans by being an online game. Not everyone has connections that can support that, myself included. It's even more bitter as the console versions don't require you to be online.

 

I'm understanding more and more of what you're saying about things being mercilessly "balanced" while I watched Grim Dawn be developed. They didn't mess up the game by any means, but time and time again, some strong combination of skills and gear would be discovered and nerfed. Constant player feedback during the entire development cycle is a double-edged sword. Of course people who followed "super cool power build" and downloaded the legendary sets would find things in Ultimate difficulty too easy.

[Veracious 267]

My favorite part of sacred two when I first got it as a follow up after d2 was the vibrant color scheme and fantastical ambiance. Many people here have complained that they prefer dreary gloomy atmosphere but since the story is fantasy I liked that they made things look hopeful and the land you're protecting still beautiful to travel.

 

As far as game play itself I love that it's a solo game as well as group. You can still play self found and complete the game and enjoy everything the vast expanse of content has to offer and never feel slighted because it's too difficult or nigh impossible to find upgrades as you advance.

 

This is all sacred two experience. My sacred one is extremely limited.

 

This is probably my number one game of all time. I love it even when my gold dryad is still stuck at the dragon under seraphim island LMAO

[Delta! 987]

My favorite part of sacred two when I first got it as a follow up after d2 was the vibrant color scheme and fantastical ambiance. Many people here have complained that they prefer dreary gloomy atmosphere but since the story is fantasy I liked that they made things look hopeful and the land you're protecting still beautiful to travel.

 

As far as game play itself I love that it's a solo game as well as group. You can still play self found and complete the game and enjoy everything the vast expanse of content has to offer and never feel slighted because it's too difficult or nigh impossible to find upgrades as you advance.

 

This is all sacred two experience. My sacred one is extremely limited.

 

This is probably my number one game of all time. I love it even when my gold dryad is still stuck at the dragon under seraphim island LMAO

I have never played Sacred 1... but I am a big fan of Sacred 2. I might even say in the past 2 years, it has become my favourite game. the free roam map is amazing... I used to love that in GTA(vice city and San Andreas being the only ones I spent time on) it has the intense and very diverse character developments... I absolutely agree with that... (closest that I can almost compare that with is Heroes of might and magic 5 tribes of the east (expansion)... but you still started with certain skills and if you wanted to reach the "ultimate skill" you had to follow a certain path... well I have played that game for years and years, and I have never gotten the ultimate skill for any class of hero...

I especially like how they did each area different, even in Artamark/Tyr Lysia/Nor Plat/Bengaresh, you still had different areas with a darker surrounds... and that creates a lot of atmosphere in the game.

 

I could possibly think of only a few things I would have programmed differently in the game, but then I get to a different stage in the game, and then I feel different about that...

 

Delta!

[podgie_bear 184]

I think my favourite part of Sacred 2 is playing it in third person perspective rather than isometric, it makes it seem like a completely different game and the with the amount of detail that can only been seen when playing that way makes me realise the amazing amount of work that went into making this game.

[bhav 28]

Oh I also really like the vibrancy and graphics. All the bright green grass looks so lush.

 

But there are darker and dreary parts too - desert, orc area etc.

 

If I was rich, I'd put together my own team of developers to create a similar new game, except with vastly more skills and character customisation, something like either DND or path of exile, but with all the single player and open world gameplay of Sacred 1 / 2.

[Androdion 884]

It's really late here so I'll just put a short one for now.

 

Why do I love Sacred 2? Maybe because after buying it twice, the first time being in 2009, and playing hundreds of hours I still haven't even tried half of its content! I haven't played three of the possible character classes, I have never made all quests in the game, I've never browsed the entirety of the game's map, etc and etc. It's just such a freaking huge game in terms of dimension and gaming scope that it can last you years on end. And the best part, it's a really cool game to play. All the fun of grinding it Dungeon Siege 2 style while having to account for a myriad of stats and bonuses, it's just a geek's dream.

[Knuckles 904]

I would have to say the #1 thing for me was....

 

The HC online community....the game itself was great but MP put it over the top for me..plus it was the first game I truly played online..so it was all new to me. Before Sacred 1, I was always solo....well not entirely true...

 

Played D1 solo only....tried D2 online but had a real issue with some players...enough that I stopped within a week or so and never went back. Thought Sacred 1 would have the same issues....but Gogo and KOTR convinced me to give MP HC a go. I was a lurker on the Sacred forums and they would talk up MP so much and seemed to be having such a great time that I had to give it a try.

 

First time on server, I joined a party that was in the Khorad desert running the Orc Cave...I was several levels lower than them and promptly died. As I remade my character and re-joined game, everyone playing asked if I needed anything and was showered with gold and runes....was hooked after that.

 

#2 Reason would be re-playability and not being forced into cookie cutter builds to be able to play in harder difficulties.

#3 Huge open world

#4 That subtle humor all over the place

[bhav 28]

Not being forced into cookie cutter builds is a huge plus.

 

One of the biggest issues I had with Path of Exile was that not taking as many health nodes as possible meant no endgame for you. Energy Shield builds struggle immensely with staying alive, whereas In Sacred games I could play whatever build I wanted as long as I had just a couple of defense skills (armor lore and either warding energy or constitution was sufficient).

[bhav 28]

Another thing I remember I really like is the survival bonus in Sacred 2. It is definitely a vastly superior and more enjoyable idea than lame experience loss on death in many other games.

 

The more you survived, the better the bonuses you got, but also enemies would get levelled up and with more champion mobs making them harder, but also with more experience.

 

Its definitely quite a challenge on a temple guardian once my energy shield runs out and I'm either mashing the heal potion button or running for my life to not lose my bonus.

[Veracious 267]

Well here I go quitting poe and returning to sacred 2 LMAO. I just gotta get past carnach. Now I'm determined!

[podgie_bear 184]

Well here I go quitting poe and returning to sacred 2 LMAO. I just gotta get past carnach. Now I'm determined!

Carnach is just a big pusstcat! My seraphim scratched his belly for him with her twin swords and he just rolled over and played dead.

 

[bhav 28]

Well here I go quitting poe and returning to sacred 2 LMAO. I just gotta get past carnach. Now I'm determined!

Pretty much what I just did. I played and loved PoE for so many years ...

 

And never found a Mjolner / Shavs Wrappings / Koams Heart / insert any other useful unique here.

 

And the end game maps were too hard for me.

 

And also Ive only previously completed silver difficulty once, and never played any higher, because Sacred 2 is so massive and I spend all my time completing every single quest.

Edited March 16, 2016 by bhav

[Veracious 267]

 

 

Well here I go quitting poe and returning to sacred 2 LMAO. I just gotta get past carnach. Now I'm determined!

Carnach is just a big pusstcat! My seraphim scratched his belly for him with her twin swords and he just rolled over and played dead.

 

In gold? Wow. I've got a 75 dryad but now she's got no survival so it's gonna be a while before I go back to him. I've got leech stars and fire resist but he's just killing my hp. The regen spell and potions don't save me neither did the leech. I thought my damage was decent but I guess not. I tried editing the drops to get more rare bows n stars but no upgrade yet. We'll see.

[lujate 578]

It's hard the first time or two, after that it becomes old hat.

[Bezlonir 53]

I've been playing the game for almost a year, maybe a bit more. I've put in probably at least 300 hours. Hard to tell since I was playing on console and so I had to delete innumerable characters who had 10 to 20 hours in so I could try a new build. Now I'm playing on PC with a gamepad and a program to let me play with it in Sacred 2. I'm really enjoying tweaking builds and such. Once I revamp all the classes, I may put out a mod of my tweaks. Mostly all I'm doing is just turning the knob to 11 on everything. It will make the White Griffin and stuff harder, though, as a huge focus has been massively powerful buffs.