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Preview article about Sacred 3 gameplay features


Silver_fox

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Silver, this is an great write up! Thanks for helping the community out with the translation, for this surprise take/turn on the franchise.

Edit to title done!

:)

 

gogo

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I agree on this.

This is definitely not we have been devoted to for years and years ( and years!) now

However...if we pull back for perspective.. could we see it that they created this as a "break" for us to just get a quick fix from...then one day... years from now...they'll return the series to normal?

...we can dream

:)

 

gogo

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Wow, never expected to read a game review with the word "cas****ed" for a short description.

 

 

SilverFox, you skipped one of the best parts in the review – glitches!

And now I’m looking forward to videos of epic gamebreaking dodgerolling:

 

Mostly the game behaves very strangely, as if the developers poorly understood what they will face from an introduction of a skill - dodge roll lets you navigate through the map faster than normal running, has no rollbacks, gives invulnerability, and with one of the first improvements deals damage to standard enemies and environment. At level 9, I just stopped using the other buttons - I rolled on the ground from the beginning to the end of the level, on legendary difficulty driving through hordes of enemies, barrels, shelters, barriers and fences. A seraphim with an iron forehead. Critical damage of normal sword - 23. From "rolling" - 20. Yes, this is the first game where there is a critical dodge roll.

 

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After seeing the Sacred 3 news here, I don't think I'll be following it anymore either.

This is really what people should be getting psyched about.

However, Divinity is looking to be amazing can't wait for it to come out in a few more days! :D

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Gotta agree with everyone else.....although I was pessimistic about S3 for quite awhile, I was holding on to the hope that it would still be something I could enjoy. After reading that review, that hope is gone completely.

 

Looks like I'll stick with Grim Dawn (I highly recommend this one) and have looked at Divinity quite a bit in the last day or so. It seems like something I would enjoy. Though it being turn-based gives me pause. Haven't played that style since Baldur's Gate (but I did enjoy that). Just seems to be geared more toward SP to me.

 

Really been looking for a real-time combat MP arpg...right now D3 is the only one of that type I'm playing, though I'm starting to get burnt out doing just bounties/rifts and not finding upgrades for weeks at a time.

 

I guess if there's a demo for Sacred 3 I'll play it, since it would be free. I've always played the demos for new games even if I never intended to buy them.

 

Still waiting for a proper Grim Dawn release. I have a feeling it will fill the hack and slash dungeon crawling void. Of course I still play Sacred 1 & 2 regularly, plus Titan Quest, Torchlight 1 & 2, so I'm not really dying for a new fix yet.

 

Divinity: Original Sin is supposed to take a lot of pride in its multiplayer features, in fact the developers have said a few times that is the preferred way to play it. I think this is not only because of the combat advantages, but because players can cooperate to handle the dialogues and quest solutions as well. And the options can change based on whether the two players agree or disagree about how to proceed. It seems really in-depth.

 

Baldur's Gate combat was actually real-time with active pause for issuing orders. The hidden mechanics were turn-based but the battles always played out in real time. If you wanted to, and had the reflexes, you could handle every battle without ever pausing the game. Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, Dragon Age, all the greats of that genre were the same way. I would actually prefer this kind of combat for a tactical game like D:OS. The key thing is that you have complete control over whether you need to spend a lot of time paused setting up strategical moves or whether you could just charge in in a blaze of glory. True turn-based combat on the other hand takes that freedom away from you. It has always felt clunky and absurd to me, and it's a struggle for me not to be embarrassed when a modern RPG like Divinity: Original Sin or Torment: Tides of Numenera decides to go that route. I'll buy both games to be sure, but they have a higher bar to pass because of that choice.

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Baldur's Gate combat was actually real-time with active pause for issuing orders... The key thing is that you have complete control over whether you need to spend a lot of time paused setting up strategical moves or whether you could just charge in in a blaze of glory. True turn-based combat on the other hand takes that freedom away from you.

Well, it's a matter of opinion, and Flix's opinion, while popular, is not the only one. I have to confess that for me it was always the opposite way around - I preferred turn-based games to active pause, because in the end I played them both in the same way. I spent most of my time paused and thinking up the best strategy, just for the interest of it, not because it was strictly necessary. If the strategy became completely unnecessary and battles could be won by simple charge, I started to lose interest in the game, because just crashing through everything without even bothering to think became boring soon enough. So the games with the active pause felt like emulation of turn-based ones on real-time engine that force you to control the length of turns. I spent most of combat time nervously holding the pause button lest I miss the right moment to press it. With real turn-base there is no wrong moment to pause, and no unnecessary stress. For some people less stress= less excitement, so it's a matter of opinion again, but I'd rather calmly observe the battlefield and enjoy its design than peer into characters' moves to choose a pausing moment.

 

In my opinion, for games that take pride in their strategy and were designed so that the strategy was necessary to use most of the time - just charging into battle without thinking would just get you killed - turn-based combat is a good choice of system. It's just my opinion and I know that I'm a minority here, but I wanted to remind you that minority exists.

 

There is enough action games around there, and some, like Sacred series start to prioritize action over thinking with next installments. The majority of players crave for real-time action and there are and would be games that deliver what they want. Personally, I see nothing "absurd" and "embarrassing" in the fact that some game developers remember about the minority of players who like different genres and still make games for them. Flix just listed a lot of good and quite recent games with "action combat" and "active-pause combat" that are available for people who like these subgenres, but I can't do the same for turn-based games. I'll always vote for variety in every means of entertainment so I'm mightily glad that the industry would have something to offer in subgenres that are currently lacking. Those won't be games for everybody, but you should not talk like they are for nobody at all just because they are not exactly your cup of tea. In fact, when I read the developers' decisions for D:OS and Torment, I wanted to applaud the devs, just because they had guts to stick to the game-design they thought would be best for their games despite knowing that it's unpopular.

 

Back to the topic - funny enough, but I feel that what I just said applies to Sacred 3 in a way. They changed the game mechanics drastically, it fell into "not my cup of tea" category for almost everybody here on Dark Matters, and generally among Sacred series fans. I've seen a lot of negative responses to the new mechanics both during development and now, and I'm yet to see a single fan who would defend it. But is Sacred 3 really that horrible? When I read and re-read the reviews I realized that the game isn't bad in what it does - it does different things from what we expected, but not badly. It won't be a game I play, won't even try the demo because I'm not interested in the subgenre. But I think the game would find its players, unless the unlikely title would make them expect something different and scare them away. After all, well-made dynamic actions were always popular, and lack of length and replay-ability is a norm rather than major shortcoming nowadays. So, surprising as it is, I think that S3 would get rather positive reviews in press, where people would judge it as "another new game", not as "a Sacred game". That's a paradox - the first two games were generally ill-received because of their bugs, but we loved them. The third game would maybe get better reception, but it won't be something we would like.

Edited by Silver_fox
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I'm ready to have my mind changed about turn-based combat in RPG's. In fact, I'm kind of desperately hoping to because I really want to play and enjoy Original Sin and Tides of Numenera.

 

I guess I wanted to enjoy Sacred 3 as well which is why I said I'd at least demo it.

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Light hit, heavy hit and defensive move? What is this, Sacred 3 or Mortal Kombat? :nono:

Is it actual Mortal Kombat 12, but they haven't told anyone? :o

No wonder the devs have kept quiet so long, they were keeping it a surprise for the MK fan base :P

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Light hit, heavy hit and defensive move? What is this, Sacred 3 or Mortal Kombat? :nono:

Is it actual Mortal Kombat 12, but they haven't told anyone? :o

No wonder the devs have kept quiet so long, they were keeping it a surprise for the MK fan base :P

Well, they do have Cyrax in the main cast.

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I just recently got Divinity: Original Sin and am enjoying that feeling of having absolutely no idea what will be useful and what won't...the process of discovery is always fun, as is the process of getting the best character I can after I know the game more.

It is sad to see what Sacred 3 ended up as. Unfortunately, it does not have my interest...but I am still glad to have the full version of Sacred 2 available along with the Community Patch which just increases the Awesome. However far off track I feel they have gotten with the new installment, the older games remain quite viable for me.

But yeah, Divinity looks like it is a proper game in the sense of the classics that came before it. I'm looking forward to getting completely lost in the game when I get a chance.

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While all these complainments are completely true the obvious fact is that using "Sacred" trademark helps very much to reach a lot of more people who would be definitely not interested in brand new game like that. Right now you can see some posts on Steam like "Sacred 2 was awesome, gonna buy Sacred 3 100%". So it depicts how big is the influence of that one word: Sacred whereas lack of it would consequent in less interest. More interest = more money. Understandable.

They have to know what they are doing and I don't believe that they didn't expect negative feedback from Sacred fans. Maybe they faced a choice like "Use Sacred trademark, make somehow another game, say goodbye to old fans and make Sacred a trilogy, end the franchise and earn some money or don't focus on that game". Maybe they had that game already planned and just added the Seraphim. Maybe not.

Of course I don't find that twist enjoyable but kind of understand it.

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