Impressions on Sacred 3

[Shattered Rift 2]

Thanks for the review links/thoughts, guys. I'd heard about the Ascaron bankruptcy but hadn't kept up, then I heard Sacred 3 was in development, and suddenly it was released? The release cycle sounded so fast as to be concerning, and I'm disappointed to hear that the game isn't more of the Sacred 2 goodness I enjoyed.

[gogoblender 2,988]

Having a Seraphim in your game and having the old classes as spirits does not make this a Sacred game. All the things they excluded are why its not a Sacred game. I wasn't expecting much but this is beyond my imagination. I am glad I didn't buy this, all the talk of Sacred has done is make me rebuy Sacred 2 gold and replay it again.

I read you can finish Sacred 3 in 10 hours and do all the quests, you can't even get out of region one in Sacred 2 (if you do all the side quests anyway) in that time.

People on Steam say its dumbed down for consoles. No, this is a mobile game, consoles can handle Diablo 3, they can handle more than 2 attacks at once, they can handle inventories too, and open world maps. This is an Android game.

I may appear new here but I have played Sacred 2 before. I actually registered here again to see your opinions on this game. Its nice to see all the old faces are still here

Hi Colift!

Were you originally registered on Sacred Intenational Forum and here as Colif?

 

gogo

[gogoblender 2,988]

bingo, and done

accounts merged

Welcome back to DarkMatters Colif... good to see you on the boards again!

 

 

gogo

[colif 36]

bingo, and done

accounts merged

Welcome back to DarkMatters Colif... good to see you on the boards again!

 

 

gogo

As I said in email response, I was going to message you before I set up the clone but couldn't see anyway to do it.

[SevPOOTS 90]

 

So If you haven't got it I would probably suggest you don't bother as the only thing that is Sacred is in the name, and the Seraphim.

From what I've seen in "let's play" videos and first reviews, it does not have even that much. The title remains, but the Seraphim is not what she used to be. The previous installments didn't picture her as a generic spandex-wearing superheroine that would be more at home at Marvel or DC Universes than in Ancaria. Nor did they limit her to using simple boring sword swings for the entirety of the game.

 

Surprising as it is, I think that DarkMatters is a wrong place to ask for first impressions about S3. People here are all ARPG fans, and after hearing the first news about the upcoming S3, we all became skeptical at best, disheartened at worst. I don't think many people of this community considered a day one purchase or a pre-order - we all were waiting for gameplay videos and reviews.

 

I told it before that I personally won't buy this game because its genre switched to something I don't normally play, but I still tried not to voice major disappointment for as long as there were not enough information to judge the game by. Now, however, we have some info on our hands... There are three "let's play" videos here in another topic. I admit that I felt bored after watching even one of them to the end. Only 15 minutes, about 5 of which is an opening trailer, and I felt that I've seen all the game has to offer during the other 10. 3 types of monsters, 4 types of attacks, the same boring trap and shield disabling actions. Repeat. Judging by reviews, it does not get better with levelling up or campaign progress, because the only thing you gain with levels is that you start to overpower the enemies and difficulty goes down, making repetitive action boringly simple.

 

And the humor... the first two games did not take themselves too seriously, but they did not shove an awkward attempt at humor in your face during every dialog, at the rate of one joke every half-a-minute of gameplay. Maybe the humor of the first two games was not always smart and well-thought, but it wasn't that trite and vulgar, and the fact that it appeared mostly in characters' idle states, side quests, and other secondary things made discovering the jokes and Easter Eggs into pleasant experience. But S3... I'm starting to understand why some of the previewers mentioned the necessity of beer and friends - I'm not sure that this game's style and humor would be to the liking of a sober person who just wants to spend an evening with his computer.

 

One more thing that has to be said as a warning: this game was originally meant to be played in multiplayer team, or at least with AI companions. Later the devs removed AI followers, but did nothing to redesign certain levels of the game that are just not fun solo. Quoting one of the reviews:

>Often, you have to stay rooted in one place while performing mundane busywork, like spinning a wheel or charging up a magic shrine while mobs of monsters attack at you. That's not fun either for the solo player or the co-op participant who ends up on wheel-spinning duty.

Just imaging plying this alone with nobody to watch your back...

 

For those who still doubt, I thought I'll leave "No Commentary" gameplay videos here, just to let the game speak for itself.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhyHpTN8TMg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8QvHDit2sU

 

"Huh, I thought that was my stomach grumbling"

-I could have tolerated that but the voice acting......

[SX255 630]

Huh, I thought that was my stomach grumbling"

 

-I could have tolerated that but the voice acting......

 

I found the English version had OK to Good voice acting. You can't really blame the actor who works with a script that is forced, lacking or just plain terrible.

[colif 36]

The voice over thing was bad enough in Diablo 3, who thought it was a good idea to have in sacred 3? Perhaps its added to obscure the boring combat.. lets annoy people so much with voice overs they won't notice the game is boring.

I watched the end to this game yesterday, last stage is 3 mini bosses followed by the big guy. Whole game is stages with very few save points, so it gets to the stage you die right at end of level and have toi replay it all, all the stupid voice overs, all the silly mini cut scenes. Its an exercise in frustration.

I feel all the positive reviews on steam and Metacritic are from either people new to franchise or people who work for Keen games. Its a pointless exercise as they overwhelmed by negative reviews.

I feel sorry for Keen in a way as they were given a series that was clearly above their ability, or maybe they just didn't get enough time/resources to even attempt it. As for Deep Silver, they have no one to blame but themselves.

[SevPOOTS 90]

I'v read that Sacred 3 has no loot? So there's no Set items?

 

Boring. Sacred UW was a lot better. Especially reading the tombs all around ancaria. are there tombs here in Sacred 3? none? Ok.

[SX255 630]

Every indoor area looks like a sewer level

[grimwold 28]

Every indoor area looks like a sewer level

 

 

Well they need some where to put all that crap.lol

Edited August 6, 2014 by grimwold

[PurpleSpace 10]

Thanks for the review links/thoughts, guys. I'd heard about the Ascaron bankruptcy but hadn't kept up, then I heard Sacred 3 was in development, and suddenly it was released? The release cycle sounded so fast as to be concerning, and I'm disappointed to hear that the game isn't more of the Sacred 2 goodness I enjoyed.

Sadly, it wasn't suddenly released as it was actually announced way back in 2010 They've actually had a fairly decent or at least average time to work on it, though some games can have an even longer development time.

[OmegaDL50 11]

Having a Seraphim in your game and having the old classes as spirits does not make this a Sacred game. All the things they excluded are why its not a Sacred game. I wasn't expecting much but this is beyond my imagination. I am glad I didn't buy this, all the talk of Sacred has done is make me rebuy Sacred 2 gold and replay it again.

I read you can finish Sacred 3 in 10 hours and do all the quests, you can't even get out of region one in Sacred 2 (if you do all the side quests anyway) in that time.

People on Steam say its dumbed down for consoles. No, this is a mobile game, consoles can handle Diablo 3, they can handle more than 2 attacks at once, they can handle inventories too, and open world maps. This is an Android game.

I may appear new here but I have played Sacred 2 before. I actually registered here again to see your opinions on this game. Its nice to see all the old faces are still here

 

Yeah the statement of some Steam members claiming Sacred 3 was made the way it was because it of consoles is baffling to me. I wonder how many of those people don't even realize that even Sacred 2 had a console release and was somewhat faithful to the PC port minus Ice and Blood.

 

This was just the publisher simply not giving a damn and taking an project unrelated to Sacred and trying to shoehorn it into one and failing in a colossal way.

 

Matt Lees, Jim Sterling, and Totalbiscuit had a go at it on the podcast:

 

The press has pretty much spoken. Sacred 3 is pretty much a steaming pile, and the worst part the community here at DarkMatters and others who have accounts on the official Sacred forums warned Deep Silver of this two years ago.

 

When you ignore the criticism and refuse to listen to your main fanbase of the series and decide to do what you want regardless of concenquences, then you pretty much deserve to fail, and this is exactly what happened.

Edited August 9, 2014 by OmegaDL50

[Knuckles 904]

I've watched Angry Joe and Total Biscuit playing and read some of the reviews on Steam. I was even on the DS forum for S3 early on but there was such a dearth of info that I soon stopped posting and shortly after stopped even reading the forum.

 

I could almost give a pass to Keen seeing as they never made a game of this type before and were never associated with Sacred . But Deep Silver knew better. They were a part of Sacred 2 and had to have at least some understanding of what the franchise was about. To change the game so deeply and fundamentally is a crime.

 

To me this is a straight up cash grab. They knew having Sacred in the name would boost sales and never cared whether or not fans would be upset. They obviously didn't care about alienating the core group of fans. Now the Sacred community may not be as huge as Diablo or Call of Duty, but we were definitely some of the most loyal fans out there. They had to know this would be the death of the series. At least it is to me.

 

They took a game I have rabidly enjoyed for a decade and twisted and changed it into something I don't recognize. Even worse, the game isn't even that good for players that never played or heard of Sacred before. So basically they turned off all genres. From the loyal fans, to hack n slash fans to casual fans. I have not read anything to suggest that anyone would even consider buying Sacred 4 if they ever even thought making it.

 

Part of me wants to yell and scream and throw a tantrum worthy of any 5 year old. How could they do this to a series so many of us cared for? Every good thing must end at some point but to see it end this way is just sooo, I don't know, depressing? sad? bitter?

 

I think I would feel worse or angrier if this was really the end. But for me Unbended will be my Sacred 3. Looks like we won't really see much til end of 2015. But at least I have something to look forward to. Knowing that many of the Ascaron guys are working on this really removes the sting of the debacle Sacred has become. I have already talked more with the devs in Unbended in the last month than I had with Deep Silver in the last few years.

[Ryanrocker 200]

I have already talked more with the devs in Unbended in the last month than I had with Deep Silver in the last few years.

Beautiful post Knuckles, one of the most honest fan thoughts I've read. Have to definitely agree with this point, I'm always in contact with Frank, and just recently was put in a conversation with Franz and Norbert. It's so refreshing to be able to reach out and talk to the people making the game, especially after the whole "closed door" policy Keen/DS threw at us.

[Knuckles 904]

Thanks

 

Some companies 'get it' and some don't. Unbended gets it. Having an interested and involved fan base creates such a flood of goodwill and interest that I don't understand why more companies don't do it. To make the fan base an integral part of development makes us feel valued and respected, that our thoughts, ideas and dreams have validity. The fans want a good game...and if we can be some small part of it...well that is just awesome

 

That we have our own crypt so early in development is unbelievable...but it definitely makes me a believer in Unbended

[Dragon Brother 619]

Im not sure there's a lot more that any of us can add than your last few posts knuckles, well said indeed!

[kriv 14]

So it is a reskinned Golden Axe?

Edited August 11, 2014 by kriv

[DreDBanGeR 32]

So it is a reskinned Golden Axe?

pretty much except that golden axe was awesome when it first came out..

[SX255 630]

 

So it is a reskinned Golden Axe?

pretty much except that golden axe was awesome when it first came out..

In 1989

[Timotheus 410]

Transgooglated from the Dutch tech website Tweakers.net:

 

Summarized

With Sacred 3 developer Keen Games deviates significantly from the formula. There is no open gameworld anymore, so there is much less to explore. It is especially unfortunate that so little is possible in the game. Characters have few skills, which also have limited alterations. However, the game looks pretty good and has a nice co-op game mode.

 

Pros
Looks good
Coop

Cons
Few options during fighting
Limited character upgrading
Unpleasant controls for the Windows version

 

Source: http://tweakers.net/reviews/3645/sacred-3-breekt-met-de-formule.html // Source in google translate

 

 

 

After seeing the gameplay vids, reading the reviews... No thanks

[colif 36]

Last few days I have played Sacred 2 again, and the open world, or complete lack there of in Sacred 3 is a killer to me. I had forgotten how much fun it is to just go randomly killing things, instead of questing. Or just doing mapping runs and having 20 odd red triangles flowing you around on the map.

 

This game is too restrictive, no grinding allowed, we hand hold you though out.. no ca runes, so you can't accidentally be too op for the game, that wouldn't be "fun" now would it? No shared stash (not that there is any equipement anyway) so you can't pre equip your characters for their trials ahead. And how do you compare 40 quests or so to 600? I know when I read about expandability in Unbended, their idea of dlc won't be pay to enter a few more quests.

[Defconqueso 5]

Hmm. I was thinking about picking this title up after getting Sacred 2. However, after reading many of the posts here, I think I'll just get the new Gauntlet instead if I want something like this.

[gogoblender 2,988]

Yah, a lot of the community really panned the game this time around, a real downer

Just your mention of Gauntlet sounds amusing though... remember looking at that game while back when it was released, and in live mp it was sick

 

 

gogo

[Csaszar 2]

S3 is an insult to all. A grave one...

[gogoblender 2,988]

S3 is an insult to all. A grave one...

 

Csaszar! Good seein ya!

Agreed on the critique, but we've been looking at Unbended lately, created by some of the Devs of Sacred 2, have you seen yet?

 

 

gogo