With summer finally here, and the sun actually shining for once (uncharacteristic as that may be), the time has come for us to do what anyone who plays games likes to do in the summer - hide inside, away from the blistering heat, unfortunate sunburns, and hay fever, as we wait for it to all pass over. And what better way to pass the time than with a game of Sacred 3 - a dungeon crawling, hack and slash, light role playing game for some multiplayer fun?
What better way? Sadly, that's a bit of an awkward question when it comes to Sacred 3, as pretty much everything it does has already been bettered by the fairly-recently-released Diablo 3.
As a top-down, dungeon crawling game designed to be played with friends, it was always going to be tricky to not draw comparisons between Diablo and Sacred. The only problem is, in almost every single area, Sacred comes out as a runner-up.
Still, it looks pretty, right?
Even the very basic functionality of the game isn't as good. While getting a group of friends together, and cramming onto a sofa to go and bash some baddies, grab some loot and do a bit of adventuring is a lot of fun, Diablo 3 lets you get together with four of your friends, while Sacred can only cope with two. It's a strange decision when you consider the two games are in direct competition - and it's one made even stranger when you consider that you can play in four player co-op online (and even a mix of local and online, so two on one console, and two on another, somewhere else in the world), and that all four of those characters will be on screen at the same time. Getting Sacred 3 off on the wrong foot altogether, the lack of four player, same console fun leaves a hole in Sacred's armour - and it's one the game never really picks itself up from.
Still, what it may lack in functionality, it certainly makes up for in effort. While Diablo plays the serious role playing card, Sacred is, at times, flat out insane. You've got wise cracking AI companions shouting weird one liners as you make your way through the levels, and totally over the top bosses, who seem to spend more time taunting you than they do smiting. Unfortunately, while some of the lines may raise a smile the first time, when you're hearing it for the thirtieth time that level, it's gone beyond being old.
Like any role playing game, one of the first things you have to do here is create your character - but while there are four characters on offer, there's literally nothing in the way of character customisation. Each character class is of a set gender and colour, so you can't even play as a female archer, or a male lancer, yet alone decide what haircut you play with. Still, on the plus side, the character designs are equally over the top, with women who look like they've spent every day since they were born in the gym, and men who look like their entire torsos are going to burst.
Kill the enemies, move into the next room. Rinse, repeat.
Rather than giving you a fantasy world to explore, or quests to complete, Sacred 3 is instead divided up into missions, each of which takes place in a different area. Some of these levels are simple A to B affairs, where you'll be ferried through a fairly narrow passage, and ambushed by hordes of enemies, while others simply take place in a single room, and ask you to survive the waves upon waves of foes.
How you do this is equally simple. You have one basic attack at your disposal, and two special, limited use moves, on LB and RB. At least to begin with, these don't tend to actually be all that good, so for the most part, you'll find yourself beating up enemies in true button masher style - by hammering a single button until things stop moving. OK, that's a slight exaggeration - sometimes you'll come across enemies who perform a move that makes them invincible, or who'll lift their shield to you, and so won't take damage - but where there's a will, there's a way. All you have to do is perform a shield break - which looks oddly like your character thrusting - to send a blast towards your foe that'll stagger them, letting you bring the pain.
As you make your way through the levels and beat people up, you'll gain experience and level up - but the rate at which you do this is incredibly slow. For a game that relies on that sense of character progression, having it take you so long to gain even a single level seems counter intuitive. Luckily, levelling up is a fairly significant affair, bringing with it brand new special moves - and in a nice twist, the weapons you get are upgradable too - but it still doesn't do enough to make Sacred 3 all that exciting.
So, at the end of the day, Scared 3 is an OK hack and slash dungeon crawler, but one that doesn't really do enough to stand on its own two feet. With stiff console competition from Diablo, not to mention the slightly older Dungeon Siege, Sacred really needed to bring something special to the table - or at least provide an equal feature set to its competitors - but instead, the game tries to compete by doing less. And that was never going to end well.
Format Reviewed: Xbox 360
