Sacred 2

I may have to see if I can rent it somewhere and try it out. I have the PC version AND a High Elf pyro, so I'll be able to see if you are just talking smack. ;)

I expect your mumbled apologies any day now. :D

Sounds like you guys did a good job with the engine however, so looking forward to seeing how it compares on the X360.

Thanks. Well, I don't expect Grandmaster to actually measure it, it's not that big a title. But it is pretty funny that reviewers can't decide which version is smoother or prettier. They are just really close. Sometimes the 360 wins out on a frame, sometimes the PS3 does. But they should always generate the same pixels.

Quick question though. Are you able to zoom out farther than the PC version? On the PC I have to edit customOptions.txt in order to have it zoom out far enough for a ranged character to be truly useful (1500 zoomout versus the default of 800?).

I have honestly no idea. I've not yet seen the master version. You may want to look of anyone has screenshots of a local coop game. That's zoomed out all the way. But I doubt it's further out.
 
Very interested in this game, although I've never played the first one.

Is there much of a story?

I haven't seen anything about it posted?
I wish there was a demo.
 
I beat the first game but don't particularly remember much of the story. I just remember that the English localization was rather poor. :) However, it was a fun game with interesting characters (I played the Vampire). Also notable were horseback riding and the presence of a large continuous overworld map. There was also an expansion (Underworld) that added a new map and the Succubus, as well as a patch (Sacred Plus).

The second game appears to have a new fully 3D renderer and of course, a console port. I'll try to pick this up tomorrow.


One thing I'm curious about is the gore factor. The European version of the first game was fantastically violent, but the North American release was toned down considerably. I imagine the releases of this game are more harmonized -- I do notice it has an M-rating.
 
I got the PS3 version yesterday and I'm actually pretty impressed with the game. I think it looks absolutely gorgeous (the screen tears pretty much constantly, but the 1080p visuals are worth it imo. The game is just packed with tiny little details, and at 1080p they really pop out of the screen) and the world's size is downright intimidating. I really dig how deep the character costumization is. If you always wanted a Diablo-esque experience on your console you really can't go wrongh with S2.

I also really like the German voice overs. Lots and lots of in-jokes about German politics there, particularly ones about Bavaria. (much love for Bruno the bear. Not so much for Stoiber)
 
I have this on preorder and it should arrive Friday. I know what to expect, but I'm dreading the visuals. I hate choppy framerates and horrible screen tear. Hated Lego Indiana Jones for it. Hated God of War for it. I do hope it's bearable in Sacred 2!
 
I have this on preorder and it should arrive Friday. I know what to expect, but I'm dreading the visuals. I hate choppy framerates and horrible screen tear. Hated Lego Indiana Jones for it. Hated God of War for it. I do hope it's bearable in Sacred 2!

Can't you force it to 1280x720 to smooth out framerate/tearing?
 
It renders at 1080p no matter what. 720p adds supersampling, but won't reduce rendering overhead that's causing screen issues. I've heard other users say at night it's fine, but when the daytime shadows hit it can look ghastly. I hope their idea of ghastly is being overdramatic!

Actually this'd be a good test of the two platforms and Grandmasters measuring powers ;)

Also MetaCritic has a score of 7.5, with some (unrealistically!) positive reviews. I think these sorts of games are made fo rthe fans only, and to everyone else they seem mediocre at best.
 
I'm hoping it's good since I picked it up today but have not yet installed (PC). Atleast it was really cheap and new! :D

Say how many discs is it for the 360. asking since it is 2 DVDs for default install and 12Gb on HDD and if the 3rd disc is installed (I dont have it since it is exclusive to CE) it is +8GB... :oops:

Seems like a huge game.
 
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There's a new vid at the official site. Downloaded and...oh dear! It's pretty bad. Not as bad as Neverwinter Nights on PC years ago, which was on the very limit of my tolerance. But Sacred 2 does manage to mix up tearing with stutters, which is surprising. The whole point of tearing is to overcome stutters! I'll live, but it'll take a while to adjust.

At least it'll look good when standing still in 1080p :D
 
A review

When I was young, I would ride to school on a delapidated bus. My only amusements on this journey were doing my homework from the night before, partaking in the foodfight upstairs, or watching the many diverse bugs in the window. Watching bugs, especially finding ones you hadn't seen before, was quite the sport, and perhaps it is this same aspect to Sacred 2 which offers the most appeal for the game. It has so many bugs, finding new ones can be quite exciting!

So, I'm playing Scared 2 with two friends on PS3. Lag is poor, as bad as Guild Wars on a bad day with characters blipping around. Kinda hard to race a mate to the next quest point when on your screen you're ahead of him, but on his he's ahead of you! Online craps out after about an hour, with players running different instances of the game :
"I'm fighting these kobolds," Richard says.
"What kobolds?" I reply, seeing a empty field and Richard's Egyptian Dog Jaffa swing around merrily like a crazy person. We've all done it. We've all fought invisible foes, nothing more than the figment of our PS3's imagination. We've also moon walked on the spot and seen our character attack willy-nilly regardless of what we want them to do.

We've also lost character progress. Sometimes you can save the game, which only really saves you character if you're a lackie instead of the game host. But sometimes it refuses to let you save. You ask to save, it makes a rude noise, and that's that. If you leave the game which should autosave, it takes you to a loading screen for the rest of your life. Or until you reset the PS3. We did play one evening 3 hours in a row without any problems. We don't know the cause or why it worked once but not the other times. On the plus side voice chat in clear and reasonable robust, excpet sometimes when nearing the one-hour 'game's about to die, who can't we hear now, quick save and exit and turn off the PS3s and start again to get another hour's play' mark.

The online campaign is also a typically rubbish hacked-on feature. Developers fail to understand what friends want in an online campaign. Instead of us all being part of one big mission, the host has a mission and quests, and the rest just tag along. Our character's own stories aren't progressed (if we play solo with the same chars, they start right back at the beginning. Hooray, we get to do all the same quests again!); we don't keep the same mission log, so I have no idea where the next quest is; and we can't change host. It's in essence one individual game with online tag-alongs. That's par for the course, but it still sucks, and I wish developers would universally twig what an online coop campaign is and how it should work.

Levelling and skills selection requires frequent referencing of the online wiki. There is insufficient explanation of what the skill improvements actually do ('A chance to cause a deep wound'...What sort of chance?! 1% or 70%?!) and most importantly, no opportunity to change your mind. Even putting in a skill point, it's immediate, with no cancel option. My Dog-Man companion has a skill he'll never use because of this clumsy interface. So you really want to know you're not wasting those skills points, especially when some of the skills are just broken. eg. Blacksmithing does absolutely nothing on the consoles. The Riding skill has virtually no value, but you wouldn't know that without having played the game for some tends of hours and tried a mount.

The game looks okay when you're standing still. There's nothing clever in the lighting or shading departments, but the textures and designs are very detailed and it's 1080p. Just don't start moving! Framerate is ghastly, stuttering and with frame tears everywhere. It reminds me of playing Never Winter Nights on PC, although that at least had high framerates with v-sync off. Sacred 2 is very painful for a console game. Start running past mobs on a horse and it slows to a Disney animated feature, 12 fps. If you're lucky. Spell effects are very tame. If you've ever played CON, you'll know what spell effects and particles can be like. Sacred 2's are the opposite. The water looks very nice though, with the waves very convincing.

A nice feature is mapping actions to whatever face buttons you want. An attack is achieved by equipping the weapon to a face button, and then presing the button. I have a ranged-attack bow on X and a melee sword on Square. Using these weapons however can be a lesson in irritation. You can't target enemies of your choosing, other than vaguely pointing in their direction. You just hold the attack button to keep attacking whoever the AI thinks you are wanting to hit. I point at a Baddy in the distance and hold the X to shoot arrows. It decides to target the wolf slightly nearer. I hold the X and keep shooting until the wolf is up close and biting my ankles. He's now joined by about 50 kobolds. I think to myself, being quite a seasoned fantasy action game player, "If I were surrounded by angry kobolds, I'd be better off with a sword and shield than a bow" and so I stop pressing the X button and press the Square button. But my character has other ideas, and instead carries on shooting. Yep, they don't change weapons when you want them to. I have to stop attacking for a while before I can switch correctly. And by a while, I mean long enough for the kobolds to make serious design alterations to my armour. Even stopping for a second and pressing square again can continue with the bow.

Still, Sacred 2 passes the time. It's a fantasy action game with coop of this ilk, and so gets the sale and the play time. Calling it 'mediocre' is being a bit kind. The world is huge (too big IMO, actually) and very detailed. The gameplay elements are mediocre. The production values and polish are poor. The bugs are too many, disgraceful really, especially when we read in another thread than the QA process of the consoles is supposed to be pretty rigorous. The PS3 version also hasn't received any patches yet. Sacred 2 is a PC game poorly show-horned onto the consoles. Don't expect anything like a Snowblind game. It's entertaining enough to play, unlike Untold Legends : Dark Kingdom, but if you aren't a fan of this type of game, you'll find no value in it.
 
Thanks for this! It seems to be worse than I even expected. Hopefully they do bring out a patch (I think they will)
 
The game requires strong hardware on the PC side to but yeah they should have limited it to 720p as 1080p just is to much for consoles. As a reference my 4890 does 35-60fps at 1680x1050, 4xAA TSAA, vsync and full settings and elite texture pack. Honestly I actually expected it to run much faster with higher AA. Though it looks marvelous with good lighting.

Though it seems to have 2 different lighting modes, regular and altLighting. I prefer the alternative as it makes the mapping really visible and crisp across the whole screen.

Oh well it is kinda entertaining game.
 
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Oh well it is kinda entertaining game.
That's the remarble thing. On paper, this game is pants. Yet it remains entertaining, despite innumerable flaws. :???: I can understand Metacritic readers rating it 8.6/10 - stinky old lukewarm ditch-water is the tastiest, most refreshing drink ever if it's an oasis in the middle of a desert! But it really doesn't deserve it, even though I've spent hours playing the thing :oops:
 
This reminds me of the original Sacred. A few years ago my sister and I were playing some coop RPGs. At first we started from Diablo 2. After we finished the hardest mode (with the expansion) we turned to Dungeon Siege and then Dungeon Siege 2. Then we got nothing to play so we even tried the original Diablo. After that, we found Sacred, which looks quite good with advanced graphics and interesting world. Then, bugs hit hard, very hard. We can't even finish the game, because it stuck when doing some quests just too frequently.

I always wanted to try Sacred 2, but the nightmare is just too strong and I still can't overcome it XD
 
I've had a chance to play it for a few hours now, and I can report that it is definitely fun, though unpolished. I'm currently playing a High Elf, though I miss the Vampire the most -- hopefully we'll get to see that in an expansion! I like the vast world map, just like the first game. The visuals are very sharp at 1080p and the frame rate only drops occasionally, usually when I am using an AoE like Raging Nimbus.

Like the original, the VA is hokey, but not too annoying. I'm not sure, but it almost seems as though lines like "I require more protection from physical damage" were recycled from the first game. I wish I could kill the guy who sings the Sacred song in town. :)

I like the leaderboards and achievements. I haven't tried online play yet, but I will check it out soon.

Overall, a fun game, especially if you're looking for an action RPG on consoles.
 
Knowing Asacron the bugs will never be completely fixed though most of the debilitating one's will be gone after they are done with all their patches. Not sure of they plan to patch console side though.
 
The visuals are very sharp at 1080p and the frame rate only drops occasionally, usually when I am using an AoE like Raging Nimbus.
Only occasionally?! I'd like to see grandmaster's analysis tools determine the truth of that! :devilish:
 
Ouch, ok I'm glad I haven't had the time to rent this on console to compare to the PC. I think I'll stick with the PC where the bugs are less and it's at least patched intermittently.

As well being able to run in a 2500x1400 window at about 30-60 fps on a 4890. Even with the max zoom pulled out to 1500 (rather than the default of 750?) which taxes the system even more.

Sacred 2 on console sounds almost like Sacred 2 at launch on PC. Almost too many bugs to make the game enjoyable.

Regards,
SB
 
Ouch, ok I'm glad I haven't had the time to rent this on console to compare to the PC. I think I'll stick with the PC where the bugs are less and it's at least patched intermittently.

As well being able to run in a 2500x1400 window at about 30-60 fps on a 4890. Even with the max zoom pulled out to 1500 (rather than the default of 750?) which taxes the system even more.

Regards,
SB

Yes the zoom is to close by default and TSAA is a real perfomance killer. Massive boost just using 4xAA. :eek:

Btw what could be the chances for native 720p option for Sacred 2 users on consoles through a patch?
 
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