What do you get when you take Diablo 2, make the plot even more undecipherable and convoluted, and make random loot even more important?  You get Sacred 2, a great game to play if you don’t care about anything other than mindlessly killing monsters because they happen to be in a circle on your map.

Really, it’s not a horrible game unless you actually want to have a reason to do the things that you’re doing.  As I said, think Diablo, only without the fun factor that somehow manages to come out in Blizzard games (frankly, I think they sold their soul to the devil, but who knows?).  The game is viewed mostly top down and you move your little dude around and press buttons that coincide with different abilities.  The graphics are pretty good, to be honest, but the viewpoint sort of detracts from some of that.  You can zoom in, and the camera almost kind of goes behind the character like a traditional third person game, but it never really gets there, so it’s more like a tease than anything else.

The story, what there is, is insanely hard to follow, especially with the bazillion side quests that pop up as you go.  The quest log is pretty much useless, and really all you have to do is bring up the map and go to where the circles are (which indicate quest objectives).  You don’t need to know why, or what you’re supposed to do there, just go.  When you get there, you’ll either start killing things and getting quest credit for it, or you’ll see a dude with a exclamation point over his head.  Even if you try to follow what you’re doing and why, the simple fact is there is just too much going on at any given time to keep track of it all.

That being said, the character system is fairly deep, and there is a ton of loot to get, so if you can just lobotomize yourself and mindlessly kill dudes for hours on end just to try and number crunch your way to success, this game could be right up your alley.  There is definitely a feeling of accomplishment when some imp drops a badass piece of armor for your character, and it really makes you understand how gambling gets addictive.  Considering that stuff drops for all the classes regardless of what you or your buddies are playing as, getting something awesome for yourself is a fairly rare occurrence.

The problem that I have with this random loot system is that even your powers are part of the loot table, so you might be level twenty, you could still not have some powers, or you might have one power that’s level ten, and another one that you might want to use more often that is only level one.  You can trade in tokens for powers at a rune master guy and get the powers that you want, but it can be expensive and it still relies on getting runes in the first place.

Another draw of the game is that the world is just massive.  While playing through the main questline would probably take a good thirty hours or so, exploring the rest of the world would probably take days of game time, and that’s not including doing the insane amount of side quests.  On top of all that, there are two multiplayer modes that are completely separate from the main story mode (which can also be played co-op, so that’s kind of a third multiplayer mode I guess). 

One is free-mode, where you just seem to run around and explore, killing shit as you go.  I don’t really see what the point of this is, but maybe I missed something.  I can see it being something to do when you’ve already beaten the game, sort of like a multiplayer sandbox game of GTA4, where there are no set goals, but people still have fun doing it.

The other mode is a PVP mode, which I must be honest and say that I didn’t really participate in that.  I’m not one for PVP, but looking at the some of the loot that dropped, I imagine that getting into PVP would be a whole separate ordeal, as there are stats on some gear that only affect other players.

So, yeah, it’s a huge game, but for me, it was a huge, long game of mind-numbing grind hell.  What little plot there was is totally lost in the depth of the other game systems, so basically the game just felt like I was killing guys for no reason other than to get better stuff.  Then, I would use that stuff to kill harder guys so that I could get better stuff.  The only reason I was doing this was to get to a mystical little circle or dot on my map.  Frankly, I hated it, but that’s just me.  Being an objective and bi-partisan reviewer type idiot, I have to take into consideration that the people I played with online were absolutely thrilled with the game, so it’s really just a matter of what you like to do.

I can tell you that I spent a half hour just talking to someone about what stats they were looking to get on their Seraphim, so obviously there is just something there that that guy enjoys.  So… long story short, if your fondest memories of games like Diablo or WoW are getting awesome loot after hours of killing guys for no reason, than Sacred 2 will fill that niche for you nicely.  If, however, you are waiting for the next great story-driven RPG, than Sacred 2 will leave much to be desired.

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