Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Ron Burke

Last year we got a look at Blizzard’s inevitable cash cow Diablo III.  Knowing full well that the game was over a year off I needed my clicky-clicky-loot-whoring fix and quick.  Enter the Ascaron Entertainment / CDV collaboration Sacred 2: Fallen Angel.  As the follow-up to the Encore-published origin title from 2004, Sacred 2: Fallen Angel brings us back to the gargantuan open RPG world.  Sacred 2: Fallen Angel is not actually a sequel but a prequel, taking place 2,000 years before the first game.  With the vast success of the PC version, Ascaron and CDV went back to the well to try to bring the game to life on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. 

As I had mentioned, this title takes place 2,000 years before the first game.  The Ancarian High Elves have secured a powerful magical substance called T-Energy (perhaps a distant cousin to the Resident Evil T-Virus as this stuff is unstable too), which naturally the forces of Darkness would love to take from them.  The T-Energy acts as a source for all life and magic, so whichever side controls it would control the most powerful force in the world.  Naturally, since this is an RPG, you are the last best hope of stopping the other side, so you’ll have to kill every monster and explore every corner to gather the exorbitant amounts of gold to pay for increasingly expensive weapons and armor in your quest to take out the foozle at the…seriously, this isn’t a game you play for the storyline. 

One of the first things I noticed when playing Sacred 2: Fallen Angel on the PC is that, after a short while, I really stopped caring about the story.  Much like Titan Quest and the Diablo series, this game is all about progressively better equipment to take down progressively bigger groups of enemies.  Since this style of gameplay is best suited to the mouse and keyboard, how did the game fare in its transition to the console market?

On the PC there were two versions of Sacred 2: Fallen Angel, a standard edition and a collector’s edition that came with a high-resolution graphic disc.  This high-resolution pack was not for the faint of heart, requiring a massive amount of RAM and processing power to maintain a stable framerate.  The results were a mixed bag, with some textures and characters having incredible detail while others were fairly bland.  Unfortunately I don’t have anything better than this to say about the Xbox 360 version or PlayStation 3 version of the game.  Clearly the regular edition of Sacred 2 on the PC was used as a base for the graphics on the console versions.  The world is heavily populated with vegetation featuring some incredible detail.  It isn’t quite to the detail level of Oblivion, but you will see individual pine needles and blades of grass.  Similarly, rock walls and floors have pits and cracks in them, lending real character to the areas.  You’ll spend time in swamps, deserts, and even at the edge of volcanoes by the end of the game.  Surprisingly, it’s the characters themselves that often come out flat.  Until you start seeing some of the more fantastic equipment, your character textures are somewhat lifeless and bland. Similarly, water can also look pretty basic, as do other effects like fire and ice, making for uninspired spell effects.  It also makes for some hard-to-spot loot drops as the occasionally bland gear textures fall onto the occasionally bland ground textures.

The occasional flat texture isn’t the true demon here – the game has quite a bit of framerate issues and texture pop-in during outside scenes or more detailed cutscenes.  Most of the time it isn’t gameplay impacting, but it is impossible not to notice.  Installing the game to the drive had a bit of a positive effect in this area, but it is clear that Sacred 2 is pushing the limits of the graphical power of the platform.  There is a saving grace for Sacred 2 – the game has very few loading sequences, and when it does load it is very short. 

It isn’t that Sacred 2 is an ugly game; it’s just that it wasn’t a smooth experience.  Certain portions of the game stand out with incredible detail, but several of them stand out for the opposite reasons.  Having played the PC version for many hours, it’s hard to take the drop in quality.

I invited a friend who was interested in the game over to help me review the title.  Having selected the Seraphim class, we were treated to a touching cutscene between our character and our dying leader.  By the end of this touching scene we had to pause the game for a moment to catch our breath – no, the scene wasn’t that moving.  The voice acting in this game rivals that of the early Resident Evil games in its over-the-top presentation and ridiculous overacting.  By the time our leader expired on her raised dais, we were about to expire from laughter.  It doesn’t improve as the game goes on, so you’ll be glad that most of the storyline is told via text boxes.  The sound effects are fairly generic and get the job done, but the grunts and squeals of my character just cuts through like a hot knife of mediocrity.

One area that doesn’t deserve our sneers and laughter is the music.  Ascaron partnered up with German symphonic metal band Blind Guardian to contribute the soundtrack to the game, and the results are pretty fantastic.  From driving metal tracks to melodic ballads, the band sets the mood perfectly across the board.  For most games I feel the need to turn the music down – for Sacred 2 I felt the need to turn it up!

My clicky-clicky description of Diablo can apply to Sacred 2 as well, except that on the console version you lack a clicky device.  Mapped to the console controller, Sacred 2 attempts to mimic the flexibility of the mouse with mixed results.  The lion’s share of your time will be spent in combat, and in that area Ascaron has done a great job.  You’ll use the thumbsticks to move and spin the camera, as you might expect, but you’ll find yourself using the D-Pad more than anything.  Since your character, regardless of the 6 you can chose from, will have a great deal of direct damage or buffing skills at their disposal, mapping them to individual button presses becomes important.  Essentially, the runes act as your attacks and buffs, allowing you to socket them into equipment to cut the recharge time on associated spells.  Being able to quickly slip from fireball to shield is important if your character is wearing anything less than plate armor.  To that end, you’ll use the D-Pad and the two triggers to combine spells and combat arts, drink potions, and cut down enemies with ease.  It’s what happens afterwards that hurts.

The interface in Sacred 2 on the PC was confusing, and that is an understatement.  Utilizing the strangest methods for upgrading skills that I’ve seen in a game to date, Sacred 2 uses a rune system in addition to skills called Combat Arts.  You’ll also have skill points to spend on attributes, your choice of gods, as well as various min/maxing options.  The problem here is simply that it is laid out in a very confusing and counterintuitive layout.  On the PC version I managed every bit and bauble I picked up – on the console version I grew tired of fighting the controls rather quickly and found myself using the auto-grab to loot and the auto-equip to throw on equipment.  Being an RPG player at heart, I felt like my loot-whoring aspect as partially lost with the slimming of the console interface.

Now we get to the heart of Sacred 2: Fallen Angel.  So we’ve talked about the mixed results on the graphic port, and we’ve talked about the laughable voice work.  We’ve even talked about the razor thin storyline.  So what is it that kept me coming back to Sacred 2?  The capacity to grow very powerful over time and decimate my enemies in spectacular fashion, that’s what.  In Diablo you gained gear and power slowly, culminating in your character becoming an unstoppable juggernaut near the end.  In Sacred 2, you’ll ramp up very quickly, but so do your enemies.  In short, the ‘race’ for power feels a bit more prolonged, but the phase where the player feels like they are made of paper mache’ is certainly lessened.  As your enemies multiply quickly, you’ll appreciate some of the more spectacular area of effect strikes. 

One of the things that absolutely floored me about Sacred 2: Fallen Angel is the scope of it.  There is an incredible amount of quests here, giving you no less than 50 hours of gameplay.  Want to become even more powerful?  Take on what has to be quadruple that amount in side quests.  Most of the quests are fetch, escort, or FedEx, but if carving and collecting is your thing, there is plenty of that to go around as well.  There are a few quests that are a bit off the beaten path or feature some quirky humor, but most of the time you are just hitting things until they go splat.  Put it this way – after exploring for roughly 10 hours I had only explored roughly 15% of the game.  There is plenty to do here, I just imagine that the game would have been better if they had cut down on the overall size of the game and put that time into the quality of quests. 

There are 6 character classes to chose from, and they boil down to the usual suspects with a bit of a twist.  You have a Seraphim (read: angel) which gives you a slot to equip various wings that grant buffs and bonuses beyond your normal gear.  The Shadow Warrior is a warrior in the purest sense.  The High Elf wields magic with impunity, unleashing the elements on her enemies.  The Dryad is similar to the elf, but utilizes the power of nature and healing as their art.  The Inquisitor class are dark clerics, utilizing dark energy to manipulate the minds of their enemies.  The Temple Guardians are powerful biomechanical cyborgs that used to guard the T-Energy, but have become unleashed upon the world.   Since the game features a light and dark choice system, how these characters turn out (not all characters have both options) is entirely up to you.  Now, if only I could become invested in the characters themselves…

Overall, the gameplay of Sacred 2 scratches the click and loot itch.  The combat is fast and furious, and it doesn’t take too long before you feel very powerful.  The storyline may be lacking, or is simply hindered by the interface, but the combat is well executed.  More quality and less quantity would have made for a better experience however.

There is one area that the PC has always trumped the console market – multiplayer.  The PC version of Sacred 2 had a great cooperative campaign that has made its way to the console version.  The game features cooperative and competitive play via split-screen multiplayer or online for up to four players, and from my play testing it works perfectly.  Obviously there is a bit of loss in graphical fidelity in the split-screen method, which exacerbates the graphical issues already present, but the online mode functions perfectly.  While I’ve not completed the game with a friend quite yet, there is no doubt that the lure of doing so is compelling.

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel is a lengthy title, likely longer than nearly any other game seen on the platform to date.  While the game does grind a bit with some of the delivery quests, the fewer discovery quests are enjoyable.  This is a great example where the developer wanted to deliver the largest amount of content possible, but might have done better by delivering a bit less content and a bit more substance. 

I can’t imagine the difficulty of porting a game as large as Sacred 2: Fallen Angel.  I commend Ascaron Entertainment for bringing the title to the console platforms, and for the most part I’d call it a success.  While there are certainly missteps in regards to interface, graphic quality, and framerate, the most important combat aspects came together perfectly.  All in all, this is a decent port of the PC version, if only they hadn’t ported the blemishes as well.

Gaming Trend Score

71

1. Graphics: 60
2. Audio: 75
3. Controls: 65
4. Gameplay: 72
5. Value/Replay: 80
6. OVERALL:71