6.7

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel

Walk into your local disk pusher and you're guaranteed to find a wall jam packed with Action RPGs, all fighting for your attention, desperately trying to become the next big sensation. Most of them can easily be split down the middle with 'hack 'n' slash' and 'wonder and magic', but it's the ones that get that mix just right that become great games. With Sacred 2, Ascaron are giving it one more shot.

Sacred 2 was originally released in 2008 on a PC format, the game didn't really hit the mark as, put simply, it wasn't entertaining enough to keep you continually pursuing a mass of quests. Now converted to the Xbox 360 console format, it has ported over some of the great elements of the PC version, and created a whole bunch of new issues.

Set 2000 years before the original Sacred game, the story develops as the Seraphim hand over some control of their source of all magic and spawning in Ancaria, the force 'T-Power', to the High Elves. Soon though the High Elves use their new powers and begin to take of Ancaria. With internal battles within the High Elves, other races attempting to dethrone the High Elves and the attempts at controlling the land, the T-Energy goes out of control and creates a chaos and havoc through the land via mutant creatures, burning villages and baron wastelands. You must now decide if you wish to continue the anarchy, or attempt to set the life cycle right.

In characteristic RPG fashion, you must choose between the life and the death, the good and the bad, the ying and the yang. Taking the path of 'light' and righteousness, you must help fight the mutants, save the towns, and bring order back to Ancaria. Taking the evil 'Shadow' route, you generally have to do whatever you can to bring pain and suffering. The character sets are also based around the campaign you choose with you standard Elf and Warriors, as well as the darker Giant Spider and Hellhound being available.

The campaigns themselves are still as painful as they were on PC, horrific storylines stitched together to keep the game pushing forward make for a very dull experience. To compile on this the voice acting is awfully clichéd and instead of any form of real interaction, giant blocks of text are thrown onto the screen for you to 'enjoy' the story Karaoke style. The story bashing could continue but instead we will move to a positive.

The land is still enormous, 22 square miles of exploration is at your disposal, and with the main campaigns not a requirement, you can feel free to journey through this land by anyway you wish. This appears to be the games main element, a seeming infinite number of side quest and loot to be plundered will keep your character levelling up until the zombie werewolves come home. The levelling system is still fairly strong also, with some unique abilities available on the expansion tree, it does give a desire to continue plundering into all the needed exp or gold is acquired.

Unfortunately, when you have built your character to your liking and have a vast array of abilities and magic spells at your disposal, in the heat of battle, your likely not able to pull them off in time. Using the top Left & Right buttons to convert the standard four pad into your spells book is still a clumsy attempt at accessing more from the standard controller and is extremely frustrating.

Visually the game has had no improvements on the PC version, or even the original title for that matter, its still basic graphics and standard animating environments. This is nothing though compared to the bugs that seem to have left the building with this title. The frame rate is horrible and brings a polished console back to the stone age, the game is also prone to random freezing, seemingly when you are in a point of a well deserved save. The freezing issue is the likely reason that the online multiplayer element has a anytime drop-in/drop-out set, a feature which is quiet redeeming.

This could have been a saving grace for Sacred 2, it could have wiped away any history of a poor original release, but unfortunately the PC to console port appears to have been rushed a bit too much and a well under polished game has appeared. If you enjoy creating your own adventure through RPGs, then you will get a vast number of hours use from this title, all others, best stay away but maybe check it out as a rental.