03-31-2004, 10:03 AM
I've been playing through the Sacred SP campaign with a wood-elf (aka a D1 archer-rogue, one of 6 Sacred classes), and am around lvl 25 in Act III at the moment. I haven't tried MP at all. I'd recommend "Sacred", but then I liked "Divine Divinity" so you may want to bear that in mind. "Dungeon Siege" was the game I hated...
I don't know that Sacred is more open-ended than D1 or D2. At least in single player, the plot is pretty linear and as far as I can tell there's one path to victory; so it's not like Daggerfall/Morrowind in that respect, or even KoTOR. But Sacred does have a much larger world than Diablo (at the expense of the map not being random). There are lots of side quests, though most of them do seem to be of the fairly routine "kill x and bring me y" category.
The combat system reminds me more of D1 than D2 (a good thing). For instance, you find runes that give you combat arts/spells, pretty much like spell books in D1, so you can eventually raise these to any lvl you want (the runes are class specific, but you can trade 4 runes of other classes for 1 rune of your choice for your own class). The trade off is that there is a time delay on recharging combat arts/spells (separate for each category), and the higher the level, the longer the recharge time. This limits the optimal level of combat arts or other attacks that you want to use in quick succession. There are also "combos", or sequences of combat arts/spells, which you can make at combo masters, though to be honest I haven't found them too useful so far.
You also have a somewhat limited number of skills you can select, and you distribute skill points gained when you lvl up among the selected skills. I guess the choice of skills is ultimately more of a distinguishing factor between different characters of the same class, though I expect that there is a limited choice of optimal selections for each character class. Attribute points go up on a percentage basis of your orininal stats, with a small number of optional ones that you can distribute. Overall it seems like a well-thought out and interesting system. For instance, wood-elfs get combat arts like multi-hit (multiple arrows fired vs one or more opponents), hard-hit (extra da), and spells like plant cage (functions pretty much like stone-curse in D1), and spirit of the woods (summon unicorn minion).
There are preset portals that you can activate once you reach them, but no equivalent of a town-portal spell. This means a fair amount of cross-country travel, some of which gets a bit tedious. You can buy horses to speed this up, and it's often possible just to run by enemies.
There is no death penalty in SP, but death can be a real nusiance: you're resurected at some previous quest point (with equipment, gold, xp intact), but it can be a long way away from where you died. My current ressurection point also has a fair chance of being full of Frost Giants. The game was very easy in the first act, but the monsters do get tougher and slower to kill (and there are 4 difficulty levels) -- so far I've died 7 times. The log book has a nice statistical record of resurection, no of monsters killed, etc.
Overall, I don't think Sacred will have the longevity of either Diablo, but it's still very well worth giving it a try.
I don't know that Sacred is more open-ended than D1 or D2. At least in single player, the plot is pretty linear and as far as I can tell there's one path to victory; so it's not like Daggerfall/Morrowind in that respect, or even KoTOR. But Sacred does have a much larger world than Diablo (at the expense of the map not being random). There are lots of side quests, though most of them do seem to be of the fairly routine "kill x and bring me y" category.
The combat system reminds me more of D1 than D2 (a good thing). For instance, you find runes that give you combat arts/spells, pretty much like spell books in D1, so you can eventually raise these to any lvl you want (the runes are class specific, but you can trade 4 runes of other classes for 1 rune of your choice for your own class). The trade off is that there is a time delay on recharging combat arts/spells (separate for each category), and the higher the level, the longer the recharge time. This limits the optimal level of combat arts or other attacks that you want to use in quick succession. There are also "combos", or sequences of combat arts/spells, which you can make at combo masters, though to be honest I haven't found them too useful so far.
You also have a somewhat limited number of skills you can select, and you distribute skill points gained when you lvl up among the selected skills. I guess the choice of skills is ultimately more of a distinguishing factor between different characters of the same class, though I expect that there is a limited choice of optimal selections for each character class. Attribute points go up on a percentage basis of your orininal stats, with a small number of optional ones that you can distribute. Overall it seems like a well-thought out and interesting system. For instance, wood-elfs get combat arts like multi-hit (multiple arrows fired vs one or more opponents), hard-hit (extra da), and spells like plant cage (functions pretty much like stone-curse in D1), and spirit of the woods (summon unicorn minion).
There are preset portals that you can activate once you reach them, but no equivalent of a town-portal spell. This means a fair amount of cross-country travel, some of which gets a bit tedious. You can buy horses to speed this up, and it's often possible just to run by enemies.
There is no death penalty in SP, but death can be a real nusiance: you're resurected at some previous quest point (with equipment, gold, xp intact), but it can be a long way away from where you died. My current ressurection point also has a fair chance of being full of Frost Giants. The game was very easy in the first act, but the monsters do get tougher and slower to kill (and there are 4 difficulty levels) -- so far I've died 7 times. The log book has a nice statistical record of resurection, no of monsters killed, etc.
Overall, I don't think Sacred will have the longevity of either Diablo, but it's still very well worth giving it a try.