I Am One of the Seraphim
It may not be perfect, but Sacred 2: Fallen Angel fulfills most of your random item hunting needs.
Published: May 28, 2009
In order to keep track of all those creatures descending upon you, a colorful ring with encircle your current target, letting you know how powerful it is in relation to you, with white being worthless, green being easy, yellow even and red well above. Pressing L3 will bring up even more information, such as what damage type the enemy attacks with and is strong against. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to swap targets. If the game decided you should shoot at that kobold behind a rock instead of the one currently beating your kidneys with a stick, so be it. It should also be noted that at no point did I encounter an enemy I couldn’t deal with as long as I was using the appropriate damage type, which I’ll come back to much later.
If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice that I’ve used the phrase “combat arts” quite a bit. It’s tempting to call them skills, but that would make things even more confusing. Skills are an entirely different beast, though they are linked to combat arts. You see, when you level up, you get a number of points to distribute across various things. You’ll get points to dump into various standard RPG attributes and also a number of different skills. At set levels you’ll be given the opportunity to learn skills, which allow you to increase your ranged damage, improve the recharge time of your fire spells, reduce armor penalties and on and on. You’re allowed up to 12 skills in total, which makes selecting which ones to take very important. You might want to take Riding in order to make your horse faster, but it may require five points in Bargaining just to access. Is it worth taking a skill you really don’t want in order to reach one you do?
Further still, each of your combat arts categories are linked to numerous skills. Learning and leveling up those skills gives you points to improve individual combat arts. If you want to increase the power of your fireball or make your attack speed buff more potent, you’ll need to invest heavily in the corresponding skills. And don’t forget that there are blacksmiths all over who can insert any ring, amulet or rune you come across into your weapons and armor in order to further increase your skill and combat art bonuses. You could spend hours just staring at menus deciding which gem to socket or which skill to take next.
But that level of customization works against the game because, in the end, it doesn’t seem necessary. Some odd design choices and an overall lack of difficulty keep all the positive points from really shining. For starters, the game’s presentation is severely lacking. The first screen you’ll encounter after booting up (and, unfortunately, installing) is a drab forest background with a simple “Press Start” message flashing in the middle. Pressing start brings you to a character creation screen, which is nothing short of confusing. Each character will verbally narrate some silly background story while you wonder why there are no true class descriptions. Sure, it’s great to know that the Seraphim is a warrior of the light, but does she prefer melee or ranged combat? You’re not told up front what any of the characters specialize in. It’s not all that difficult to figure out, but it’s still annoying. You’ll find yourself muting the TV while trying to decide which class to play. The voice acting is gratingly bad.
