By Tom Cross

Playing Sacred 2: Fallen Angel is both a pleasure and a pain. It's pleasurable because the game is fun, big, and addictive, and painful because it has its own share of flaws, some worse than others. Much like the original Sacred or Titan Quest, Sacred 2 is a game that operates partially in Diablo II's shadow, and partly in the shadow of all of the action RPG's since Blizzard's classic.

Unlike so many of those games, Sacred also creates a unique, interesting experience. Set in a medieval science fiction setting, robots and robber elves rub shoulders in this world. Your avatar can range from a heavenly guardian to an evil mage, and even to a robotic Egyptian dog. You'll use magic, swords and high-tech gadgets to defeat your enemies, and even ride various exotic mounts. Sacred II is nothing if not varied, and it does its best to mix up the done-to-death fantasy setting that it uses as its inspiration.

Sacred II establishes itself quickly as a game that means business: it doesn't mess around with too much exposition, and it starts you on your path to better items and skills quickly. This is good, because Sacred II is refreshingly light on story. I say refreshing because the point of this game is never to transport or entertain with dialogue or narrative. It's entirely bent on providing you with a multitude of interesting and cool options. It succeeds on most fronts, luckily.

Sacred II succeeds not only because it brims with detail and content, but also because these assets are presented with constant care. The mixture of sci-fi and fantasy means that interesting and spectacular combinations can be made out of the different characters' abilities. Auras, damaging attacks and buffs all flash across and around your character, making for dazzling battles.

Things have the potential to get even more frantic, as Sacred II is obviously tailor-made for amazing online co-op dungeon running. As expected, playing the game as part of a group is great. It allows for combos and simultaneous attacks on enemies, using powers that provide various kinds of damage and buff synergies. As of right now, the multiplayer is still finding its land legs, and is pretty unstable. Hopefully CDV will take care of this because it's a game mode players should all try.

Another of Sacred II's assets is its open level design. Unlike many action RPGs, it is neither randomly generated nor frustratingly linear. Instead, at the start of your journey you are faced with a vast map. You can travel to almost all locations on this map from the beginning of your travels.

Page 2 »