The game, like most RPGs, has a massive amount of loot to pick up. Each character can wear a number of items and jewellery to provide protection and stat/skill improvements. Most gamers will have plenty of enjoyment trying to get full sets of armour or improving their character by getting an uber piece of gear. Weapons and clothing appear on characters and so there are aesthetic reasons for changing gear. Do you want a flaming sword or maybe a light sabre type weapon? Weapons and armour can be improved at a blacksmith by adding improvements to a weapons various sockets, adding even further depth to the loot system.

I’ve praised the game for it’s customisation of characters, but sadly this only goes as far as skills and equipment. Whilst the difference between shoulder pads and a cape are fairly obvious the difference between characters of the same class are not. Customisation of characters is very basic. With some characters you can only change their hairstyle and hair colour with others you can change nothing. This seems like quite a significant oversight as most modern games of this type pride themselves on the depth of customisation. It would have been nice to have been able to simply choose the gender of my characters.

Sadly quests aren’t as enjoyable as they could be. They are a little bland and are exactly what you would expect, go kill 5 bandits, find the treasure, get the treasure map. On one of my characters I ignored side quests all together and just went around killing things for xp instead. It would have been nice to have seen some more involving quests or something on a more epic scale. This could really have pushed the game to the next level.

I’ve found the map to be quite frustrating. The world map doesn’t zoom in as far as I would like making navigation a little awkward also the mini map can’t be zoomed at all and it can be difficult to work out which way is north at times due to the tiny north pointer which is easily confused with the quest pointer. (other than by resetting the camera).

Another area which I dislike is the follower AI. Frankly it is terrible. Helpless characters that you are set to defend will run headlong into groups of enemies rather than stay their ground or following closely. You cannot give orders to followers either which seems like a huge oversight.

I have only spent a few hours trying out multi-player and that was largely the co-operative element. The game allows for drop in drop out play and you can take loot and experience away with you. The game doesn’t require that you stay close together and you can wander off. We suffered a small amount of lag, whether that is due to our connections or the games netcode I cannot say, but on the whole the experience worked quite well. For me this is a good example of a developer getting the multiplayer elements spot on. There are a variety of modes and the whole experience is made easier, I’m looking forward to trying out the PvP elements of the game when I have got a character fully kitted out.

I know that some of you gamers out there are interested in gamerpoints. Sacred 2 has an excellent balance of achievements and you should take a good amount of these of the first playthrough. To get all of the available points you’ll need to go through the game several times, which is no bad thing.

Sacred 2 was never going to be in the running for game of the year. It is a solid, enjoyable dungeon crawler RPG with enough depth to justify multiple playthroughs. If Baldur’s gate was your type of game then Sacred 2 is an essential purchase.