Sacred Plus is a combination of the game Sacred and an expansion pack. Since it’s all designed as one package in this re-released version and I’d never played the original game, I’m simply going to review it as a single product.
A very nice product it is, too. In essence Sacred Plus is a traditional RPG (Role Playing Game) in the “hack‘n’slash” tradition - that is, with the combat section being the major part of the game. It has no pretensions about adding anything particularly new to the genre; it’s aimed squarely at RPG fans and gives you an absolutely huge game world to explore.
There is a storyline involving the normal sort of thing (someone decides to summon a demon, demon eats summoner, demon poses great threat to the very existence of humanity etc), which really isn’t very important. There are hundreds of quests to accept or reject, and the game world is absolutely massive - I had uncovered 6% of the map after just over 10 hours of playing time. You play a single character (chosen from an initial selection of six character types - Gladiator, Seraphim, Wood Elf, Vampress, Battle Mage, Dark Elf) and if you choose to play the tutorial will start off in a slightly different position with differing initial quest at the start of the game. For instance, the gladiator must first win his next match, then win his freedom from the unscrupulous trainer. After that the game is the same, although each character class of course has their own special abilities.
There are three modes of maps; an overlay map accessed by holding the tab key down (not all that useful really but can help in located nearby merchants, people and quests) and a map of the whole game world (above-ground). Clicking on any area will reveal it in more detail - much more useful than the overlay map when trying to find a route to somewhere - but only in the areas you’ve already visited. The main map shows places of interest and quest locations, which is dead useful, and the overlay map has arrows pointing to the location of the main quest and sub-quests. This is all very useful but since the area you can explore is so vast, you do still end up spending a lot of time wandering around trying to find things.
The graphics are very nicely designed; all the location and character graphics are very clean, meaning there’s very little confusion even when there’s a full-scale battle involving many characters on-screen at once. There’s a good variety of location graphics too, helping it to avoid looking too generic. The animation is, with one or two unimportant exceptions, rather good. When you enter a building the roof disappears so you can look round inside, which is a rather cool way of doing things. The music and sampled speech / sound effects are on the whole very good, though the music is only used sparsely.
Though you only play a single character you can have associates who are to a limited extent under your control, usually staying with you until a particular objective has been achieved or mission completed. Inventory management and equipment is quite detailed and gives you a lot of options for setting your character up as you want, while levelling up gives you a fair bit of scope to create a character very skilled in particular things or with a number of different skills. You can equip weapons to affiliated characters too; when they leave you, the equipment is dropped on the floor in front of you so you can equip it or sell it as you wish.
Combat involves several things, including different special moves and combos of these moves, which have to be learned from special trainers. Some equipment can be upgraded and there’s always a fairly good range of stuff to buy from local merchants (don’t forget to always keep well stocked up on healing potions!). You can also buy a horse, which is a pretty cool feature. Don’t forget the mount/dismount/call horse button by your main character portrait, otherwise it’s very easy to lose your horse and not be able to find it again! (I of course never lost my horse and wandered around for hours trying to find it before realising this button was there…
[ahem]…)
The game’s strengths lie mainly in its well-designed and easy to use interface (I have yet to look at the on-disc manual for help - which helps to explain the horse-losing problem!), the huge map, vast number of quests, good aesthetics, occasional very challenging monsters (the dragons tend to be generally tough), and extra longevity in the form of the multiplayer mode (which I daren’t try as it would just be too time-consuming). There is occasional unexpected use of humour in the game - I won’t say any more because the first time I was hit by this use of humour I literally burst out laughing aloud, and I don’t want to prevent you from having that same feeling because you’ve been forewarned about where the humour springs up!
On the other hand the game certainly does have its weaknesses; the storyline is weak and there is a distinct lack of puzzles. I and many others much prefer RPGs to require the use of intelligence and skill in addition to battling an levelling-up. You can spend a long time just getting from one place to another, and though you can speed things up on horseback, this restricts somewhat your ability to use special combat techniques. Worst of all, your horse can die, which is a very sad event! (Trust me, you will start to feel very attached to your four-legged friends in this game!) Although it is a little on the easy side, because the game is so huge that isn't really a problem.
At the end of the day
Scred Plus is a game that will appeal to RPG fans, but
only RPG fans. It doesn’t try to do anything radically new, but it integrates one or two original ideas into the time-tested framework and it all works very nicely. I picked this game up for just £2 ($4), and with the amount of time it will take to complete it, value for money is assured. Even if you went through as quickly as possible (ignoring side-quests) it would take you quite a while to complete; however if like me you tend to take on every single quest offered to you, it will take a
very long time.
I had no problems running this game on Windows Vista. On installation the WMF 9.0 codecs refuse to install, but don’t worry - Vista has WMF 10.0 pre-installed and the videos worked fine on full detail settings. Otherwise the system specs are as below:
Required specs first, recommended in parentheses afterwards:
CPU: PIII 800MHz (PIV 1/4GHz+)
RAM: 256Mb (512Mb+)
HDD space: 2Gb (2.5Gb) - the game comes on 2 CD-ROMs
CD/DVD drive: 4x (8x)
Graphics card: 16Mb (64Mb)
DirectX: 8.0 (9.0)
Sound card: DirectX compatible (DirectX 9.0 compatible)
DirectX 9/0b is supplied on disc; run on system with DirectX 9.0c
OS: Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP (and, unofficially, Vista)
Internet / network access needed for multiplayer
There is a note on the specs saying that some non-standard Notebook / Laptop chipsets may be incompatible.
PEGI rating: 12+ for violence (there is an additional gore level which can thankfully be turned off - quite possibly wouldn‘t have continued playing it if not!!)
Produced by ASCARON Entertainment in association with Spellcraft Studio, re-released by GSP under the Reload White Label budget range.
It is the second German game in a row that I’ve bought (didn’t realise that until afterwards) - the other was the excellent RTS (Real-Time Strategy) game
Paraworld.
Other RPG Games
Not as big but with more original gameplay and a wicked sense of humour, I think you’ll like
Bard‘s Tale
See also:
Might and Magic VI: For Blood and Honour - a good game but unfortunately too buggy on modern PCs.
Might and Magic VII: The Day of the Destroyer - a massive game that is a little repetitive but still very enjoyable for RPG fans.
Might and Magic IX - an impressive attempt but, unless it’s been patched recently to solve its many problems, sadly this one also is far too buggy.
