Other than providing a setting for the world, the plot isn't going to factor into your gameplay too much. Perhaps the only thing really holding back the game is that the menus are awkward to browse with a controller instead of a mouse, and while it doesn't ruin the game, it's the most noticeable shortcoming of the console port.Īt its heart, Sacred 2 is a pretty traditional Diablo clone. The bumpers control interaction with the environment. Items are bound to the d-pad and it works rather well, but the sticky and imprecise d-pad can sometimes register wrong direction pushes during frantic combat. Holding one of the trigger buttons will switch you over to the second or third set, and you can then activate the skills in the same fashion. To activate any of the skills in the first set, you press a corresponding face button on the Xbox 360 controller. Players have access to 12 skill slots, divided evenly among 3 sets. Sacred 2 does a pretty admirable job of giving players access to most of their abilities without overly limiting them, and while the control scheme is sometimes a little awkward, it works fairly well. Even modern game controllers have only a handful of buttons and can't come close to offering as many possible button combinations as a PC game. The hardest part of making a console Diablo clone is making sure the player doesn't feel limited by his skill selection. It's a minor complaint really, but considering how simplistic the character models are, it would've been nice to have slightly more variety in their appearance, instead of being stuck with a Seraphim with blonde pigtails or a Seraphim with blue pigtails. The female characters have two hairstyles, and you can alter their hair color, but that is about all you can do to differentiate your character from a friend's. Each class has a fixed gender, so you can't play a male Dryad or a female Temple Guardian, and you can't change the characters in any noticeable way. Weirdly, there isn't really much you can do to personalize a character beyond selecting a class and name.
Most of these classes can choose between Light and Darkness, but the Seraphim, as the embodiment of purity and light, is pretty much stuck on the Light path. Players are given a choice of six playable classes: Dryad, High Elf, Inquisitor, The Seraphim, Shadow Warrior or Temple Guardian. The plot is paper-thin and is mostly there as an excuse to justify why you're going around and punching things in the face, but even the most curious gamer will probably forget about it halfway through the game, aside from perhaps recognizing a few familiar names when a boss fight is imminent. As if that weren't difficult enough, T-Energy is very unstable and can destroy entire cities and mutate beings into terrible monsters. Meanwhile, various forces, both good and evil, swoop in to claim the T-Energy for their own. This has upset the balance of the land, and the High Elves are dealing with a mini civil war over who gets to rule the populace. A group of High Elves has gained access to a deus ex machina power source called T-Energy, which has made them an unstoppable force. Sacred 2 is sent in the fantasy land of Ancaria. This is why it's surprising that, for all of its flaws, Sacred 2: Fallen Angel manages to be a PC port that does a solid, if imperfect, job of porting a formerly PC-exclusive Diablo clone to a console. A few attempts were made to port Diablo and some of its ilk to systems like the PlayStation, but the console ports always felt inferior to the PC original even Diablo clones made specifically for consoles had a hard time capturing the same fun feeling. Unsurprisingly, these games spawned a staggering number of clones, both good and bad, but the gameplay didn't translate well to console titles.
Long before World of Warcraft was even a glimmer in a Blizzard programmer's eye, they had the Diablo franchise, a pair of ridiculously addictive hack-and-slash action-RPGs that drained countless hours from gamers. While Blizzard's World of Warcraft may be the current champ of time-draining addictive PC games, it was far from their first.