Genre: RPG
Developer: Ascaron Entertainment
Publisher: Encore

The isometric, high-resolution Nethack-clone subgenre is one that is most notably populated by Blizzard's Diablo and its cunning sequel. In fact, isometric and high-resolution are all you need to know about Sacred's visuals. The lush maps are beautifully hand-drawn, and the characters are reasonably detailed 3d models. On a nice system where smooth framerates can be provided, the game looks very pretty indeed, although it lacks the technological wow-factor that another inspiration for this game, Morrowind, has. Sort of throw-back, but supported by modern PC capabilities, Sacred is an eye-appealing game to be sure.

The music, clearly inspired by Diablo but not nearly as well composed as the haunting songs from that game, still can provide the occasional chilling moment. The voice acting is filled with humor: the player characters are sarcastically quick-tongued, and some of the enemies provide some comic relief to what is otherwise a violent, bloody, yet sometimes boring endeavor. The sound effects feature the "clangs and whacks" of battle that most gamers know so well in Tolkein-esque fantasy games. Mostly forgettable music and average sounds considered, Sacred is a "par the course" audio lesson.

Again, Blizzard's venerable Diablo was a huge inspiration here, as were the innumerable Nethack variants that litter the Open Source community. Like some of those variants, and perhaps even a bit like Morrowind, Sacred features a huge gameplay continent with a variety of regions in which to bash hundreds of monsters repeatedly until the player character levels up, only for the procedure to repeat again. There are some caves, dungeons, and zillions of quests to break up the monotony, although they are backed by a story so cliched that it's difficult to remember even as you play the game. Still though, 6 classes and a good balance of spells and abilities offers many character development possibilities.

Production quality Rogue-like games are not all too common, and to an RPG fan, Sacred is actually a particularily fun and addicting network title but, and it's a shame, the game is very buggy, and even the publisher has come to spoil the fun: Encore, who publishes this game in North America, censored the game for this region, failed to include a map in the packaging, and pressured the title into a premature release. As well, Ascaron is continuously trying to add features and fix bugs concurrently, and the game seems to be getting less and less playable with each patch as the code probably is getting increasingly spaghettied. If you must have Sacred, importing the UK version will at least get you packaging and the real game content, but the hideous bugs will still at least partially spoil your party.