It seems like back in the day, you couldn’t swing a +1 Quarterstaff without hitting a dungeon-crawler on the original Xbox. While the 360 has pretty good collection of the genre, few of those titles can offer the staggering amount of content that Sacred 2 does. The only question, then, is if it’s the kind of content you want to play.

Gameplay:

Sacred 2 doesn’t deviate too far from the tried-and-true dungeon-crawler formula. You play from a top-down perspective, you kill lots of bad guys (standard fare here: rats, skeletons, werewolves, spiders, so on and so forth), and you collect lots of treasure in the form of gold, armor, weapons, and accessories. Rather than having a standard “attack button,” you map weapons and abilities to the controller’s face buttons. Let’s say I have a sword and a longbow. Instead of equipping one and attacking with only that weapon, I can map one to the A button and one to the X button, and attack with either, switching on the fly. By using A, B, X, Y, and the left and right triggers to switch to two additional palettes of mapped weapons/abilities, you can use 12 different items or skills seamlessly. It’s a very handy concept, and works very well when coupled with the use of the D-Pad for health potions and a special “Divine Gift.”

There are tons of weapons and armor for you to choose from. On top of the standard armor set (helmet, cuirass, greaves, etc.), some characters, like the Seraphim, can equip special pieces of armor for extra effects or defense. There are spears, swords, knives, bows, magic guns, staves, and even shuriken and throwing knives…and you can even fight from a mount! Many weapons and armor pieces also have special properties on them, and as you level up your proficiency with each weapon and your armor, more of these properties become useable and enhance your overall combat effectiveness. You can even customize items in towns by using Smiths or Rune specialists, giving an already deep system a little something extra.

Another unique aspect of Sacred 2 is its lack of Mana (or MP, TP, EP, Energy, or whatever you want to call it) to limit your special ability use. Every character has 15 abilities or spells, divided into 3 schools with 5 abilities in each school. Instead of these abilities using Mana, each ability has a set recharge time. While the recharge time varies with each ability, the time of all abilities will increase as you equip heavier armor. It’s sort of a new take on the traditional “mages wear cloth, fighters wear metal” shtick. If you play as the very Mage-y High Elf, you don’t have to wear lighter armor, but if you want to spam your fireballs, you’ll probably want to.

There is a great deal of customization in Sacred 2’s leveling system. You can focus on tons of different character aspects. Weapon specializations, armor specializations, ability schools, character traits…pretty much everything can be improved over the course of the game, and how you improve what is totally up to you. With the relatively broad selection of characters, you have several different starting points, as well. Characters seem to range fairly well from the “pure fighter” to the “pure mage” classes, with several in-betweens of various attribute mixes and strengths. Each character has very unique abilities, as well, so if you play as the Inquisitor, it will be a much different experience than a game playing as the Dryad.

While Sacred 2 plays like a traditional dungeon-crawler, the actual adventuring doesn’t take place in dusty old dungeons. Most of your adventuring will actually take place on the huge world map. Traveling from location to location is hazardous, as most of the roads are occupied by bandits, undead, and other ne’er-do-wells who are perfectly comfortable (and perhaps even enthusiastic) with dropping you where you stand. Various caves and other locations are available to visit, but the majority of your questing will still take place on the seamlessly navigated world map. That’s right – there are no load screens. The only time you will ever load is when you transition to a cave or when you enter a town. Even entering towns only takes a moment of in-game loading before you can move forward. A feat that is fairly impressive considering Sacred 2’s detail.

Graphics:

Sacred 2’s graphics have faults. Some of the character textures are a higher quality than others and cloth doesn’t move naturally. More traditional looking armor pieces also seem to have been given less attention-to-detail than the wackier pieces. The NPCs are also somewhat uninspiring as far as their quality, especially compared to the main characters. All of that said, the game’s overall detail level is tremendous. All of the time spent outdoors does an excellent job of showing off the game’s visual strengths, which are tons of swaying grass and trees, lighting effects, and shadows for all of the above. The world is still very vibrant without being overly colorful or cartoony, and the environments are quite beautiful and varied as you travel from place to place. While Sacred 2 may be visually outclassed by a few of its peers, it has more going on that any other same-genre game on the market. The only other complaints I can levy against the graphics are that traveling at night can be somewhat bothersome if your brightness is lower than average, and if you are playing on a standard definition TV smaller than 26”, you’re likely to have a great deal of difficulty reading the text. And, whether you want to label it as a gameplay issue or a graphical issue, it would’ve been nice if the camera could have zoomed out a bit more or have adjustable angles. The camera works great, so this isn’t really a complaint, but I would’ve liked to see more angle options along with a further zoom.

Sound:

The biggest shortcoming Sacred 2 has is probably the audio, though it isn’t exactly bad, per se. The music is serviceable and features a few nice battle tunes; there’s just nothing that will wow you or send you rushing for the soundtrack. What really struck me as odd were a few of the character’s voices. The actors did fine in their roles for the most part, and my complaint is less with their performances and more with the people who chose them. For instance, the first character on the character creation screen is the Seraphim, and as soon as she opens her mouth her voice actress seems wrong. Again, I want to emphasize that this isn’t because the actress is bad. She just sounds like an energetic cheerleader instead of a world-saving, angelic hero. Though most of the characters fit their roles quite well, I feel like there should have been more attention paid to the casting.

Longevity:

If you want a game with a lot to do, stop reading this and go buy Sacred 2. There are hundreds (literally, yes, hundreds and HUNDREDS) of side quests you can complete in addition to the main quest of each of the characters. You can even travel down the light path (good) for the main quest, or the dark path (evil). The world is absolutely massive for this style of game, and you can spend hours and hours just trying to maximize your character. The achievements are all time-consuming in that they challenge you to win the game at least twice, and also challenge you to reach a certain level with each character. You can even play online co-op with three other players, play same-screen co-op with a friend, or run around the world freely with Player-Versus-Player rules turned on for an extra challenge. There’s even a chance that future DLC could extend the life of the game, as a flying suitcase (of sorts…) can be purchased from the Marketplace to hold extra items for you. All of this can be overwhelming for those who do nothing but play action games or First Person Shooters, but for dungeon-crawler fans and completionists, this is a great find. Before you buy, however, you should be warned that there are a fair number of bugs still present in the game. My most frequent was being glued in place and unable to move when I used a handgun, but I could get rid of this glitch by opening the menu and quickly close it again (which is easier to do than it sounds, since the menu is opened in real time with the Right Bumper and closed by releasing it). Occasionally, you can expect to be forced to walk around an object your hero should be able to walk over, as well, but more the most part, the technical problems present didn’t seem to get in the way of gameplay. At most, they may irritate you if they persist, but they don’t outright break the game at all.

Finally, I have to mention the outright absurdity in one area of the game: its women. For example, the Seraphim class I mentioned starts the game wearing a shirt, panties, the back half of a skirt, and high heels. It’s just stupid. I know that sex sells, but when a piece of armor with a higher defense rating turns out to be a g-string, there is something seriously wrong with the person who designed the armor. And honestly, if a Seraphim is a holy messenger of the gods and is supposed to be the very epitome of goodness, righteousness, and virtue, should she really be running around bare-legged in a thong, anyway? Can’t we at least give an outfit like that to the naturalist Dryad?

Overall:

Absurdity aside, Sacred 2 is a great buy for anyone looking for a big, long, dungeon-crawling RPG with lots to do and lots of co-op options. It’ll keep you busy for a long time, and chances are you’ll enjoy the ride…especially if you have a few friends riding shotgun with you.