Such a good game! One of the biggest maps I've ever come across, tons of quests, builds, itemization. Still good after so many years. A lot of games don't feel very good, once they're this old. This is an exception.
I love all the hacking and the looting. Go get it.

Sacred 2 is a worthy succesor to Sacred.

Things I liked about the game:
+ its sacred 2
+ nice graphics
+ a fair amount of viable builds / diversity
+ trashing tons of mobs for loot
+ large world, scaling mobs in endgame make it possible to grind your gear in any area
+ tough as nuts highest difficulty

Neutral noteworthy things:

- There is a multiplayer, I personally find it quite hard to have fun with this game in multiplayer. Iam not a fan of pvp and questing with friends is hard to coordinate and usually ends in chaos and frustration. Everyone has this one friend that needs 60 minutes to distribute 1 skill point on lvl 5, that friend that listens and reads every tiny bit of every quest. That one friend thats always randomly afk etc.

Things i didnt like:
- crashes and the endless search for a fix
- this asspull atempt of a story 1/10 they tried
- some builds / mechanic abuse

All the points the negative reviews list can be easily fixed by the user in the end except for the instability some users have. I personally do crash every 1 or 2 hours but on a bright side this does keep me from playing all day.

I dont know how people get the idea that an Action RPG/hack and slash needs to define itself with superb story or lore. I like both sacred for their somehow very satisfying way of slaughtering tons of mobs and gettin rad loot. The combat mechanics work flawless for close combat. Ranged combat has some slight issues with terrain sometimes. shots getting blocked by hills, props whatever and some mobs have such a huge movement in their attack animation that they evade shots. Those are little flaws that dont matter too much since sacred is so smooth and fluent in its combat that it doesnt matter if a few shots miss or you misscast your spell out of bounds by accident.

I dont say its impossible to put a good story into a hack and slay game, I am saying that a hack and slay game can be fun and entertaining even without any story.

Now a list of issues other user describe and my thoughts:
- game is too easy / outleveling quest areas: If you are seeking the challenge the game has to offer skip all guides and start your character in silver difficulty. Even if you do every sidequest there is its nearly impossible to outlevel silver before you have done every quest there is. If you happen to stumble upon really broken stuff like the BeeEffGee build just dont do it.

- buggy quests: yes, there are some quests that dont function well or at all but so what ? there are hundreds of quests and for the density of actual content its impressive how few quests are actually bugged. Also quests do give exciting rewards like set items. In fact with the Bargaining skill at 75 quests are well worth your time in higher difficulties IMO.

- boring story / lore: yep, lets be honest nobody plays this game for its quality story. If you are interested in a good told story go read a book or play some games that are actually made for that. If you dig deep and actually read the books that drop every now and then you see the effort of immersion or lore and sometimes its even slightly interesting to read. Just because Sacred isnt based on a 100 bands thick story like Warcraft it isnt automatically bad.

- it doesnt bring the same charm as Sacred (the first one): well nostalgia can be a real pain in the ♥♥♥. I personally like both games. They are similar and I feel like Sacred 2 is in fact the better game concept wise. You have more diversion in your class. And I feel its not so punishing as the first for going trololo and skilling whatever. I however feel the Sacred genes.

- hard to controll camera: yes the camera can be a nightmare but by fiddeling with the options you can live with it quite easily. Just disable follow camera and collision and you are good to go. Just use the rotation keys to keep the boss centric bossfights so that the boss is north of you and you wont have problems with movement or attacking.

- progress loss by crashes / corruption: I dont see the problem here. The game has the option to bind save game. Just put it somewhere comfy and hit it every now and then. Never lost more than maybe 10 minutes. I always save after finding an item id like to keep, saveing the game doesnt interrupt the game at all. Atleast for me with the game on a SSD might be different on HDDs. It never ever happened to me to corrupt a savefile. Even if you fear corruption its easy to create a backup every now and then.

TL:DR Sacred 2 is a good arpg with alot weighting on hack n slash. The story would be better off missing completely than this sorry attempt. Its still a good Sacred and its fun to build and play diverse characters. I can definitively recommend it to somewhat openminded Sacred fans. If you want it to be a Sacred clone with better graphics you are bound to be dissappointed.

WARNING: Some people have so many issues with this game they cant even get it to launch at all. All I needed to do was making it run as admin, with XP servicepack 3 and the parameters -skipopenal -nocpubinding.

good game.

Personal opinion: Get this game instead of Sacred 3 if you're looking for an Action RPG!

My first impression playing this game back in 2010 was pretty special. I started a Dryad (hey, they looked hot and I love Druids) and watched the fairly epic cinematic, after which I was placed on a beach with a kind of a mentor beside me. I guess the gods didn't smile upon him on that day though, because somehow I ended up having to tutor myself. First thing I noticed when gaining control was the graphics. One word. Wow. They are incredible, and the attention to detail is pretty much un-parallelled. Leaves being side swept, a little bird making his nest - hundreds of small things that leave you with a warm and fuzzy feeling inside. Even now in 2014, it still looks great.

I still have that Dryad - but I specced her so badly that she is broken beyond repair. I highly recommend using the Sacred 2 Wiki for help with builds. There is no respec option, and if you find yourself wanting to play it all the way to Niob, your spec pretty much needs to be perfect.

The sound is good as well, although the voice acting is bad. Not terribad but bad enough that you treasure the fact that only the main quests have voiced dialogue.

Moving on; most of the classes in the game are innovative and fresh. Whoever saw an ancient Egyptian-inspired Anubis-like robot thingie before as a class? Packing an alien blaster along with his hammer no less. Very fresh, very fun. You diversify a bit by choosing a god and one of two campaigns (good or evil), which adds a good deal of replayability. Rather annoyed by the fact that you can't select gender for the classes though. Some years ago I never touched any female class, for some reason. Thankfully I outgrew it, or I would have missed out on half of this game.

The story is fairly weak, but the focus doesn't really lie there either, as it gives you hundreds of side quests left and right. In fact there are so many, I find myself skipping half of them. Many of them are kind of like MMO quests in a sense. Very generic; a silly story behind it and mediocre rewards. But it works, somehow. In one early side quest though, you are pitted against the game's first boss. This was a pleasant surprise - as once you engage a boss monster, the camera centers on the boss and the game spits out some cool music. He took a serious pounding too, so it was a good moment.

The map is gigantic; as far as I know it has the biggest world in an action RPG, ever. I have still not explored everything after well over 100 hours of play (played it on a disc version most of the time), and there are several optional bosses where you can see how good (or bad) your build is. Bosses can be incredibly punishing, but they are also a lot of fun. Keep your thumb on the spacebar.

The difficulty level when playing Bronze is extremely easy the first 2-3 hours. I considered re-starting several times and selecting Silver instead. But it's gotten more challenging. This really depends on the class and spec you want to play. I have one character in Platinum; a Seraphim, and I still find the class a lot of fun. I have chosen to spec her both with Sword / Shield and Ranged (for BeeEffGee). This'll likely hurt me quite a bit if I reach Niob, but for now it works well. I like being able to change things up now and then.

Multiplayer is dead, unfortunately. Seems Ascaron went and got themselves bankrupt, and was forced to shut down their US servers. EU servers still worked when I started playing it back in 2010, but I believe they are shut down as well.

All in all though, great game. Sort of a diamond in the rough but if you can see past some bugs, crashes and general hiccups, you may find yourself in love with this game, like me. I've played it for about 120 hours; I am on my third version of the game now, and after experiencing just one in-game crash in 14 hours of playing, I can finally, after many years, recommend this game. On the previous versions it probably crashed between 2-300 times in 100 hours of playing.

Since I wrote the review the game has crashed 7 times in 28 hours of play. Still not too bad, considering I've had PhysX enabled all that time.

Sacred 2 is a Diablo-style action RPG set in a truly massive world. Its largest selling point is probably just that – this game is almost excessively huge. Sacred 2 features an incredible world packed with nearly 600 quests and a sprawling map that you’ll be unlikely to have seen even a quarter of in 20 hours. Every building is able to be entered (many with multiple floors), every NPC speaks, and most containers have loot stashed away in them. As typical of the genre, Sacred 2 offers multiple difficulties to unlock for even more replayability.

Looting is another huge draw – practically every enemy will drop loot, all with different stats and colorations. If one enemy doesn’t drop anything, you’ll soon have another 10 or more on screen anyway. Monsters, animals, and humanoids alike creep in every corner, waiting to swarm your character. To cope with this, you’re given a wide range of distinctly different player characters, each with an array of different armor, weaponry, special moves, and unique mounts (although all may buy horses as well).

Combat is fast, though oftentimes mindless, fun. No matter the character, you’re always open to many ways to play, from magic, to ranged, to multiple forms of melee (sword & shield, dual wielding, axes, clubs, etc.). Your mount, whether unique to your class or a horse, also opens up another combat style with its own unique stats and, for some, attacks. Enemies range from normal humans to mythical beasts such as harpies and werewolves, each with variations in stats, attacks, and appearances, guaranteeing you’ll have plenty of new monsters to slay your entire journey.

Sacred 2’s saving grace to the argument of it being “just another clone” is that it’s already fully aware of being a clone filled with various clichés. The game doesn’t take itself seriously; one moment you have men in bunny suits attacking you, another moment you’re fending off mutated sheep who’ve decided you should be food instead. Sacred 2 plays on its light-hearted silliness with quests such as those, jokes galore (cemeteries house plenty in particular), and fourth wall breaking moments – for instance, the Seraphim is fully aware she can’t proceed without the player and will make her grievances known quite vocally if you leave her standing alone for a short while. This both saves it from coming across as a simple clone and gives it plenty of character of its own.

It has its flaws, like all games. The biggest irritant might possibly be its camera, which attempts to be both isometric and standard 3rd person at the same time, often leading to it spiraling around awkwardly. Another point to make is not necessarily a flaw, but could be a massive turn off for some: the bright colors, voice acting, and purposeful ridiculousness of Sacred 2 could easily put off someone looking for a serious RPG, or possibly come across as poor quality before it becomes more apparent the game is using its clichés as a joke.

Overall, I’d happily recommend it to fans of Diablo style games, particularly those who love to explore, as you’ll have a lot to see, and hours and hours of combat-filled gameplay. Sacred 2 is truly an overlooked gem.

This is my favorite action role playing game! A huge map to explore with various landscapes and many hidden places. There are 7 different classes with different ways to skill. But the most addictive part for me is the hunt for massive loot... set armors, unique weapons and random roled rare items.
But its highly recommended to install the latest Community Patch. It brings more content and is fixing some of never solved bugs by the bankrupt vendor.
Negative points are tricky camera handling and the very instable source code. Its often crashes because of memory leak.
Multiplayer is only possible with LAN mode. If you want to play online use VPN tools like Tunngle.

If you like ARPG's like Diablo combined with a large open world so go for it!

8.5 of 10 points!

There is endless stuff to do, quests everywhere, loot everywhere, levels up and powers and BLIND GUARDIAN god I love this game.

That Said, WINDOWS 8 PLAYERS READ THIS.
If it won't run you may need to set compatibility settings.

So go to
\Steam\steamapps\common\Sacred 2 Gold\system
Then right click Sacred2.exe and click compatibility.
Select Windows XP Service Pack 3 compatibility settings
Check "Run this program as an administrator"
Apply then restart your computer. Easy Peasy.

I now own every Blind Guardian album.

Longevity. An incredibly huge map, which would take one hours to come close to uncovering, aswell as being a free roaming game(Thus, you won't be confined to a specific route).
An excellent variation & customisation in armour and weapons.
More than 200 levels for each character to grind, along with skills and attributes that make each and every character Unique.
The difficulty level can be raised to such a standard, if one dies, it means you DIE and will not be able to play the character any more.
Very unofrgiving, Which makes surviving so incredibly sweet.

Overall, 9/10.

There's only one thing I don't like about this, Not being able to see more. A limited viewing range. Somewhat of a half arsed camera. Though, That's just me.

Anyone else should give this a 10/10.

Does anybody have the phone number to the guy that programmed the camera?

I want to call him out personally.

[Edit:] Damnit, this game is actually fantastic. The camera is still terrible though.