Sacred 2: Fallen Angel

Top-down action RPGs have been fairly regular on most consoles but arguably less so since the shift to 3D. Games like Too Human and Fable II have taken the genre in a new direction but there are still plenty of people who long for the days of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, Diablo and Champions of Norrath.

Enter Sacred 2. Released last year on PC, Sacred 2: Fallen Angel is the followup to the well-received (but PC-only) 2004 original. As you have no doubt already surmised, play is from the third person perspective, with the camera any distance from "fairly close" to "almost godlike" - depending on the player's preference (set on the right stick).

There are a total of six classes to choose from, including the Seraphim - the only class to return from the original title. Each (aside from the Seraphim) has the ability play two differrent campaigns - light or dark (the Seraphim can only play the light campaign). Customization of these characters is virtually nil, with only hairstyle being changeable and even then, only for some classes. The player can assign a name to their character but this only appears during the character select screen before gameplay commences.

Players are able to assign the various abilities etc that they earn when they level to the four main face buttons. You can then use R2 and L2 as "shift" buttons for a total of 12 instant-access spell / ability buttons. You can even create combinations of abilities and assign this combination to just one button if you so desire.

The game is inherantly online, intended primarily for play with a small party over the internet. So much so, in fact, that you can't actually pause it - even when playing by yourself in "offline" mode. The menus suggest that you can start a game by yourself in such a way that people can drop in and out whenever they want to however we were unable to test that out. Hopefully by the time a review copy appears there will be people online to test it with - it certainly seems likely to be the kind of thing we'd want to do with a group of friends.

Player control is pretty straight forward - it initially seems overwhelming how much functionality they've managed to wrap around the console controller archetype but once you get familiar with them, they're very smartly organised and give you a lot of control over what you're doing. At no point do you wish you had a mouse and actually controlling your character is more involving than clicking on things.

The quest system shouldn't surprise anyone, with the usual icons above NPC heads when they've got something for you to do or are awaiting your return with the heads of the rats they sent you out to get for them. The main map does a pretty good job of keeping track of these various tasks and the minimap will alert you to anything nearby that you've been tasked with interacting with. It lacks the polish of something like World of Warcraft or the excellent quest tracking system used in the (otherwise dire) Age of Conan but it does an adequate job of keeping you on task.

Leveling is triggered by the usual regular acquisition of XP, becoming increasingly difficult to progress as you go through the game. You get one point per level to spend on a stat of your choice, which seems underwhelming - especially when you see just how small a difference this point makes when you spend it. You also get access to some extra abilities of your choice (from a set list per class, obviously) which helps you expand your repertoire and hone in your play style as you progress. Naturally this means it is all a little underwhelming to begin with, but eventually you'll be able to develop a distinct character once you've spent enough time in the world.

Combat is accomplished by pressing the face buttons (in combination with R2 and L2 if you need to use those extra slots). Simply holding your basic attack will cause your character to attack enemies in turn (and you will typically be facing more than one at a time), with no need to release and repress when switching targets. Your character will even turn to face enemies when switching targets, keeping things very manageable in the heat of combat.

There are a few slightly awkward aspects to the title - to talk to someone you need to practically sit on their face - the old "L1 - Talk" context sensitive action doesn't appear until you're literally on top of someone and even then, only from certain angles. Similarly, the same button is used to open chests or examine items and again, you need to be right on top of them for it to work. Your character also absolutely refuses to vault small rocks or slide down small banks, resulting in long walks to get somewhere you wouldn't hesitate to go more directly in real life.

Graphically it's a mixed bag - quite nice for the most part, with cool swaying grass and trees that know how to disappear when they're blocking the camera. In parts however the lighting is a bit funky, the animation loops can be painfully obvious and bits of it lack polish. The framerate in this build is unable to hold stable but that's the kind of thing that tends to come together right at the end so we won't judge it on that just yet.

Once you get used to the quirks however there's a seriously promising action RPG on the offering here - we're very keen to see where those last bits of polish are spent prior to release, a decent action RPG of this type seems to be quite a rare drop these days and we're keen to see if this turns out to be epic or vendor trash. Stay tuned to NZGamer for the full review as soon as we can get our grubby mitts on it.

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