Sacred 2 Remaster is such a hot mess of a hot mess of a game. To be very clear: I love it so, so much.
Sacred 2: Fallen Angel was released back in 2008. Remember those days? We all had PlayStation 3s and Xbox 360s. Physical retail for games was still a thing, and subscription services weren’t ruining everything. The world wasn’t melting down in a way that must be making the accelerationists giddy in joy. It was a simple time, in other words. An almost pleasant time. And Sacred 2 was certainly a simple and uncomplicated game to go with the times.
It was a Diablo-like clone, with an isometric perspective, and button-mashy/mouse-clicky combat that required you to keep mashing the “potion” button as much as the “fight” button, just to keep your character alive through almost every combat encounter. Almost every single quest you’d get – and there were a LOT of them – were a variation of “go kill X number of enemies, or collect Z item and bring it back to me”, and you’d have to kill a LOT of enemies to slowly level up and, as you did, you’d start being able to tackle tougher quests and delving deeper into the world.
Sacred 2 was an absolutely mammoth game and a ridiculous grind, and there was something so perfectly cathartic about it. Load it up, bash some skulls, get some new shiny loot, and your day’s stresses would just melt away. It was the kind of game that you could play between more substantial fare, and due to its truly incredible size and scope (and for the record, it still feels massive by today’s standards, so imagine what people thought 16 years ago), it was something that you could enjoy for months. Because the narrative was purely functional and the quests were just about following the trail of breadcrumbs on the map, it was also a game that you could drop out of and come back to several weeks later.
None of this is a slight on it. I loved Sacred 2 specifically for all these reasons. It was a pure grind that, thanks to the pleasant aesthetics and quality calibration of rewards and the rate at which you’d fight new enemies, made it almost compulsively moreish. There was also enough of a sense of humour in the characters that you’d run into along the way that it felt like a Dungeons & Dragons campaign in the hands of a DM that just really, really liked combat. And without the gothic nightmare trappings of a Diablo, it was an action RPG for when you were in the mood for something a little less intense.
I loved Sacred 2 so much that a few years ago, I tried to buy the game on Steam (my PS3 being long retired now), only to fail to get it to work at all. Which is why I was so excited when I heard there was a remaster on the way.
As it turns out, that remaster preserves all the original’s warts. This means bugs. So many bugs. Characters (including quest giver) randomly disappear only to re-appear on a reload. Characters floating above the ground or getting stuck on scenery. Ranged combat that seems to randomly stop working at times. Flying enemies that are randomly impossible to actually hit, even with magic or ranged weapons (but, again, suddenly mortal again with a reload). Quest icons that sometimes disappear and then re-appear, and so on. The remaster does run at a much steadier frame rate than the original game did, and doesn’t crash like the original was prone to, and most of the bugs that are there are amusing rather than annoying, but just be prepared that this game isn’t exactly a masterpiece in precision.
As a remaster, what the developers have done is sharpen the art up a bit – characters are very, very blocky and minimally textured, but they’re clear on the screen. One thing that they did do, however, is let you pull the camera much closer in, to a behind-the-back perspective. As far as I can remember, Sacred 2 on the PlayStation 3 never had that option, instead forcing you to play the game from that isometric perspective and, if you did try and zoom in, losing the ability to see far enough away from your character to spot enemies or points of interest. Or at least I think that was the case. I like to play my games from that behind-the-back perspective when I can, and I do vaguely remember wishing Sacred 2 was better at that as I played it.
This enhanced camera perspective in the remaster certainly solves any issues with the zoomed-in view, allowing you to see around you, but it does have a downside in that trees, buildings, and walls constantly get in the way. But you’ve always got the option to pull the camera back in those circumstances. I did like being able to get a much more direct view of the world around my character.
The ”features list” of the remaster also mentions that the combat and UI have been improved and refined. I honestly don’t remember the nuances of the original clearly enough to identify those improvements, but I was totally happy with how this remaster plays, while it also taps into my nostalgia for that original. The lack of multiplayer is a bit surprising, given how much fun this particular genre tends to be with friends, but I played the original Sacred 2 solo, and I’m not even subscribed to PlayStation Plus right now anyway.
I’m going to hazard a guess and say that the potential audience for Sacred 2 Remaster is very small. It’s a very simple, grindy, button-masher action RPG with a totally irrelevant plot. If you’re going to play and enjoy this, it’s because you get hooked on that simple, basic gameplay loop. And if you do… well, welcome to dozens upon dozens of hours of it. If you’ve never played Sacred 2 before, but enjoy Diablo-likes or Eurojank like Risen, Gothic or ELEX, then there’s every chance you’ll find this one amusing (and in the right way).
