Sacred 3 is the newest instalment of the Sacred franchise published by Deep Silver who now own the Sacred IP and developed by Keen Games, a change from the last two in the series which were developed by Ascaron Entertainment, which unfortunately dissolved back in 2009. Sacred 3 steps away from its RPG predecessors and becomes more of an arcade style Hack ‘n’ Slash. Take this as a pre-warning; do not go into the game expecting anything like Sacred 2 as Sacred 3 falls very far away from the mark set by its predecessors.
Before I even stepped foot into a game, I managed to accidentally close the game a few times from pressing ESC/B on my controller to try and skip the usual logo screen and then once I was in the game and had begun creating a new character, my game completely crashed! I also seem to have some issues with the game shutting off my second screen, but thankfully that is just mildly annoying and not game breaking, though I figured I would get that annoyance out there.
Unlike previous games, you have a choice of 4 characters or 5 (if you had pre-ordered or purchased the single character for £2.49), that are already pre-made so there is no character customisation here. Character growth and improvement consists of a handful of skills, an upgradable armour set and various weapons and weapon spirits that you will find. All upgrades are level locked and cost gold that you find throughout the campaign by killing monsters or contained in chests. No upgrades are found in chests, which only provide health and energy along with gold; weapons and weapon spirits are found throughout the levels.
It seems that the weapon spirits are linked to the amount of kills that you get as there seems to be no other common factor tied to the times that I found them. Weapons are obtained by defeating some bosses, though yet again it’s not entirely obvious which end bosses will reward a weapon and which ones won’t. No gear or upgrades being available in chests or as rewards make the game very unfulfilling.
Weapon spirits are a nice addition to the game to add some semblance of customisation to your character. Each weapon spirit adds a unique ability – and some personality – to your weapons. The weapon spirits you equip will largely depend on your playstyle; I only ever used the Battlemage who adds a chain of lightning to your attacks. Each of the weapon spirits have their own personality and will talk to the player during the level and respond to some of the situations, though their soundboard is fairly limited and can get extremely tedious should you use the same spirit for a long period of time. Personality-wise the weapon spirits are very love-hate, though I personally couldn’t stand them for too long as the humour seemed to try too hard to be entertaining. Though the dialogue throughout the game is completely not my thing at all, I am not entirely sure where they were going with it, but there are some moments that made me cringe quite badly.
Combat in the game is very repetitive and quite unsubstantial. Most of the time, it’s pretty much just a single button mash with the occasional dodge or interruption thrown in the middle. Using the mouse and keyboard is very awkward and feels like the game was designed solely for console play with the optional keyboard and mouse tacked in at the very last minute. Movement is W/A/S/D, so you’re only able to move in 8 directions, whereas the controller is much more fluid and works better for the gameplay. Though there seems to be an issue with rebinding keys to the controller while the option is available, the keybinds don’t seem to stay at all once you have rebound them.
I tried multiple times, even closing the game to rebind to no avail. On top of your basic attacks you also get two special attacks, and then an aura for when you are playing co-op. All of the attacks in-game are upgradable and you can purchase these with gold once you are high enough level to unlock the upgrade. All-in-all the game is pretty shallow and there’s not much to the combat or customisation, bosses are easy enough once you get down the few moves they make.
The world is no longer open and is now a linear based map that you select via the world map. Once you have started a level, you need to complete it before you leave as there is no saved progress during the maps, though these sections are short enough so this shouldn’t be an issue. Map length makes for a decent length to just pick up and play for a short while. There is not much exploration to do in any of the maps with it being a pretty direct running from point A to point B or an arena map with waves of enemies, which makes for little variation throughout the game. Even the obstacles in the map are very monotonous; more mobs to fight, some traps that you can interrupt, some stuff dropping from the sky that you’ll need to dodge and then a boss. It feels unrewarding, especially topped off with the lack of gear that you can find or even the simple customisation.
While the game itself isn’t appealing in the long run to me, it makes a good game if you want some brainless button mashing. Sacred 3 is still a pretty looking game, though I feel like the game has limited itself due to the console optimisation. The top-down play with no ability to change the camera angle really limits what you see in the game, although at times they do pan out for you to see the surrounding area; a lot of the time you’re basically seeing the floor and immediate surroundings. The soundtrack to the game is fantastic and by far my favourite part of the game, narration at times is just as cringe-worthy as the dialogue from the weapon spirits, which I feel detracts from the atmosphere that the music projects.
Overall the game is sorely lacking, and regardless of new developer you would have expected more from the Sacred franchise. Changing the genre of the game is hard to do well when you have a franchise that has already made a foothold elsewhere. Sacred 3 seems to have over-simplified itself to appeal to more widespread gamers, while riding on the success of Sacred 2 to draw others in. On top of that, there was immediate DLC locked content even in the pre-release review version, which is available for the price of £3.99. As a standalone game I don’t feel like it brings anything special to the table when you could go and play something that has been more fleshed out and provides more for the price that it’s available at. Let’s just hope that should we get a new instalment, it will return to the Sacred franchise that we know and love.
Sacred 3 is available on Steam for £39.99/€49.99/$49.99 and is also available for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.