Sacred 2 is being released later this year, reminding me that I hadn’t really had a good playthrough of the original Sacred yet, so I think I’ll mess around with it for a bit. I bought the Sacred Gold pack at some point, but I think I played it for less than an hour before getting distracted.

It’s a very Diablo-ish action RPG with a lot of the same hack-n-slash, random loot, interface similarities, etc. Quests are more plentiful though, and skills are more like Diablo 1, learned by finding or buying gems that add points to the skills rather than choosing paths in a tree a la D2. The graphics are a bit crude, locked at 1024×768 (I think), without widescreen support, and lacking the finely polished art direction of Diablo, but they suffice.

I created a Battle Mage in order to get a taste of both fighting and magic, since I’ll be unlikely to have time to try multiple different types of characters. So far, he can pretty much hold his own in a toe-to-toe fight with a monster of the same level, but for groups and tougher monsters I pretty much have to run in a circle and alternate between casting fireballs and healing. I don’t have very many skills yet though, so I’m sure my tactics will change as time goes on.

Right now I’m level 7 and still finishing off the townspeople’s quests before continuing on too far with the main quest. I chose the ‘Silver’ level of difficulty, the highest it would let me before unlocking more, so it can’t hurt to scrounge every reward and be as tough as possible before getting too deep…