Sacred

The Good
Boy and this game had something really going. Respect that they still made it in 2D graphics which "supposedly" is more stable. Well, at least graphically anyways.

Another Diablo-style game. Well, at least this one carried a little bit more, although regardless it did copy more than 50% off Diablo 2 which is technically a clear copycat.

Though regardless, any RPG that has a Vampire class in it almost immediately withheld any ill attention I had towards the game...at least for the moment.

The game tutorial was pretty helpful. It skillfully and easily guided you at the first parts of the game and the storyline was helpful enough or at most points straight forward enough as not to get irritating, as the world of Sacred is quite large.

Character development was quite fun. I thought did fared a little better than Diablo 2, where some skills are totally useless in higher levels. Then again, maybe Sacred followed the same footsteps...can't quite remember. Although I do recall it was extremely difficult to upgrade certain skills as you need the "item" to advance and not experience points. Though a bug I found kinda ruined that experience...(later on da bad)

One of the most fun things about the game was the multitude of enemies. They're not that difficult to beat, but there's a whole lot of them. I remember the first time I encountered the place that was crawling with goblins. Yeah, I can out run them. Apparently it wasn't possible, since the whole goblin football team AND their fans were chasing you too. That was quite fun really. Obviously it was a big hint that you shouldn't explore there now.

One of the things I enjoyed most was actually this the first real-time RPG to my knowledge that has horses to ride. The first RPG I played that had horses available was Ultima 6 (that were graphically visible, of course). I really enjoyed horseback riding, although they kinda stunk when it came to fighting on horseback, but I suppose its a start.

The Bad
The game was "this" close to become a well received RPG from where I was playing...until...I found a bug.

Not just any bug. But one of the worst bugs you can possibly conjure in a game. The one that inhibits you to progress in the game.

There I was, stuck in the middle of an Orc infested desert, near an oasis where the primary mission states that I had to give water to a dying soldier. Just get a bottle at the oasis and bring him the water. Fine.

Went to the oasis, that small thing-a-majig at the oasis must be the bottle. For the next 15-30 minutes, I was circling that dang thing trying to figure out why I couldn't pick it up. After almost an hour I gave up, thinking there must've been a sidequest or something I missed. So I explored everywhere else possible and after many gaming days, I returned to the spot of the ol'bottle problem. Still couldn't pick it up.

I could've easily gone to an internet cafe to find out what was wrong, but I have a policy to "almost" never look up walkthroughs, cheats and other stuff that is against my code of ethics as a seasoned gaming veteran. I still thought that I did something wrong in the game which prevented me to progress in the game.

Guess what? I restarted the game. Twice...same result.

If you know at this point in the game, that's where you have some serious anger management issues. Especially when you have high blood pressure like I have.

So out of frustration, I forced myself to go online and see WHAT IN THE HELL I DID WRONG. Apparently, I didn't do anything wrong. There was a bug in the programming. You had to enter some idiot code in the game debug? to fix it. Now that really pissed me off. That meant technically, there was nothing I could humanely possibly do to progress in the game without entering that code. After that, my interest just shut down. Anything good about the game just went poof! in the void.

(Coincidentally, I was in North Sumatera when the Tsunami occured. Though I the Tsunami was only one province away, I still did experience the 7.9 richter scale earthquake. That apparently became more entertaining than playing Sacred).

I met up with some gaming pals and they more or less were bummed as I was because of the bug, some others fared worse to discover more bugs. So when the sequel of Sacred came out, we avoided it like the plague or worst. We were curious, but not curios enough to go through the same emotional irritation the first Sacred gave us.

All just because of one lousy dang bug in the programming. Fortunately I didn't play the multiplayer. I hear my bug problem was heaven compared to what the multiplayers had to go through.

Way to go programmers! !%#$%!##$

The Bottom Line
Well, I wouldn't go near it now, later or any possible distant future. Maybe you should get it after they've released the 20th patch. That is if they've fixed everything.