Sacred

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Ahh, another nice sunny day out in Bellevue, one of the many different areas of Sacred: a new RPG from Encore software. The game puts you in control of one of 6 characters (to be described later) and allows you to adventure out into a world full of evil and death. Anyway, back to the nice day. My level 6 battle mage has just finished trading with the local merchant, and I decide to head out to continue my quests. All of a sudden, a horde of goblin champions appears from out of nowhere. I, fortunately, am prepared for anything. A couple of clicks and two goblins were laid out with a level two fireball, another with my petrification, and the rest with my frost attack. I step back, and smile, for this is one awesome game.

The Demons!

Shaddar the necromancer once had high intentions on creating a demon to rule the world of Ancaria. However, in his power hungry plans, Shaddar made a slight accident in his preparations, and the demon became uncontrollable. This meant that nothing would be able to stop him, and Shaddar, the man who created him was taken out of the mortal realm by his own creation. With this demon let loose upon the world, it's up to the adventurer to save us all.

Unique Set of Character Choices

The first awesome part of the fantasy-based RPG Sacred is the wide selection of characters. A total of six characters are at the gamer's hands, each with different styles and tactics used in the game. For one, there is the gladiator, a warrior who is unequaled in melee combat. Also, there are the Seraphim, holy warriors who use light on their side in battle. Next, Sacred offers the chance to play as the wood elf, an archer of the forest who also specializes in moon and healing magic. Her evil counterpart, the dark elf shows her face in Ancaria, with unique weapons and the ability to use traps. Battle mages have come to join the fight, using a wide variety of magical skills to lay low their enemies. Lastly is the vampiress, a unique class never really seen before in RPG's. Combining dark arts like summoning bats and life stealing with the ability to be a knight during the day makes this class one that is both rewarding and different. Despite the seemingly unholy practices of some of the classes, all are out to put an end to the demon of SHALDAR.

A Discussion on Rune and Skill

“So what exactly is the point of classes anyway?” one might ask. First of all, Sacred offers probably the coolest character class skills ever seen in a computer game. In Diablo, barbarians had cries, whirlwinds, sorcs with t-storm and orb, etc. Sacred breaks skills up more than this, with basically runes and skill points.

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Take the battle mage for example, with a “skill point” called fire magic. The more points put into this skill with each level your character earns increases both the damage and cool down of ALL fire skills. When I first saw this, I was like cool! But after a while… I began to wonder when I could increase my fire spells like fireball. Hmm… newbie little me. On one of my quests I found a rune that was basically a “rune of fireball.” When I clicked this, my fireball skill went to a level 2!!! What I'm trying to say is, skill points are used to increase the damage of all types of one spell, while runes increase the effects of specific attack. Not as important as the whole rune/skill discussion, are character attributes. Characters are given one per level, and these are used to increase strength, dexterity, endurance, charisma, and so on. These are pretty boring since you only get one, but can sometimes mean surviving or dying in a prolonged battle. All of this may sound confusing, but trust me; it's very, very cool.

Working with NPC's

Somewhat along with the character description is the NPC's that adventurers encounter in the many towns of Ancaria. There are 4 important people, the smith, the merchant, the rune man, and the horse trader.