The Ashen are back and are laying waste to Ancaria. It is up to you to take up the mantle of one of 4 heroes, team up with up to 3 friends and hack ‘n’ slash your way through thousands of enemies in order to defeat the invaders and retrieve the Heart of Ancaria. This is Sacred 3.
Sacred 3 has you play as one of four heroes – A winged Seraphim, Marak the axe-weilding Safiri, the royal Alithea and Vajra, the Khukuri archer – all of which have their own set of skills, strengths and weaknesses. These heroes have gathered to face the Ashen, a force that had been defeated in previous Sacred games but has regained its strength and has captured the Heart of Ancaria, upsetting the balance of the land. You are guided by Aria, a helpful but rather annoying lady who is leading the resistance.
Sacred 3 is an (almost) top down, linear hack ‘n’ slash trawler and hacking and slashing is almost all that you do. The game starts well, introducing you to the fighting mechanics as you defend Halios from attack. X is a standard attack. Square is a block breaker. O is dodge or block. Combat skills (devastating attack moves) are unleashed using L1 or R1. There is no jump button, even though most of the trailers for Sacred 3 show a hero leaping through the air at some point. Triangle is to interact with objects. You then use these controls to mash your way through wave, after wave, after wave, after wave (you get the idea) of enemies. The game is built around the combat and it is all you seem to do throughout. Walk. Fight. Walk. Fight some more. Walk. Fight while occasionally pressing Triangle next to something. Walk. Beat up an object. Walk. Fight. This becomes very repetitive early on before the difficulty starts to ramp up and even then, the wide variety and mix of enemies is the only thing stopping Sacred 3 from being excruciatingly boring.
One of the only pleasing aspects of Sacred 3 is the plethora of different enemies for you to slice through. There are tonnes of them. These range from grunt fodder which are easily dispatched with one slash of your axe, shield enemies which cannot be attacked unless hit with a block breaker, wizard/shaman style enemies which perform area of effect spells and “elite” enemies which are bigger and badder than the normal enemies, have more health, better attacks and take some effort to bring down.
Sacred 3 has a surprising amount of levels that span numerous different themes, (crumbling cities, forests, volcanic eruptions, ruins among others) and the environments can add to the dangers you face. In almost every level there is a segment that has falling dangers that you have to avoid, an outline of where they will land giving you a hint of where not to step. Some levels have explosive mines and poison boxes which will explode if attached. It is just a shame that these levels are so linear with only a few branching paths and invisible walls blocking your way progress into interesting looking areas.
Each main story level is capped off with a boss battle and the vast majority of these are great. They all play into the same boss battles tropes of the majority of games, with a pattern to learn in order to defeat the boss, but are still a challenge. These patterns range from simply dodging telegraphed attacks and replying with your own barrage or laying into an enemy until they unleash huge blasts that you have to use the environment to avoid getting caught in. After repeatedly tapping X for so long, carving a way through the hundreds of enemies that repeatedly get in your way, the boss battles are a nice change of pace.
Sacred 2 had a loot system which many found to be intuitive and deep, although not has good as those in the Diablo game. For some reason, there is no loot system in Sacred 3. Perhaps Keen Games decided that they could not beat Diablo on their own turf and decided to take this part of the game out entirely or maybe the loot system simply didn’t work with 4 player co-op but either way, the loot system is missed. The levelling and character customisation system is relatively deep and new weapons are unlocked sporadically which can be buffed with spirits. Better attacks, new skills and upgrades to almost everything can be bought with the cash you hoard in each level and there is a decent amount of choice – not JRPG level options but enough to customise your abilities to suit your play style and characters.
Sacred 3 is fine in single player but the game is much better in co-op. The game features drop-in, drop-out multiplayer which increases or decreases the difficulty of the Ashen army. Teaming up with other players helps alleviate some of the monotony of hacking through the waves of enemies and adds a little bit of spice the proceedings as you try to compete to get the best score (as this adds an XP bonus at the end of the level). A helpful half moon appears under your character showing your player number so that you don’t get lost in the melee and having a good mix of characters (like an archer and a close range tank) means you all get your fair share of action but don’t get in each others way. The after effect of this multiplayer is that it is impossible to pause the game – even when playing on your own. Pressing start brings up a menu but the game continues in the background – something I learned when the Tesco delivery driver knocked on the door and I returned to find myself dead.
Here is the kicker – Sacred 3 has an attitude problem and this is where the game lets its self down the most. The game is steeped in serious fantasy but it is filled with failed attempts at humour, wackyness and light heartedness that feel entirely out-of-place. Part of the games weapon customisation allows spirits to be attached which buff them. These spirits throw out soundbites when you manage to pull of an impressive combo and can be really off-putting. Hearing “Sexy” or “Lets hug a tree” when you finish a fight in a fantasy game is just odd. At the start of every boss battle, the screen freezes and a daft message appears. When you are about to face off against a giant, ugly ork creature, the last thing you want to know is that it “Lost his teddy bear”. Sacred 3 is filled with weird wacky quirks that are out-of-place. It feels like the developers wrote a decent fantasy game and then somebody came along and said “Woah dudes! This game needs something ‘now’, something ‘hip’ to make it ‘down with the kids'” and then added a load of dialogue that would be more at home in Borderlands than in this game. This is most aptly demonstrated by Aria, your guide, who’s guidance sounds like it coming from an acne-ridden teen than the leader of the resistance. She is plain annoying.
As for visuals, Sacred 3 is not the prettiest game you are going to play on the PS3 but it is not ugly by any stretch of the imagination. Some of the effects are pleasing on the eye, character models are fairly detailed and the environments are colourful. There are some weird frame rate drops, even when there is nothing going on on-screen, and the action almost grinds to a halt – they are that noticeable.
The Verdict? Sacred 3 is a middling adventure which will only entertain those who are hardcore hack ‘n’ slash fans. The game is a strange mix of forced humour, slick but repetitive combat and an easily forgettable storyline trudging over Sacred but well trodden ground. Its only saving graces are its length, with plenty of content to keep you busy, the variety of enemy types and a well implemented 4 player co-op system. The lack of loot is a disappointment, it is not pushing the boundaries when it comes to visuals and Sacred 3 brings nothing new to the genre.
Sacred 3 hacks its way onto the PS3 (version reviewed) and Xbox 360 on August 1st 2014.
FULL DISCLOSURE: We were provided with a review copy of Sacred 3 in order to complete this review.
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