So there is no character creation, you can just choose the name of your hero or heroine. Depending on your initial choice, the game takes off with different introductions and in different areas, but in short time each character makes it to the place of the first main quest.

There are 4 difficulties available to choose from, but only Bronze seems adequate at first. Silver is too heavy, and the others not available at first. However, you can export you character with all its stats and inventory and then start a new game with an increased difficulty, e.g. Gold or Platinum.

To develop your character, you need to find runes which give you special abilities or spells when studied. If you learn a special ability or a spell several times, it levels up. If you find special abilities or spells from other classes, you can trade them 3:1 or 4:1 (configurable) for your character's ability classes or spells at a combo master.

Each character has two fixed abilities in the beginning, and during the game up to 6 others can be added (at levels 3, 6, 12, 20, 30, 50). When a new level is reached, you can distribute the earned ability- and attribute-points, but attributes are also increased automatically at the same time.

As said before, Sacred's gameplay is strongly inspired by Diablo, but there are some significant differences, which make it more playable and more enjoyable compared to Diablo 2: Sacred has a reasonable saving system, restricted monsters respawning (it is possible to pacify an area by solving 4-5 side quests which decreases respawning) and unlike Diablo 2 it has been optimized for single player experience at first.

In the course of the game you find enough items to satisfy even the greediest collector. There are even socketed items, from which you can have the improved items removed again from a blacksmith and replaced by even better ones.

One of the best new aspects are the combo attacks: You can have a special NPC, the combomasters, combine up to 4 of your special abilities or spells, which you then can recall by one single click like a regular ability. This may come in handy at some boss enemies of course.

Unfortunately, the enemies become repetitive after a while, but the addictive game play keeps you going and eliminating enemy by enemy.

To travel long distances in the huge world of Ancaria, there is portal system available. You can also mount a horse for faster travelling and to be able to flee from combat, but encounters are better lead afoot for most spells, abilities and combos are not available from a horse's back, except for the Wood Elf, who has some special attacks.

On the visual side, Sacred offers a combination of beautiful drawn 2D graphics in which the 3D characters do fit in very good. Each new piece of armoury is depicted on your hero, whose animations are a little odd at times however, especially the Gladiator looks like he has two left feet. There are 3 zoom levels, but on a standard 15" TFT display the one with the largest oversight shows things too small , the middle is too close for good oversight and the third is to admire the armoury only. A seamless zooming system would have been better here!

The music does a good job and stays in the background, but always puts a scene in a nice atmosphere. The sound effects are very nice and especially the German voice actors are great. For example, the Galdiator is dubbed by the German voice of Bruce Willis (who quotes from his movies at times, e.g. from Die Hard 2: 'Jippieieh, du Schweinebacke').

The controls are good as well, the GUI is well structured and the keys are assigned as we are used to them from other games, which is important, as they keys cannot be remapped.

Unfortunately, the first German sales version is full of bugs, even after patch 1.4. On some machines, the intro movie does not run. One of the most annoying and noticeable bugs happens in some side quests, in which you have to rescue someone. Sometimes, these NPCs are simply nowhere to be found, which results in a non-solveable quest. It have become a bad tradition to use German buyers as beta testers lately...or so it seems!

There is a lot of humor in Sacred, be sure to read the epitaphs on the courtyard in particular! And in multiplayer, cheaters are said to be depicted as bottles or rabbits!

Overall, Sacred is even more motivating than Diablo 2, especially for the better quests, the saving system and brigns some great and fresh ideas like the horse and the combos to the genre, but the story could be more involving and quests a little more original (most of the time the there are baby sitting, fed-ex, search&destroy or search&rescue jobs only.). Enemies get repetitive and some areas are simply to boring and too large. Sacred has a high replay value by exporting heroes, different difficulty levels with better items and the 6 classes. If you enjoyed Diablo 2, you need to play Sacred and if you were disappointed by Diablo 2, Sacred may be just what you were waiting for after Diablo 1! For a possible Sacred 2 let's hope for better quests and less vast areas however…