Sacred 2 Remaster Review – Missed Opportunity

Sacred 2 Remaster Review

There are lots of gamers who love to replay their favorite titles just the way they remember them. The market for emulators is booming for a reason. I, on the other hand, appreciate the way games are now, with more responsive controls, better visuals, and at least occasionally great narratives and performances. To some degree, splitting the difference, Sacred 2 Remaster preserves what made the 2008 original so innovative, while making a few welcome upgrades.

Ancient History

No doubt many gamers have no idea what Sacred 2 is or was. Coming on the heels of isometric ARPGs like Diablo and Titan Quest, Sacred (2004) and Sacred 2 were fantasy ARPGs in the same ballpark. Sacred 2 stood out by virtue of its rotatable camera, vast explorable world, and colorful palette. It also had a sense of humor, refusing to take its somewhat opaque narrative too seriously. Sacred 2 had a pretty deep upgrade and combat system, and a unique dark/light mechanic.

But the 2008 version had some issues, too. First, it was technically very rough around the edges. Movement and combat were clunky. The game’s voice acting was either endearingly amateurish or just plain bad, depending on how charitable you felt. Sacred 2 Gold didn’t do much to fix any of these things, but it did package the base game and DLC together. Also notable was that Sacred 2 also appeared on Xbox 360 in 2009, making it one of the first isometric ARPGs to make its way to consoles and controllers.

Jump to 2025

There are remasters that are so thorough they render the original unrecognizable. Sacred 2 Remaster isn’t one of those games. In many ways, it doesn’t go nearly far enough, but we’ll get to that.

Sacred 2 has a decent enough — if not terribly original — high fantasy narrative premise. It takes place in the land of Ancaria. The ancient race of Seraphim has ceded its control of Ancaria to the High Elves, who have split into two warring factions: the clergy and nobility. At stake is the manipulation of a supernatural force called T-energy. During the course of the campaign, the player encounters several races vying for control of Ancaria’s T-energy, which is wreaking havoc on the land.

One of Sacred 2’s best features is that players can choose to play either the Light or Shadow campaigns, each with a different arc and goals. There are six starting classes, but two of them are locked to a specific campaign. The Seraphim must play the Light version, and the Inquisitor the Shadow campaign. At many points, the two campaigns and many of the NPCs and side-quests converge, so the two arcs aren’t entirely different.

The six starting classes are marginally customizable at the start, but really become unique as they start to use the game’s many weapons and combat arts. All classes have access to magic of one kind or another, and the game has a pretty vast array of weapons and skills. The depth of systems was impressive in 2008 and remains so in the new version.

Around the World

Ancaria is big place and is built on a range of colorful and distinct biomes. Most of the map is open to the player from the start, and while players have mounts to help them travel a little quicker, there is unfortunately no fast travel system. The game notably features some verticality and underground areas to explore. Unfortunately, the camera struggles mightily in some of those more complex areas. Overall, Sacred 2’s environments are colorful, vibrant, and fun to explore. Some attention has been paid to adding fidelity to textures, character models, and the world in general, but character movement — in and out of combat — feels incredibly antiquated.

While it will certainly make you appreciate how far video game combat has evolved, Sacred 2 Remastered makes only marginal improvements on the original. Nostalgia is great, but it doesn’t make up for terrible hit detection, lack of precision, sluggish controls, buggy gameplay, and brain-dead enemies. It’s a real shame that combat didn’t receive a complete overhaul. The world is engaging, and the systems have depth. But combat just feels bad.

The game’s writing and voice work haven’t been touched. In 2008, a fantasy RPG poking fun at itself and its conventions was a nice antidote to the overly serious dark gothic worlds of games like Diablo. But in Sacred 2, it just doesn’t hold up very well.

Bug Out

I get preserving a classic game’s strengths. What I don’t get is not fixing an old game’s tech. Releasing a Remaster of a 17-year-old game with texture pop-in, stutters, crashes, and bugs is more than a missed opportunity. Sacred 2 includes some graphical settings that the original couldn’t have dreamed of. Unfortunately, it’s not even close to a smooth experience, even on a high-end rig.

Sacred 2 Remaster accomplishes a couple of things. It reminds us that the original was ambitious and forward-looking in many ways. Sacred 2’s wide-open world and deep progression systems hold up well. Sacred 2 Remaster is also a reminder that the original’s tech and combat left a lot to be desired. People loved the 2008 game in spite of those things. Enjoying Sacred 2 Remaster means having to overlook them once again.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***