At first glace, the game is Diablo. You have a character, in an isometric view that you can move around and to click on enemies and attack. Diablo fans may be disappointed to find that the world is not randomly generated, but should be impressed to see the extremely large world map. It makes Morrowind added to Oblivion look a bit small. It certainly, if nothing else, makes Diablo feel like a demo in terms of world size.
I touched a little on the skill system on the first half of my post, but I'll continue it some more.
Your skills are divided into 3 categories: Attributes, Skills, and Combat Arts.
Attributes: Veteran RPG players should have no problem understanding this one. It's your character's physical stats. How strong you are, how much health you have, your mental abilities, etc, etc. Each time you level up, you get one point to put into your character. It sounds really crummy when you have 6 attributes, but all your attributes do level up with you, but you get to put that *extra* point into what you want to focus on.
Skills: Skills aren't what you may think of when regarding most RPGs. Skills in Sacred are better thought of as "proficiencies," because they will boost your ability to handle weapons, armor, riding horses, and any number of things. Say you are a mage with fire, ice, wind and earth magic. Taking Fire Skills allows your character to deal more damage and recharge your fire skills faster. You get to add up to 8 different skills as you level up, but you have to wait pretty long to get the 8th one. Just make sure you choose a skill you are going to stick with, because taking riding might be great for a while, but if you stop using your horse, then it was a wasted skill.
Combat Arts: Combat arts are basically what RPG players think of when some one refers to skills. They are your fighter's whirling blade attacks, or your mage's ice storms. Anything that isn't a basic attack is your Combat arts. What is unique to Sacred and combat arts is that you never learn them from leveling up like you would in Diablo. You have to find your Combat Arts by getting random drops. It kinda sucks, but there is a good reason for it, and I think it works better in the end. As I mentioned before, you can over-level your skills. Each time a Combat art drops from an enemy, you have a choice of learning it or keeping it as a token. All classes combat arts will drop, but you can trade them in multiplayer, or take them to a special store keeper and exchange them for a combat art that is applicable to your class. The reason why you might want to hold on to a Combat Art token is because you can insert them into your weapons and armor slots. If you insert a token into a slot on your equipment, you will gain the damage bonuses from the extra level without getting the full penalty of the recharge time. Two players could have 5 levels in the same Combat art, but the one who equiped his tokens instead of learning them permenetly will be able to use his skill much more frequently.
Anyway, I can't recommend this game strongly enough, especially at the price it is at. Even if you are unsure of whether or not you will like the game, it's almost impossible to say you wasted $5 if you didn't like it. Just compare it to a run to McDonalds, and see how much you really think it's not worth it.
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