"Sacrifice" Vs "Brutal Legend": What are their PROS and CONS?

[piinyouri]

Echoing everyone who said the RTS elements killed Brutal Legend.
I thought I was playing a Zelda copy with a rad palette swap and then...the first big battle.

It's so stupidly convoluted in the control scheme that managing to do anything is....well shit it was easier to move units in Starcraft 64.

Jack Black was surprisingly enjoyable though, and Tim Shaeffer knows his metal stuff. That game was legit.

 

[DioWallachia]

Echoing everyone who said the RTS elements killed Brutal Legend.
I thought I was playing a Zelda copy with a rad palette swap and then...the first big battle.

It's so stupidly convoluted in the control scheme that managing to do anything is....well shit it was easier to move units in Starcraft 64.

Jack Black was surprisingly enjoyable though, and Tim Shaeffer knows his metal stuff. That game was legit.

I dont want to make the "PC Master Race" have a hard-on stiffy but do you think that if BL had a control scheme of a PC game (like Sacrifice) it would be a better game to micromanage?

 

[BRex21]

I have been meaning to try brutal legend someday but haven't got around to it yet. Sacrifice was a particularly fun game, but it did lack a little bit of strategy beyond get dudes to attack other dudes.
Still it had a variety of unit types, and good group and bind potential making it masterable if you wanted to take the time and patience. Horrible graphics tho

 

[GloatingSwine]

I dont want to make the "PC Master Race" have a hard-on stiffy but do you think that if BL had a control scheme of a PC game (like Sacrifice) it would be a better game to micromanage?

No, it would still be terrible. The control scheme was bad for RTS, but it was the lack of interesting units or anything interesting to do with them that really made it bad.

 

[DioWallachia]

I have been meaning to try brutal legend someday but haven't got around to it yet. Sacrifice was a particularly fun game, but it did lack a little bit of strategy beyond get dudes to attack other dudes.
Still it had a variety of unit types, and good group and bind potential making it masterable if you wanted to take the time and patience. Horrible graphics tho

The graphics were fine for its age and i really dont mind them. And lets face it, its better for it to look like that rather spend more millions into it rather than feeling the need to make a deal with the devil (EA) just to sastify a demand of "looking good" rather than being a good game.

 

[piinyouri]

Echoing everyone who said the RTS elements killed Brutal Legend.
I thought I was playing a Zelda copy with a rad palette swap and then...the first big battle.

It's so stupidly convoluted in the control scheme that managing to do anything is....well shit it was easier to move units in Starcraft 64.

Jack Black was surprisingly enjoyable though, and Tim Shaeffer knows his metal stuff. That game was legit.

I dont want to make the "PC Master Race" have a hard-on stiffy but do you think that if BL had a control scheme of a PC game (like Sacrifice) it would be a better game to micromanage?

Yes. Easily.
I suck at RTS games really but I could tell all the difficulty of the battles in BL came from how unnecessarily difficult it was to maneuver units or do anything really.

Had it been on PC, where I could see all the units clearly and easily and selected them as such, they would have been much easier.

 

[DioWallachia]

Echoing everyone who said the RTS elements killed Brutal Legend.
I thought I was playing a Zelda copy with a rad palette swap and then...the first big battle.

It's so stupidly convoluted in the control scheme that managing to do anything is....well shit it was easier to move units in Starcraft 64.

Jack Black was surprisingly enjoyable though, and Tim Shaeffer knows his metal stuff. That game was legit.

I dont want to make the "PC Master Race" have a hard-on stiffy but do you think that if BL had a control scheme of a PC game (like Sacrifice) it would be a better game to micromanage?

Yes. Easily.
I suck at RTS games really but I could tell all the difficulty of the battles in BL came from how unnecessarily difficult it was to maneuver units or do anything really.

Had it been on PC, where I could see all the units clearly and easily and selected them as such, they would have been much easier.

I guess you mean that it would be easy to click on them, but "see all units"? Sacrifice also had the problem of having a clusterfuck of creatures that were hard to select individually AND to make them go for an espesific enemy in ANOTHER clusterfuck.

And to think that with a premise of having WIZARDS on the game, they could at least had the power of "Astral Projection" to see beyond your body and many from a overhead view at least.

 

[piinyouri]

Echoing everyone who said the RTS elements killed Brutal Legend.
I thought I was playing a Zelda copy with a rad palette swap and then...the first big battle.

It's so stupidly convoluted in the control scheme that managing to do anything is....well shit it was easier to move units in Starcraft 64.

Jack Black was surprisingly enjoyable though, and Tim Shaeffer knows his metal stuff. That game was legit.

I dont want to make the "PC Master Race" have a hard-on stiffy but do you think that if BL had a control scheme of a PC game (like Sacrifice) it would be a better game to micromanage?

Yes. Easily.
I suck at RTS games really but I could tell all the difficulty of the battles in BL came from how unnecessarily difficult it was to maneuver units or do anything really.

Had it been on PC, where I could see all the units clearly and easily and selected them as such, they would have been much easier.

I guess you mean that it would be easy to click on them, but "see all units"? Sacrifice also had the problem of having a clusterfuck of creatures that were hard to select individually AND to make them go for an espesific enemy in ANOTHER clusterfuck.

And to think that with a premise of having WIZARDS on the game, they could at least had the power of "Astral Projection" to see beyond your body and many from a overhead view at least.

Yeah I think all RTS's should be in overhead view.
Anything else is similar to trying to play Mario 64 with the camera in the "zoom in on marios ass" mode.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well I had to look up a video of Sacrifice because sadly I never heard of it before, apparently it was ahead of it's time and with that a massive flop.
From what I see that game did everything Brutal Legend tried to do and succeeded, i.e. it was funny and charming the whole way through with amazing designs, the RTS part was actually strategic and thoughtful and your main guy played a vital role.

Meanwhile Brutal Legend... oh god was that a puddle of piss, first they sold it as an action adventure with Tim Schafer writing, but they only had one hour of that and then they flip on you with the most meaningless RTS shit I have ever seen (maybe that is a console standard), and it stopped being funny just progressively flatter and grindier, hell some people were so traumatized they will flat out deny the game even had RTS.
But it was there and it was hopeless, no strategy, no progression, shallow as fuck, no proper control of the field you just kept throwing in units and grinding the enemy till you got to the other end, that is RTS design straight from Satan himself.

 

[Uncreation]

I played a bit of Sacrifice some time ago (not exactly when it came out, but it's been a few years still). And after what i've played, i have agreed with a review i read about the game, in a local gaming magazine. If you treat the game as an RTS then you will probably be quite frustrated with it, because of several reasons. First and foremost is the fact that the camera is stuck with you character, and so, it's hard to have an overview of your unit.
A better way to approach this, though, is to not play the game as an RTS, but rather as a sort of 3rd person Action game. Essentially, the game revolves around the main character anyway, and you can theoretically play the game using little or no creatures i think, using your other types of spells (damage, etc.). Basically it's you versus an oposing wizard, slinging spells at each other. Of course, since the AI will use creatures, it will be very hard if you don't, but that's not the point.
Now, the creatures are a bonus. Think of it this way: YOU are the big, powerful wizard with amazing powers and spell at his disposal, YOU fight the enemy, YOU crush the other wizard. And, like any self-respecting mage of huge power, you can also bring your minions with you to do your bidding.
Now, instead of seeing the game through the eyes of some (modern day) general, trying (and failing) to keep an eye on all of his troops at all time from a 3rd person view, you are a mighty fantasy sorceror, sending your minions to fight and kill and die for you, as you unleash all hell with your magic upon the field of battle and any poor bastar... erm... enemy wizard trying to stand in your way that day.
I may have gotten a bit carried away there, but the feeling the game gives you is very nice. You (or I, at least) can't help but feel realy hyped when you're in the middle of the whole mayhem, casting spells, shouting orders at the minions (Guard me!, Circle formation!, etc. love the fact that the character actually shouts the orders at the creatures and points towards them. ), taking the souls of the dead enemy minions. Awesome game in my opinion.
Haven't played the other one though, so no idea about that one.

 

[Pink Gregory]

Strange that y'never hear Brutal Legend compared to the earlier Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes; pretty much purely for the 3rd person/RTS comparisons.

I liked Brutal Legend a lot, but the gameplay was certainly at the bottom of reasons why, sort of a 'fails in the execution' sort of thing.

 

[DioWallachia]

Meanwhile Brutal Legend... oh god was that a puddle of piss, first they sold it as an action adventure with Tim Schafer writing, but they only had one hour of that and then they flip on you with the most meaningless RTS shit I have ever seen (maybe that is a console standard), and it stopped being funny just progressively flatter and grindier, hell some people were so traumatized they will flat out deny the game even had RTS.
But it was there and it was hopeless, no strategy, no progression, shallow as fuck, no proper control of the field you just kept throwing in units and grinding the enemy till you got to the other end, that is RTS design straight from Satan himself.

That was Electronics Arts fault (who could POSSIBLY have guessed?) who marqueted the thing as a action adventure rather than an RTS like Tim wanted

 

[DioWallachia]

Strange that y'never hear Brutal Legend compared to the earlier Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes; pretty much purely for the 3rd person/RTS comparisons.

I liked Brutal Legend a lot, but the gameplay was certainly at the bottom of reasons why, sort of a 'fails in the execution' sort of thing.

When was Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes made? Any reason of why its the first time someone brings it up? bad marketing/obscure or it has something different than the above examples (like something else besides de 3rd person/RTS)?

 

[DioWallachia]

Echoing everyone who said the RTS elements killed Brutal Legend.
I thought I was playing a Zelda copy with a rad palette swap and then...the first big battle.

It's so stupidly convoluted in the control scheme that managing to do anything is....well shit it was easier to move units in Starcraft 64.

Jack Black was surprisingly enjoyable though, and Tim Shaeffer knows his metal stuff. That game was legit.

I dont want to make the "PC Master Race" have a hard-on stiffy but do you think that if BL had a control scheme of a PC game (like Sacrifice) it would be a better game to micromanage?

Yes. Easily.
I suck at RTS games really but I could tell all the difficulty of the battles in BL came from how unnecessarily difficult it was to maneuver units or do anything really.

Had it been on PC, where I could see all the units clearly and easily and selected them as such, they would have been much easier.

I guess you mean that it would be easy to click on them, but "see all units"? Sacrifice also had the problem of having a clusterfuck of creatures that were hard to select individually AND to make them go for an espesific enemy in ANOTHER clusterfuck.

And to think that with a premise of having WIZARDS on the game, they could at least had the power of "Astral Projection" to see beyond your body and many from a overhead view at least.

Yeah I think all RTS's should be in overhead view.
Anything else is similar to trying to play Mario 64 with the camera in the "zoom in on marios ass" mode.

But at least with my idea we could have it both ways. But i assume that to make it "fair" they will most likely make the "Astral Proyection" to be executed once in a while or that the wizard cant move while in this state and will act more like a building.

 

[Sir Shockwave]

As a man whose played both, they have their advantages...but also their flaws.

The big let downs with Sacrifice were it's camera and controls, something that would be repeated in Stormrise. When you have a large army of critters to move, it becomes cumbersome. HOWEVER, Sacrifice is a lot more re-playable than Brutal Legend ever was due to the way the story was designed - do you play one god straight, or some mix of two or three?.

Brutal Legend on the other hand had better controls, but also suffered from arguably worse Army Management. The sole tactic amounted to "March next to me, Kill things.". The controls weren't much designed for issuing more than that. However, both games get points for their imagery.

 

[Kilo24]

Sacrifice was (and is) brillant but extremely hard. If you are thinking about firing it up again, there are some issues with video drivers but these can be overcome. Oh yeah, did I mention, it's proper hard.

I played through it as a kid by just making all the units I could and Guardianing them to a single manalith. The AI would just throw itself against me and die; the only level I could describe as hard under that strategy was the very last one.

Of course, I tried that against a human player once. It did not work.

Now, for me, the game is pretty easy. Just keep 3-4 manahoars, a roughly even mix (soul-value wise) of melee, ranged, and flyers, order them all to follow you, use your spells mildly intelligently, and use the teleport spell defensively, and all the single player missions are pretty simple. I really can't describe it as a hard game.

On-topic, I haven't played Brutal Legend, but Sacrifice has modular sides (5 choices for each of 9 levels), is wonderfully unique, and all the mechanics are focused towards combat. On the other hand, there's not a hell of a lot of strategy to it outside of designing your spellbook, ordering creatures around is quite a miserable experience if you want them to do something more than follow you, use a self-targeted ability or defend a place, the minimap is pretty bad (you need to be there in person to get meaningful information about any enemies), and the way that the battle dynamics are designed means that as soon as one person gets an advantage, they almost always keep it. On the whole, I do quite like it. It does a fairly decent job of throwing the RTS genre on its head, and still manages to have pretty good mechanics for all its novelty and significant flaws.

 

[DioWallachia]

I played a bit of Sacrifice some time ago (not exactly when it came out, but it's been a few years still). And after what i've played, i have agreed with a review i read about the game, in a local gaming magazine. If you treat the game as an RTS then you will probably be quite frustrated with it, because of several reasons. First and foremost is the fact that the camera is stuck with you character, and so, it's hard to have an overview of your unit.
A better way to approach this, though, is to not play the game as an RTS, but rather as a sort of 3rd person Action game. Essentially, the game revolves around the main character anyway, and you can theoretically play the game using little or no creatures i think, using your other types of spells (damage, etc.). Basically it's you versus an oposing wizard, slinging spells at each other. Of course, since the AI will use creatures, it will be very hard if you don't, but that's not the point.
Now, the creatures are a bonus. Think of it this way: YOU are the big, powerful wizard with amazing powers and spell at his disposal, YOU fight the enemy, YOU crush the other wizard. And, like any self-respecting mage of huge power, you can also bring your minions with you to do your bidding.
Now, instead of seeing the game through the eyes of some (modern day) general, trying (and failing) to keep an eye on all of his troops at all time from a 3rd person view, you are a mighty fantasy sorceror, sending your minions to fight and kill and die for you, as you unleash all hell with your magic upon the field of battle and any poor bastar... erm... enemy wizard trying to stand in your way that day.
I may have gotten a bit carried away there, but the feeling the game gives you is very nice. You (or I, at least) can't help but feel realy hyped when you're in the middle of the whole mayhem, casting spells, shouting orders at the minions (Guard me!, Circle formation!, etc. love the fact that the character actually shouts the orders at the creatures and points towards them. ), taking the souls of the dead enemy minions. Awesome game in my opinion.
Haven't played the other one though, so no idea about that one.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeell the wizard its quite weak at an early game and cant kill for shit until you hit the godlike powers of lvl 9 so you kinda need the minions even for a Wiz vs Wiz match because (guess what) he can heal just as fast as you do (assuming Player vs AI)

Depending on what god you are aligned, you most likelly will hit a gamebreaking spell early on like the Demonic Riff who can summon demonds per EACH of the enemies in the vicinity, so if the enemy had a massive army of LVL 1 creatures then they will die horribly, every single one of them (assuming that he cant just order them out of the area of effect) or the Raise The Dead spell that the AI never uses againts you.

Hell, even at lvl 1 with James and Pyro you can hit brokeness early by having a massive army of flyers because those versions do splash damage, something that its inmensily usefull when each wizard at lvl 1 DEPENDS of massive quantities to counter each other.

 

[Ratboy1337]

All I know is Brutal Legend wasn't very good. The story was pretty interesting but I didn't like the game play very much. I have never heard of that other one.

 

[DioWallachia]

As a man whose played both, they have their advantages...but also their flaws.

The big let downs with Sacrifice were it's camera and controls, something that would be repeated in Stormrise. When you have a large army of critters to move, it becomes cumbersome. HOWEVER, Sacrifice is a lot more re-playable than Brutal Legend ever was due to the way the story was designed - do you play one god straight, or some mix of two or three?.

Brutal Legend on the other hand had better controls, but also suffered from arguably worse Army Management. The sole tactic amounted to "March next to me, Kill things.". The controls weren't much designed for issuing more than that. However, both games get points for their imagery.

Do you think that BL being on a (and i quote here) "FILTHY BAKA GAYJIN GONSOLE" made it worse? Could have been saved by having PC controlers?